Ulti's Top 10 GameFAQs Contest Matches

This is a repeat of a Top 10 list posted on the GameFAQs home page.

Introduction
The selling point of GameFAQs is obvious: video game help and discussion driven by user-submitted content. If you're on this site, you're likely here for help on a game. But beyond this, GameFAQs is known for another fun past time -- and that is contests. From 1998 up until the spring of 2002, CJayC (the first administrator of the site) ran some random, easy-to-enter contests. They were simple and fun, but it was nothing earth-shattering. Then he decided to make a topic on a well-known social board called Current Events, where he asked for ideas on which gaming characters most deserved to be in a 64-entrant, one match per day NCAA style bracket contest. The field for the original Great GameFAQs Character Battle was questionable at best, but it didn't matter. The contest was an absolute smash success, and the GameFAQs tradition of annual bracket contests -- and some years, we get more than one -- was born. The contests have undergone several paradigm shifts in formats and entrants, but the one constant is throwing a bunch of stuff into a giant bracket and having our own version of the NCAA basketball tournament. For the first three years, the contests followed the NCAA format of four 16 seed divisions to the letter. Beginning in the spring of 2005 with the Villains Contest, this changed. We've since seen 8 divisions of 8, 4 divisions of 8, 4way polls, male/female splits and retired winners. There was even a Quote Contest announcement that never panned out, and there is currently a lot of hype for the coming Female Villains Contest. For the most part, the contests are great fun, generate a ton of interest and debate, and always leave people interested in what comes next. Contest polls routinely draw in a ton of votes compared to normal polls of the day, and it's looking like GameFAQs will continue the bracket contest tradition for as long as possible. The following list is a rundown of the best contest matches we've ever had, but there are a few things to remember before reading on. First and foremost, I made sure not to include any one contest more than twice. Not including the current Winter 2010 Contest, we've had 11 of these things. Having any one contest take up 30% or more of a top 10 list would be unfair to the overall contest history. Secondly, the current Winter 2010 Contest is not represented on this list. The best time for reflection is after the fact. Lastly, note that I live in Eastern Standard Time. So if I say 11 p.m., that means 8 in California or whatever. Can't be helped. All this said, let's get on to the good stuff.

#10: Best Game Ever 2009 Quarterfinal - Zelda: Twilight Princess/Resident Evil 4/Brawl/Metal Gear Solid 4
A lot of people were disappointed with our second games contest getting not only the fourway treatment, but seeing games once again split by generations. The novelty of fourways was long since over thanks to two consecutive character contests with it, and anticipation of a sequel to the first Best Game Ever contest reached fever pitch by the time the sequel was announced nearly five years later. The spring of 2004 was a perfect storm, but not because of the games getting split by era. Repeating that idea was a mistake, and the people who visit GameFAQs regularly are still waiting for a normal bracket layout for a 1v1 games contest. Yet just like 2004, the contest went extremely well in spite of a weird format. Final Fantasy 7 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time of course dominated the field, and we ended up with the cookie cutter Link to the Past/Final Fantasy 7/Ocarina of Time/Final Fantasy X final. But there were a LOT of good, unpredictable matches leading up to that point. Two in particular stand out and make the list, one of which being the culmination of a great rivalry that began during our 2008 Game of the Year polls. Most people assumed Brawl would run away with GOTY honors, but then a Metal Gear Solid 4 got in the way. During the first round of the overall GOTY poll, MGS4 surprised everyone and barely beat Brawl for first place by 1000 votes. Brawl got its revenge during the "final" vote, weathering an early storm and eventually winning by 2500. Bacon (the man who replaced CJayC as the site's administrator) thought it was such a good poll that he ran a final FINAL poll, a 1 on 1 between Brawl and MGS4. MGS4 again took a small early lead, but Brawl rode the Nintendo day vote to a comfortable, decisive 4200 vote win. It was a great back and forth, and the impending rematch was hyped as soon as the Best Game Ever 2 bracket came out. But thanks to a fourway format, two other games got to join in and render this the most unpredictable match of the contest. Very rarely will you see a fourway match in which any possible combination of 1-2 is possible, especially this late. Any of these four games could have gotten anywhere from first to last place, and the closeness of the poll showed this. This wasn't one of those matches with an insane comeback or a giant controversy. It makes the list because of unpredictability and buildup. This match pit the GOTY winners from 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2008's runner up against one another. The weak link here ended up being Resident Evil 4. After a lot of pre-contest hype, it struggled out of the gate and barely beat Kingdom Hearts 2 twice to get into the third round. Metal Gear Solid 3 almost beat RE4 in the third round, and was up by 650 votes at one point. RE4 caught some weird Nintendo day vote support to eke out a third close win in a row, but its luck ran out in the quarterfinal. Within 15 minutes of the poll starting, RE4 was clearly not going to place. It took Twilight Princess a little longer to be out of the running here, but it too had a disappointing quarterfinal performance after a lot of pre-contest hype. After an easy first round win, it had a weird second round match where it barely got first place despite RE4 and KH2 fighting it out all day. It got back to its winning ways in round 3, before rolling over and suffering a slow death in the hyped quarterfinal. So just like in the 2008 GOTY polls, this match ended up coming down to Brawl and MGS4. Brawl looked absolutely dominant through the first three rounds of this contest, including a 12000 vote drubbing of MGS4 in the third round. One round later, MGS4 made up for it by delivering a classic, albeit with help. Thanks to Brawl sharing Nintendo votes, MGS4 took the lead early and didn't look back for quite awhile. It led by 1500 in the morning, and Brawl couldn't mount the standard Nintendo morning vote push because of the Nintendo split. MGS4 stalled forever during the day, and didn't start going down until school let out. But once it did, Brawl went on the comeback trail. The lead was 1400 votes at 3 p.m., and Brawl got it all the way down to 650 in a mere three hours. From there Brawl started to run out of gas, but it kept coming back all the way until the end of the match. The lead was as small as 66 in the final hour, but never any closer. MGS4 held on tight for a great upset, although both games would still advance into the semifinal. Brawl would get its revenge there, but it was a meaningless fight for third place. Perhaps if there's ever a 1v1 games contest, these two can be set up against one another and settle things for good. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3505

