(3)Castlevania vs (6)Halo 2006

Castlevania vs Halo (2006 Series}

One of the unspoken rules of the contest is that every single match involving Halo or Master Chief must be entertaining or interesting in some way. (The sole exception to this is Master Chief vs. Crash Bandicoot, 2004. Because, c’mon, it’s Crash Bandicoot.) When the series bracket was announced, the 6-seeded Halo faced stiff competition in Round Two from Kingdom Hearts… but first it had to get past Castlevania. Despite the fact that Halo and Master Chief have a reputation for tanking to holy hell in the past, most of the board put its faith in Halo to make it out of Round One without a second thought.

I don’t know much about voting trends in terms of day vote and night vote and afterschool vote and the like, but I do know that Halo is supposed to be crazy with the day vote. Well, Castlevania laughed at Halo’s great day vote and absolutely buried it, en route to a 55-45 victory. What happened here? Well, it’s also commonly accepted that anti-votes are an innate property of Halo/Master Chief; at least until this year, Xbox hate ran rampant on this site. That and few people bothered to think about Castlevania as being an influential series with a game on damn near every platform. A satisfying upset for the few who managed to pick it correctly.