#9: Fall 2006 Quarterfinal - (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (1)Crono
The Fall 2006 Contest was rather bizarre, thanks to it being at the tail end of the first 1-on-1 era. The gimmick in this contest was splitting the bracket up into male and female halves, which led to some very strange results, a ton of female characters making the field when they would never get in under normal circumstances, and a host of male snubs. On top of this was Fall 2006 being the second consecutive contest with retired winners, so Link, Cloud, Sephiroth and Mario were no where to be found. The elites instead were the likes of Solid Snake, Sonic the Hedgehog, Crono, Samus and Mega Man -- with Samus being a virtual lock to make the final. Even more odd was the post-contest Battle Royale gimmick, with the four past winners and the male/female winners all getting thrown into a poll. Last place was eliminated until one character won, which ended up being Link. The entire contest had no real direction or purpose to it, and reeked of paper champions. This said, Fall 2006 had two major highlights: Solid Snake's run, and the Sonic vs Crono match. Snake in this contest rode momentum from the Brawl announcement and redeemed years of tough losses and terrible match pictures, including a last-second upset of Sephiroth in the Battle Royale to make the final three. But ultimately, this contest was saved by the crazy Sonic vs Crono match. Even though Crono was historically the victim of bad luck (more aptly named "Mario") year after year, he was still the odds-on favorite to win the male half of the bracket in this particular contest. Mario, Link, Cloud and Sephiroth were all gone from the main field, Samus was stuck dominating the females and Crono had always been stronger statistically than Mega Man, Sonic and Solid Snake. Crono was supposed to walk through his half of the bracket, then possibly even threaten Samus and win the entire thing. But a little blue thing got in the way of Crono's victory tour. Sonic the Hedgehog too had been a victim of bad luck for years leading up to this match, and developed a reputation for collapsing against elite characters. He had that awful loss against Samus in 2002 when he was an overwhelming favorite, and hasn't been the same since. One could easily make the argument that Sonic's lone bright spot in any of these contests was the miracle comeback against Crono in 2006. When the match began, things went as expected. Sonic kept it respectable, but floated in the 45% range and watched as Crono built up a huge early lead. Crono went up by nearly 1000 votes in an hour, before slowing down considerably overnight. The lead peaked at 2200 votes come 5:15 in the morning, and the standard analyses trickled in. Sonic can't beat an elite character, this particular bracket was custom made for Crono circa Sephiroth being handed a contest in the spring of 2005, and so on and so forth. But then the morning vote hit, and the entire match slowly turned in Sonic's favor. Sonic dripped away at Crono's lead for hours on end, shaving off a little at a time. As the day more on, it became more and more clear Crono was in a world of trouble. Chrono Trigger has never had a good day vote, while Sonic characters always have good day votes. There's an old contest joke about waiting until the kiddies wake up, which has some truth to it. Characters from Sonic, Nintendo and Kingdom Hearts all have insane morning votes, then they taper off during school hours before exploding again once school lets out. Sonic's comeback on Crono in 2006 followed this to the letter, albeit with Crono stalling Sonic's efforts as well as he could. It took Sonic nearly 9 hours just to get the lead from 2200 to 1000, but then he exploded once the after-school vote hit. He seemingly erased Crono's lead in an instant, then blew past him and ended up winning the match by over 1900 votes -- just like how Sonic would have done it on TV. This match was by far the best from this contest, although it meant little in the grand scheme of things. Sonic lost to Solid Snake in the next round, and has since looked as bad as ever -- though he does always have this one to look back on. Crono is *still* looking for his breakthrough victory, although his window to do so is likely long since closed. Sonic's 2200 vote comeback is as of this list's writing the largest successful comeback ever in a contest. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2558

#8: Summer 2002 Divisional Semifinal – (1)Sonic the Hedgehog vs (5)Samus Aran
The original character battle was an interesting beast. It was our first contest ever, and as such it was just 63 straight matches of people cheering on their favorite character in the poll, with a bunch of people making favorites brackets. There were no past results, stats or trends to work with. No geeky terms like X-Stats, ASV, SFF or Fodder Line. Just 64 characters slapped into an NCAA style contest, with everyone rooting for their favorite character each day. It's an innocent, raw contest state that will never again be fully replicated, though contests have still remained fun since then. The untold story of 2002 however was how weird the field was. There were little-known fighting game characters all over the place, and some absolutely terrible seeding. Lara Croft and Pac-Man, two characters we now know are very weak, were 1 seeds in 2002. Sephiroth, consistently one of the 5 or so strongest characters on this site, was only a 7 seed. Everyone who remembers the 2002 contest well always speaks highly of it due to nostalgia, but objectively speaking the first two rounds of that contest were pretty bad. And come round 3, it didn't matter. The 2002 contest featured the most exciting three-match stretch -- Sonic vs Samus, Mega Man vs Sephiroth, Mario vs Cloud -- we'll ever see. It highlighted that entire contest, and the contest's own winner (Link) takes a distant back seat to the excitement those three matches brought. Two such matches make the list, with Mega Man vs Sephiroth being the odd one out. Long story short, Mega Man followed two legendary blowouts by building up a 700 vote lead on Sephiroth through 12 hours. Sephiroth would eventually come back and win by a comfortable 1000 votes, which actually made Mega Man one of the stars of the contest. The other two matches however were a little more important, hence why they make the list. Sonic vs Samus was the most controversial match of the entire 2002 contest, and some would argue it’s the dirtiest match we’ve ever had. Two days earlier, during the Scorpion > Pac-Man upset, Penny Arcade directly linked to GameFAQs and asked people to vote. It was the first documented case of a well-known site linking to our contest (it's since become a common and accepted practice), and the results were obvious. Vote totals for the rest of the 2002 contest skyrocketed compared to earlier levels. The next day, Link dispatched Jill Valentine in expected fashion. The problem is the ending of Link's poll was delayed for two hours, meaning Sonic vs Samus didn't get started until 3:00 a.m., well after most people had gone to sleep. The standard time for the poll change back then was 1:00, so the 2 hour delay started this entire match off on a bad note. When it finally did get going, the two characters were surprisingly even. It was expected to be a respectably close match, but Sonic was far and away the favorite to win. Samus would have none of it, and would build a small lead early on. But since the poll started late, she didn't have time to build up a large lead before the standard Sonic Team morning vote kicked in. Sonic laughed away Samus's small advantage and won the entire day vote. Samus kept it within striking distance and stalled Sonic's advance periodically, but overall Sonic had a good handle on things. He won the morning and after school votes, and had a 2000 vote lead with 6 hours to go. He never felt like he was pulling away, but the match had that feel of a close win where the winner was never fully challenged. He had seemingly survived the start time hiccup, and Nintendo characters have never really been known for strong night votes. If Sonic survived Samus's best shot during the day, surely this poll was over… right? As you can guess by looking at the results page, this is where all the fun started. For the next three hours, Samus started chipping away at the 2000 votes and brought it down to 1500 come 10 p.m. -- a respectable comeback attempt to be sure, but 1500 votes in the final three hours would be impossible. The largest comeback anyone had seen to this point was Donkey Kong coming back from down 700 on Aya Brea, but that was an all-day affair. Well not only did Samus come back from the 1500 votes, she did so with a massive rally in LESS THAN TWO HOURS. There has never been such a large contest comeback to happen this fast, and no one who was there that night thought this was legitimate. To this day, no one has ever managed to swing 1500 votes in a close match that quickly. But it was all allowed to stand somehow (in retrospect, Samus was obviously cheating and GameFAQs simply didn’t have a good way of preventing or checking well-disguised vote-stuffing back then), and Samus was in the lead by midnight. "Ridiculous" doesn't begin to describe the final hour of this poll. In most comebacks, a character comes back over a long period of time, gets stalled for a little after it's tied, then someone takes a lead. When Samus came back, the entire match just... stalled. The two characters remained deadlocked for the final 60 minutes, with people rallying and refreshing the poll result page like mad, and the winner was a matter of blind luck. Samus just happened to be leading come closing time, but not before massive F5 use crashed the poll results. When the dust settled, Samus was actually declared the legitimate winner. The contest board (and really, the entire site) went COMPLETELY nuts over this, because again, no one who was there that night thought Samus’s comeback was natural. CJayC had to make three different topics to try telling people the result was legitimate and that it would stand. Which is fair to say if a full check was made, but the erroneous "There was confirmed cheating, but it was even on both sides" statement was invoked (paraphrased). Confirming any vote-stuffing at all was a huge mistake here, and to this day Sonic fans feel they got robbed. No matter which side you come out on here, this was a match for the history books. The only reason it doesn't place higher on the list is because this match deserves a definite asterisk. Not because of any potential vote-stuffing (we'll never know the full answer to how much existed or how bad it was), but because of the two hour delay in getting it started. No one knows how this might have played out over a full 24 hours. Instead, we got 22 hours and a bunch of question marks. The 34 vote margin of victory was a record lasting two years, until Ryu Hayabusa beat Jill Valentine by 27 votes. To date, the closest contest margin is Liquid Snake beating Alucard by 3 votes in 2007. Sonic/Samus wasn't only a great match because of the match itself, but because of the side effects. The poll results page crashing forced GameFAQs to do away with instantaneous poll updating, which lasted until the merge with Gamespot. After that, instantaneous updates were once again killed by a controversial match -- Kefka vs Vercetti 2005, in which there was confirmed cheating taking place -- and we've had timed updates ever since. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=994

#7: Fall 2007 Final - Link/Cloud Strife/L-Block/Solid Snake
The 2007 character battle was our first fourway contest. It was unpredictable as intended, but for all the wrong reasons. The strongest characters of course did well, but the story of the fourway character contests are quite literally joke results and crazy rallies. Such insanity included Bidoof leading Vincent for an hour, Mudkip almost beating Luigi, the Weighted Companion Cube making a deep run, Hogger from World of Warcraft winning a match and characters like Matt the Mii and Midgar Zolom making the field at all. We even had to endure Vaan, Sharpie-drawn abs and all, in the debut match. The fourway format means less votes for each individual character to work with, meaning one entrant has less work to do if they want to catch fire and unleash holy hell upon the field. Both fourway character contests had their fair share of weird results and crazy runs, but none more famous than L-Block catching a mid-contest joke rally in 2007 and winning the entire thing. Some would argue the joke rally happened to spite the format, but most will simply say it was funny. No matter what you believe, L-Block trumps any other story from either fourway character contest, and it's proof of how utterly random the entire format is. When this contest was in its early stages, L-Block was not close to the Link-slaying beast he turned out to be. He was a cute little character who came in second place to Kirby, almost by default because the other competition was so weak. Then in the second round, Kirby was stuck sharing a poll with Donkey Kong. Kratos from God of War got first place because he stuck out like a sore thumb, and Donkey Kong dragging Kirby down by stealing a bunch of Nintendo support allowed L-Block to sneak into second place. In the divisional final (the third round), L-Block again benefited from a fanbase split and snuck into second place. Solid Snake and Kratos sharing a poll meant all those badass-loving Playstation fans had to go one way, and they chose Snake. This knocked Kratos down by a ton, and L-Block cleaned up the mess. L-Block was very much expected to lose at this point, because the tournament quarterfinal had him in a poll against Squall, Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake. Sonic and Snake are routinely elites on this site, and Squall has always been just a smidge below elite level. Yet miraculously, L-Block jumped out to an early 1000 vote lead for *first place* in the quarterfinal. The lead would peak at 1700 votes before Snake made a comeback attempt that fell short, but it didn't matter. L-Block fever had gripped a lot of the internet and ALL of GameFAQs, and the mass rally was on. L-Block completely squashed the tournament semifinal against Snake, Master Chief and Dante in a poll that scored a whopping 164000 votes. This led to the shocking 2007 final the next day, where L-Block jumped out to an 825 vote lead on Link in the first 5 minutes. Before an hour was up, the lead was nearly 3600 votes. The rest of the poll was a foregone conclusion, and L-Block would end up becoming our most surprising contest champion ever. The final would go on to score a record 195360 votes, which might never be topped. What's funny is GameFAQs ran a bonus poll with L-Block, the Pong Paddle, the Weighted Companion Cube and the ?-Block from Mario Brothers the day after the final, and ?-Block completely dominated the poll. Even still, L-Block's run in 2007 is arguably the best ever (rivaled only by Starcraft in the first games contest), and we may never again see something so ridiculous. L-Block hasn't come close to capturing that magic in subsequent contests, but he doesn't really need to. Pretty nice job for a character that lost to Kirby by more than 17500 votes in the first round. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2925

#6: Summer 2003 Semifinal – (1)Link vs (1)Cloud Strife
The summer of 2003 was the much-hyped sequel to the original character contest, and for the most part it exceeded expectations. It was more predictable than 2002, but that's because we had some past results and stats to work with. Yet nothing prepared anyone for the most important upset in contest history. Without Cloud > Link in 2003, it's quite possible we'd no longer have bracket contests. It could have been seen as too predictable with Link always winning. Instead, we got an absolute shocker of an upset to keep things fresh, albeit it came with controversy over match pictures. Link got stuck with his Wind Waker model in every single one of his pictures that year (even as his background in the sprite round), while Cloud got a mix of Final Fantasy 7 and Kingdom Hearts stuff. People to this day blame the picture for Link's loss, but it's possible Cloud could have won anyway. He was a total beast that year. The writing was on the wall seemingly from the beginning, as Cloud meant business all contest long. Cloud and Link were trying to one-up each other in every round that contest, but Final Fantasy 7 in general kept impressing. Link breaks 90% in the opening match of the contest, so Cloud goes out and gets 87% on CATS -- exactly what Link would get based on 2002 extrapolated standings. Link fanbase splits Fox for a massive blowout in round 2, so Cloud follows it up with a massive fanbase split win on Auron. The sprite round is where Link really started to show he had problems. Magus, who has since proven to be a contest punching bag, scored 35% on him. Cloud followed this up by scoring 70% on Bowser. One round later, Link failed to completely dominate Samus in only scoring 62% on her (normally you see all-Nintendo polls with massive blowouts from the fanbase all going one way), while Cloud went out and nearly doubled Sonic. While all this was going on, Nintendo seemed a step behind all contest long. Luigi was upset by Squall in a very famous meltdown, Mario followed up his miracle win over Cloud in 2002 by laying a total egg against Sephiroth in 2003, and in general Squaresoft just seemed stronger than Nintendo throughout. By the time Link vs Cloud rolled around, there was a real sense Link was about to drop the ball. When the poll first began, the two characters were almost even. From there, it was never a match. Cloud stormed out to the lead with the next poll update and never looked back. He would go on to upset Link by 4700 votes, and he followed it up by beating Sephiroth in the final to win the entire contest. As an actual match, Cloud > Link in 2003 doesn't stand up to matches with crazy comebacks and weird shenanigans. But for pure influence, it's as important as any match we've had. No one knows if contests still exist in their current form without Link getting upset that year, though it's worth noting Link didn't exactly collapse afterwards. L-Block is the only thing that prevented him from winning every single character contest since 2003, including winning every single rematch with Cloud. Link has beaten his revenge out of Cloud several times over, most notably with his most popular game (Ocarina of Time) finally getting the better of Final Fantasy 7 in the second games contest. Barring a Final Fantasy 7 remake -- and Square is dense enough to consider never making one, even though we've seen Final Fantasy 4 released about 50 times now -- Cloud might never beat Link ever again. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1365

#5: Spring 2009 Quarterfinal - Super Mario Bros./The Legend of Zelda/Super Mario Bros. 3/Super Mario World
This is the other Best Game Ever 2 quarterfinal match to make the list, and it takes the cake for best match of that entire contest -- maybe even best match ever, depending on how big of a Nintendo fan you are. The original Mario Brothers and original Zelda were expected to get to this point, but one round earlier they had a very telling match. Mario 1 and Zelda 1 went 1-2 as expected, but Mario's margin of victory was only 2100 votes. Zelda 1 was able to avoid a bad fanbase split (which can often cause insane blowouts, like Link getting 88% on Ganondorf once) against arguably the most well-known NES title, which set the stage for what it would pull off in the quarterfinal. Mario 3 and Mario World had an equally foreshadowing divisional final match, in which Mario 3 was only able to win first place over Mario World by 700 votes -- and this with two other games in the poll that would drag down World before 3. This set up an extremely unpredictable all-Nintendo match among four universally beloved games, where anything could have happened. When the poll finally started, the only thing we learned early was Mario 1 had no chance. Being stuck in a poll with two stronger Mario games, whose own 1v1 fight had been hyped for weeks, meant the original title would get its doors blown off. Before long it was seemingly a two horse race, as the original Zelda (the game that sticks out like a sore thumb in this group) fell way off the pace overnight. Mario 3 and Mario World were content hogging up all the votes and fighting for first place, which left Zelda the odd man out overnight. By 2:30, Zelda was in third place by 1000 votes and seemingly out of the match entirely. It would hang around for awhile and look to have a respectable third place finish, but it looked like that was the best it could hope for: a respectable third place finish against three other Mario games it undoubtedly shares a massive fanbase with. More on this in a second. The true fight overnight was between Mario 3 and Mario World. Normally in fourway matches the fight between first and second place is rarely exciting, as both first and second place advance anyway. But this one was a bit different, as it symbolized a big paradigm shift on GameFAQs. For years, it was widely assumed Mario 3 was the strongest and most popular Mario game here. Stats from 2004 back this up, as Mario 3 and Mario World shared a common opponent in Chrono Trigger, with 3 doing better. Yet here was a major poll with Mario World challenging 3's authority, and ultimately winning. The two games were deadlocked for the first few hours of the poll, but Mario World was able to take control of first place and slowly build a lead for itself. When the morning and day votes came and clearly favored Mario World, 3's chances of a comeback were over. Mario World would not only beat 3 in this poll, but it would cleanly beat 3 a round later in the contest semifinal during a meaningless fight for third place. And if Mario World wasn't stuck with an SNES and Genesis title in the divisional final, it probably beats Mario 3 three times in this contest. If we ever get another 1v1 games contest, Mario 3 vs Mario World in a 1 on 1 poll is something we clearly need to see. The whole 3 vs World match was enough to make this match an all-timer, but the *real* fun didn't start until the early afternoon, where the bad news for Mario 3 would get far, far worse. Remember The Legend of Zelda, that game off in third place? It hung around as well as it could, but was down by 1460 votes at 1:40. This is notable, because one round earlier when it was fighting for first place with Mario 1, Zelda 1 kept the lead in stasis from that point on. Mario's lead stayed around 2300 votes for almost the entire poll's remainder, and then shaved a couple hundred votes off near the end to lose by a respectable 2100 votes. Zelda 1 would repeat this performance, which is shocking because it was in a poll with THREE Mario games. Avoiding the fanbase split to make a comeback push should have been next to impossible here, but either way Zelda 1 caught absolute fire at this point of the poll, and almost all of it was at Mario 3's expense. Zelda 1 chipped away a little bit at the 1460 vote lead for a couple hours. Then the after school vote hit and Zelda went completely nuts. At 3:00 EST, when the ASV typically starts, Zelda was down by 1350 votes. Over the next 4 and a half hours, Zelda gouged into the lead and got it all the way down to 400. Zelda finishing the comeback and winning seemed like a foregone conclusion at this point, but Mario 3 got its second wind in the evening hours. It slowed Zelda's comeback attempt, but was never able to stop it. It reeked of postponing the inevitable, and the lead fell to 100 votes at 10:15. With 1:45 yet to go and all the momentum, Zelda was poised to pull off one of the biggest shockers ever. Come 11:00, the lead was down to 50 votes, and come 11:30 Zelda FINALLY took the lead. The problem here was leaving Mario 3 a full 30 minutes to counter-rally, and the two games stood dead even for the next 10 minutes. Mario 3 then clutched up, pulled a 55 vote update out of nowhere and held off Zelda's last gasp to eke out the most Pyrrhic victory we'll ever see in one of these contests. Mario 3 not only lost to Mario World, but it almost blew a 1460 vote lead to an NES title in 10 hours. It did blow the lead, in fact, but needed a last second rally to win and conclude one of the most exciting 24 hours a GameFAQs contest match has ever seen. Some matches are great for a little while, but it's rare you see something that's great for the full 24 hours. Ironically, the reverse happened in the very next match. Link to the Past had the hold off a very similar comeback attempt from Mario 64, but the comeback never got within 200 votes and LTTP would win fairly easily. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3502

#4: Summer 2002 Divisional Final – (1)Mario vs (2)Cloud Strife
From the very beginning of the original contest, the match everyone was looking forward to was Mario against Cloud. They were in the same division, they were guaranteed to meet and it felt like they were guaranteed to have a great match. The hype for this mach before the contest started was insane, and neither the hype nor the match would disappoint. This was before contest predicting was littered with past statistics and knowledge of voting trends. All people really did all contest long was root for favorites and hope for the best. Mario was the favorite to win the entire contest that year, but he didn’t rattle off overly dominant performances compared to what Cloud was doing. With no stats to work on, all we had to go with back in 2002 was the eye test -- and Cloud just *looked* stronger than Mario for three rounds. Cloud in 2002 wasn’t the same Cloud we know today, who gets anti-voted early in every single poll (even CATS led him for a couple minutes in 2003); this was more or less the height of Cloud’s popularity, and it showed. He flat-out crushed Fox, Pikachu and Alucard, while Mario was struggling to double Morrigan Aensland of Darkstalkers fame. Who? Exactly. A potential champion looking off-balance against Morrigan would be bad news under normal circumstances, but 2002 was hardly normal circumstances. By the time the big duel rolled around, the two characters had equal support, and it all came on the heels of two legendary matches. Yet within seconds of this poll finally starting, it was clear the hype was worth it. Vote intake was completely insane, especially given how low-scoring the polls were before Penny Arcade started linking to us. The two characters were neck and neck for a little while, but Cloud started pulling away and taking control overnight. Square tends to do well with the night vote, and the match that defined the Summer 2002 Contest was no different. For the first six hours of this poll, Mario’s warning signs all came to a head and Cloud seemed poised for a classic upset. By the time the morning vote showed up, despite all of Mario’s best efforts and some INSANE vote totals, Cloud took a 1000 vote lead. This is when the match turned positively weird. Nintendo characters always do well in the morning and after school, and Mario was bound to make a charge given how hyped this match was. So when Mario began a comeback attempt in the morning, it wasn’t surprising. What was surprising however were the circumstances behind it, which can only be explained by some biased cosmic interference in Mario’s favor. For starters, this match just so happened to take place on the exact release date of Super Mario Sunshine. It doesn’t matter that the game was terrible, because it was massively hyped, bought in a ridiculous amount of site traffic in Mario’s favor and happened to get released on the day of Mario’s most important contest match ever. Then when those people saw Nintendo’s icon in a close match with the so-called filthy FF7 scum, they rallied friends to the cause. This allowed Mario to begin his slow march back from down 1000 votes, which lasted all throughout the day. But Cloud would not lose without putting up a huge fight, given how GameFAQs became what it is largely because of Final Fantasy 7. This led to Cloud having a lead of 500 votes come after-school time, and this is when the infamous Planet Gamecube link was put up. It’s hard to believe now, but it was once extremely taboo to rally in public for a GameFAQs contest match. Penny Arcade linked to us during the Scorpion > Pac-Man upset, but they didn’t ask for any specific votes; it was simply a general disdain for Pac-Man losing and a funny comic strip. Planet Gamecube however was obviously going to rally for Mario votes, with a direct link to our site. Mario literally erased the 500 vote deficit in a matter of minutes, and CJayC himself would later condemn Planet Gamecube for doing it. Rallying is not against the rules, however, so it was all allowed to stand. Between Super Mario Sunshine, the massive amounts of Nintendo rallying and the Planet Gamecube link, it was simply too much for Cloud to handle. The rest of the poll was a mad dash to the finish line, but the outside events made it a fairly predictable finish. Mario spent the rest of the match fluctuating between a 50-300 vote lead, slapping down every single one of Cloud’s attempts at coming back. It was an extremely close poll, yet for reason it seemed very distant. There was simply no way Cloud was going to come back and win this match. The stars quite literally aligned for Mario, and he would go on to win by 277 votes in a poll that scored 129703 votes. It was by far the highest vote total of the 2002 contest, not to mention that contest’s best and most important poll. In the eight years since the famous Mario/Cloud duel, we have yet to see a fair rematch -- somewhat fitting, given how Sephiroth twice proved how such a rematch would probably go. We have a ton of stats that prove Mario’s win over Cloud in 2002 was arguably the biggest miracle in contest history, and yet they have somehow never had a rematch. Amazing, really. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=996

#3: Best Game Ever 2004 Divisional Final – (1)Chrono Trigger vs (6)Zelda: A Link to the Past
Some matches are good because of a hilarious picture, like Duke Nukem getting put on a milk carton in 2004 or Kefka's Yoshitaka Amano art making him look like a head of lettuce. Some matches are good because of large comebacks, like Sonic, Samus, Starcraft and Master Chief all successfully coming back from down 2000+ votes once. And then you have a match like Chrono Trigger vs A Link to the Past in 2004, which was good because of tension that lasted for hours. After the Samus > Sonic fiasco in 2002 that crashed the poll results page, GameFAQs made the poll results timed with 15 minute updates to prevent F5 spam. This lasted until the site merge with Gamespot, during the Soul Calibur vs Kingdom Hearts match in 2004. The poll results went back to instant updating, which was kind of a double-edged sword. Instant results were nice, but people spent the next year accusing anything seeing an instant 5 vote jump of cheating. This was finally stopped in 2005, but to the point: Instant poll results and the sheer magnitude of Chrono Trigger/LTTP made this one of the best matches ever. The original games contest saw 64 games split into eras, meaning Chrono Trigger and Zelda were bound to meet in their division's final. Crono the character had suffered two heartbreaking losses to Mario in the first two character contests, but his game meant business. It completely crushed Secret of Mana in the first round, then extracted a small measure of revenge on Mario by easily beating two of his most popular games: Super Mario RPG and Super Mario World. Chrono Trigger was primed for the divisional final, while LTTP had a small hiccup on the way. After completely embarrassing Gunstar Heroes and Super Metroid, Final Fantasy 6 took an early 100 vote lead on Zelda and held it until the morning vote. Zelda would go on to win that match by 4300 votes, but it was cause for alarm. The entire Zelda series looked almost invincible to that point, but the FF6 match was the proverbial needle in the balloon. It went downhill real fast for Zelda. There was a stretch of that contest where all four Zelda games lost in a span of five days, which is completely unheard of and something we'll probably never see again. One such loss was the much-hyped Chrono Trigger match. No one knew at the time what strength Chrono Trigger had in relation to FF6, but FF6 giving LTTP a match meant Chrono Trigger would undoubtedly follow suit. When the poll started, Chrono Trigger came out on fire and built a lead of 330 votes in the first hour. Polls began at 3:00 a.m. EST for the Best Game Ever contest, so Chrono Trigger got to enjoy its best voting block early on and took full advantage. The lead would eventually get stretched out to 520 votes despite Zelda's best efforts, but things were far from over. After about 3 hours of the lead stalling between 450 and 500, the Nintendo morning vote kicked in. Zelda erased the entire 520 vote lead before lunch, even with Chrono Trigger pulling out every trick in the book to stall. Given how good Nintendo always does during the day with how bad Chrono Trigger always does during the day, this match looked over. Zelda had come back to tie the poll with a full 15 hours to work with, and a good 7 or 8 of those hours would be Nintendo's peak. What would follow is the most prolonged, close stall in the history of these contests. At noon, Chrono Trigger was winning by a scant 15 votes. And despite every single past voting trend pointing toward Zelda pulling away during the day hours, it ever could. For about an hour and a half from noon until 1:30 or so, all of Zelda's attempts to take the lead were met with Chrono getting a small boost and going up by 30 votes or something. When Zelda finally "broke through" and got a lead of 22, Chrono Trigger came back and got a lead of 50 out of no where. It went back and forth like this for hours, but then the after-school vote kicked in. Zelda quickly built up a lead of 190 votes -- and with a lot of after-school voting yet to come, so it finally seemed like someone would pull away for good and seal this match. Yet Chrono Trigger clutched up big time. That first hour or so of the after-school vote is the only part of it Zelda was able to win. It couldn't keep the momentum going and pull away, and Chrono Trigger went on a prolonged stall/comeback to weather the entire ASV. Typically, the ASV lasts from about 3 until 7 (EST) or so and the characters and games who do well with it can oftentimes *dominate* the poll during these hours. Just look at what happens any time something related to Kingdom Hearts is in a match. Yet Zelda only won about an hour of this, and Chrono miraculously, slowly won the rest. The match was tied by 6, and it stayed that way. For FOUR HOURS. Close matches and comebacks are rare. Matches that stay effectively tied for that long, especially after both games had both pulled off successful comebacks earlier in the match, should be statistically impossible. Yet there they were, pulling off the GameFAQs contest version of Ali vs Frasier. I'm shocked the poll results page didn't crash from all the refreshing during this match, and anyone who was there for this match remembers a true classic. Any time one game went up by even 20 votes, it felt like an accomplishment. And the other game was always there to slap the small advantage away. All good things must end, however, and Chrono Trigger would be the game that caught fire during the second night vote. Around 10:30, CT finally got some momentum and built up a 100 vote lead. Zelda made one final comeback attempt and got it down to 34 at one point, but then Chrono Trigger finally, after literally 20 hours of struggling, pulled away for good to win by 362 votes. Zelda made a few stalls during the final few hours, but would never threaten a true comeback. It was a somewhat anticlimactic end to the most tense match we'll ever see, but no one will complain about that. Chrono Trigger would go on to make the tournament final, where it would lead Final Fantasy 7 for 30 minutes before bowing out. It was a great end to a great contest for Chrono Trigger, and inarguably the contest high point for that game. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1658

#2: Summer 2003 Divisional Semifinal – (1)Mario vs (4)Crono
Mario vs Crono is by far the biggest contest feud, which everyone knows by now. There’s symmetry to it, too. If you include game contests and 4ways, Crono and Mario have a 5-5 record against one another. Mario > Crono in 2002, 2003 and 2005, and Mario 64 > Chrono Trigger twice in the 2009 game contest. Crono > Mario in 2004 and 2008, and Chrono Trigger beat Mario RPG, Mario World and Mario 3 in the 2004 game contest. The total votes from all these polls is C(h)rono 468224, Mario 424385, which is decently close given unreliable these stats are. It’s a legendary yet weird contest rivalry, and the height of it came in 2003. But to really understand how crazy this match was, you have to go back to the 2002 semifinal. Mario had just come off his miraculous, assisted win over Cloud and had received a lot of backlash for the way he did it. People were not happy about the whole Mario Sunshine/Planet Gamecube mess, and a lot of anti-rallying went against Mario one round later. Crono had pulled off a string of upsets (Dante, Lara Croft and Solid Snake) leading to the semifinal, and the poll ID number against Mario just so happened to be 1000 -- Chrono Trigger starts in A.D. 1000, and for a time it felt like one of those situations where everything perfectly lined up for an upset. Crono shockingly kept that poll within striking distance, although he would still find himself down by 1300 votes come 6 p.m. He then began a massive, inexplicable charge and came all the way back by 11. A few minutes later, the explanation was easy: Crono had cheated for at least 490 of those votes. So 490 votes were removed (an EXTREMELY rare event that’s only ever officially happened twice), and Crono came back again within an hour. He ended up being ahead by 80 with one final update to go. Crono mania took over GameFAQs, and people assumed Crono was about to pull off an impossible upset and make the final. And then… boom. Mario pulls off a 200 vote final update to win by 115. The whole situation left a dirty taste in everyone’s mouth, especially with Crono getting caught cheating and Mario’s odd final update. People wanted a fair rematch, and they would get at least a setup for it one year later. Crono was very clearly underseeded on purpose to intentionally set up Mario vs Crono II, and the hype for it was obviously nuts. But unlike 2002, where Crono went into the Mario match on a string of close upsets, he CRUSHED his first two opponents. Meanwhile, Mario was busy only getting 55% on Shadow the Hedgehog, who has since proven himself to be an absolute joke in contests. Everything was setting up perfectly for Crono to get some payback, but then things got weird before the match even started. Back in 2003, the polls were not automatically updated. CJayC put each new poll up manually, and for whatever reason he decided to end Aeris vs Sonic 20 minutes early to get Mario vs Crono going. It took a few minutes for people to realize what was going on, but once they did Mario built up a fast 100 vote lead. It seemed like the poll would be over fairly quickly, but beginning with what the actual poll start time should have been (1 a.m. EST), Crono started taking over. He waited a full year to get back at Mario, and it showed. With the overnight vote, he built up a lead of 750 and really looked like he had his A game. But then the standard Nintendo morning vote showed up, and those 750 votes disappeared in a matter of hours. The poll was tied by 10:30 a.m., and Mario still had the entire Nintendo day vote to work with. Mario got a lead of 190 in a matter of minutes, then inexplicably froze. Almost on a dime, Crono started flying up again even though nothing related to Chrono Trigger ever does anything with the day vote. It was a weird trend in a weird match that made no sense, but the bottom line is Crono took Mario’s own day vote from him and had a lead of 800 votes come 8:30 p.m. With only 4 and a half hours to go and Mario’s best time behind him, this poll seemed stone cold over. Even when Mario stalled Crono for a couple hours, it still looked like Mario was ready to have a fork stuck him. Crono led by exactly 822 votes at 10:30 p.m., with two and a half hours to go. Chrono Trigger always has a great night vote. This was done. Crono had gotten his revenge for what many deemed 2002’s most egregious error in judgment, and all he had to do was coast to the finish line. Mario cut 48 votes off the lead with the next update, but then Crono took 15 back. 789 vote lead with two hours to go. When Mario spent the next 30 minutes getting the lead down to 675, no one thought much of it. But then the absolute impossible started to happen. An 88 vote cut in the next 15 minutes soon turned into 104 votes, which then turned into 130 votes. At 12:30 a.m., with the poll’s end time in doubt because of the early start, Crono found himself leading by only 295 votes. In the next 15 minutes, Mario cut a whopping 144 votes to get the lead down to 151. But even with Mario’s insane comeback attempt, the poll was now over 24 hours old. It should have ended right here, with Crono getting a fair win in the big rematch. Instead, the poll would indeed go to 1 a.m. In that 12:45-1:00 update, Mario gained a completely outlandish 243 votes to take a 92 vote lead. CJayC then made a topic on the contest board saying he would investigate the poll for cheating, so everyone assumed Mario was about to get disqualified. The poll was finally closed at 1:07 a.m., with Mario leading by 137. Given past events, it was a sure thing Mario’s comeback would be proven unnatural. But then… instant death for Crono. CJayC made another topic on the contest board saying the entire poll was legitimate and that Mario’s win would stand. To say all of GameFAQs wanted a pound of flesh from Ceej over this would be an understatement. There was no explanation for the early poll start time, no real explanation for why the poll wasn’t closed after 24 hours (or why something as dumb as manual poll changes were in place at all), no explanation for the poll being extended past 1 a.m., and no explanation for how Crono got votes removed in 2002 while Mario’s equally fraudulent push a year later stood as legitimate. It was a wholly insulting “Nothing to see here, move along people” type of message that did nothing but convince everyone a Mario conspiracy theory was in place (Fun Fact: During this match, Ceej made a topic on Current Events talking about how he cheated to get the 100000000th GameFAQs post; imagine how well that went over later). Remember, Mario thrice in the span of one year pulled out a magical clutch near the end of a poll to win when he was probably dead in the water. To this day, most people are convinced of Mario/Crono II being the biggest contest screwjob ever. If you look at an update chart for that match, there is not one 24 hour period that Crono lost. He only lost because of the 27 total minutes of extra time. Even the people who picked Mario to win that match felt extremely dirty about it, because everyone knows the match wasn’t legit. Crono would eventually get a form of revenge in the first games contest and in the summer of 2004, but it didn’t really feel the same. GameFAQs underwent a merger with Gamespot and a site redesign that would drastically reduce site traffic and poll vote totals for years. Crono beating Mario with neutered poll numbers isn’t nearly as cool as a potential upset over Mario with 133000 votes flying around, and Crono himself has never been the same since the 2003 screwjob. He’s gone from competing with Mario to losing to guys like Vincent Valentine and Missingno., and everyone can point to one time frame 27 minutes long here Crono’s downfall began. Sure Crono got some wins on Mario years later, butt this one match, dirty as it is, will always be the rivalry’s highlight. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1357

#1: Best Game Ever 2004 Round 1 – (1)Halo: Combat Evolved vs (16)Starcraft
Everyone knows the stat. In the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, a 16 seed has never beaten a 1 seed. There have been close calls now and then, but never a win. For awhile on GameFAQs, it looked like the same would hold true. No matter how off a 1 seed was, they were always put up against something like Servbot or Chop Chop Master Onion in the first round. Then in the first games contest, thanks to the dumbest nomination snafu ever, we got an extremely odd 1/16 pairing between Halo and Starcraft. The nomination system that year was nominating one game per system, which led to all sorts of seeding oddities and strange games making the bracket. It was also extremely unbalanced. Case in point, Starcraft had to compete with tens of thousands of other PC games for nominations, while everyone just kind of nominated Halo for the Xbox for the hell of it to avoid leaving part of the nomination form blank. Halo actually ended up getting the most nominations of any game that year because of this. To make matters worse, the bracket was split up by generation, so all the NES era games were stuck in one division, the SNES era was stuck in another and so on. Yet Starcraft, which was released in 1998 in America, got stuck in Division 128 as a 16 seed with games released half a decade later. The PC in general got a raw deal with the entire nomination system that year, but you know what they say about karma. When the bracket came out, Halo vs Starcraft was the one match everyone pointed to and hyped up. This was during the height of Halo hate, and people were fairly annoyed at Starcraft being stuck as a 16 seed in the wrong division. Halo was of course the favorite, especially with being a 1 seed, but there was just something really off about Starcraft’s bracket placement that contest. The hype for a possible upset was there, but the psychological barrier of “1 always beats 16” held most people back. It wouldn’t stop being from anti-voting the hell out of Halo like they always do, but picking against it was another matter entirely. 76% of people picked Halo to win this match, which is low for a 1 seed but still made Halo the overwhelming favorite. That said, the anticipation for this poll was nuts. Everyone hated Halo back in 2004, which speaks nothing of the angst surrounding the nomination system, divisions by generation and a beloved game like Starcraft getting stuck in this position at all. A huge explosion was getting ready to take place, and Starcraft was clearly the beneficiary. When this poll began, it looked over within seconds. Starcraft wasn’t just beating Halo, it was kicking the hell out of it from pillar to post. It had a 1045 vote lead in just over 3 hours, which would be the equivalent of a 16 seed taking a 30 point lead on a 1 by halftime of an NCAA tournament game. Halo just got totally blindsided here, and the match looked like it would be a laugher in Starcraft’s favor. But once Starcraft hit that 1045 vote lead, the match turned in virtually the opposite direction. The morning vote hit, it favored Halo, and Starcraft just started dropping like a rock. We didn’t yet know Halo was a day vote god, so this comeback wasn’t easily explained until much later. The whole lead disappeared in a matter of hours, and Starcraft offered only minor resistance. By 3 p.m. EST (the halfway point of the poll, since polls began at 3 a.m. EST for awhile once GameFAQs moved out to California), Halo took full control of the poll and began building up its own lead. It rode the momentum of day vote and after-school voting up to an 1100 vote lead at 9:30 p.m., and given Halo’s momentum it looked like the poll was over. And then, out of literally nowhere, the Carriers arrived. Or more specifically, the second night vote arrived. Starcraft began cutting into those 1100 votes slowly, and got the lead down to 800 come 11:30, but 800 votes in 3 and a half hours when vote intake drops like a rock is a tall task. But those 30 vote cuts quickly turned into 100 vote cuts every 15 minutes, and before long it was a repeat of how the poll began, when Starcraft just totally dominated and made everyone think this would be a cakewalk upset. Starcraft came all the way back from down 1100 with almost an hour and a half to spare, but it did not take its foot off the gas until poll’s end and would end up winning by 373. The 16 seed upset was cool enough on its own, but this match was about more than that. It showed PC gaming wasn’t ready to fully pass the torch to consoles just yet, that the nomination system really was messed up, and that no matter how much gamers disagree on tastes, they can always agree to hate Halo. As everyone knows, Starcraft’s amazing upset over Halo SPAWNED MORE OVERLORDS -- or spawned a great contest run, whatever. It upset Kingdom Hearts in round 2, and then everyone assumed it was dead to rights against The Wind Waker in round 3. It began that poll close, but then fell behind by over 2000 votes before pulling off another miraculous second night vote comeback. Then the match against Melee happened, which put a gigantic elephant in the room. After falling behind by 3700 votes, Starcraft attempted another late comeback, but was caught flagrantly cheating by CJayC. The final poll numbers were not adjusted since Melee won anyway, but the vote-stuffing for Starcraft that day was unbelievably obvious and calls into question the entire contest run. Even further evidence of this happened in the most recent games contest. 4ways are a perfect format for rallying, yet Starcraft couldn’t even get out of the second round -- against Final Fantasy 8, of all games. Starcraft got a lot weaker once GameFAQs put new security measures into place, ironically in part because of the stunt Starcraft pulled 5 years prior. Any one of Starcraft’s 3 close matches from 2004 could have potentially made this list, but two of them were fishy (one confirmed as such). The Halo upset, no matter what Starcraft did to condemn itself later, remains special, and was the best match we’ve ever had. Not only is it special because of the actual poll and 16 > 1 result, but because it was our last poll before the site was redesigned. There will always be a certain sense of nostalgia with this one. Poll Result: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1625

Conclusion
It’s hard to narrow down 600+ matches (not counting what’s currently going on in the Winter 2010 Contest), so obviously there will be snubs. There have been some great Crono vs Vincent duels, a lot of antics by Frog, Jill Valentine losing by 27 votes TWICE, Alucard’s Plan and some matches that were awesome solely because of hilarious match pictures. A couple of matches that really stand out in the snubs department are Aya Brea vs Donkey Kong in 2002 and Frog vs Master Chief in 2004. Aya/DK was the original F5 match, and Frog still holds the record for closest 1v1 win with a margin of 7 votes. Then of course there are the hilarious blowouts, like Mega Man’s first two matches in 2002 or Solid Snake completely lobotomizing Tanner. Winter 2010 has already had a classic worthy of making this list (Crono getting upset by empty data), and hopefully the current character battle has many more to come. Contests are awesome, and hopefully they stay for a good long while.