(8)Chrono Cross vs (9)Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King 2010

Ulti's Analysis
See now this is how 8/9 matches are supposed to go -- a clear favorite winning 60/40, with some minor debate from paranoid people. You may think it's dumb pointing this out, but look at the list of all the 8 vs 9 matches in this contest:

(8)Rock Band 2 - 24365 [49.24%] (9)Deus Ex - 25117 [50.76%] Total Votes - 49482

(8)Mother 3 - 18174 [35.14%] (9)Devil May Cry 3 - 33538 [64.86%] Total Votes - 51712

(8)Warcraft 3 - 25066 [49.55%] (9)The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind - 25522 [50.45%] Total Votes - 50588

(8)Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald - 30021 [50.77%] (9)Grand Theft Auto 4 - 29113 [49.23%] Total Votes - 59134

(8)Tales of Vesperia - 22346 [44.47%] (9)Borderlands - 27909 [55.53%] Total Votes - 50255

(8)Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - 30560 [63.57%] (9)Silent Hill 2 - 17516 [36.43%] Total Votes - 48076

(8)Marvel vs. Capcom 2 - 26911 [51.56%] (9)New Super Mario Bros. Wii - 25287 [48.44%] Total Votes - 52198

(8)Chrono Cross - 29368 [61.89%] (9)Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King - 18083 [38.11%] Total Votes - 47451

Four of those matches completely screwed over battle brackets, notably NSMBWii's loss that all but eliminated most of the field. Of the four that went as expected, two of them were complete mindf***s anyway in Vice City and Devil May Cry 3 collapsing against their opponents.

So as the first round wound down to a close, Chrono Cross beating DQ8 was nice to see for an 8/9 match. I know 8/9 matches in any seeded bracket are supposed to be wonky, but losing a ton of matches close would bother anyone paying attention to contests. You can even make the case the Borderlands and Chrono Cross wins were mildly debatable as well.

It's one of those deals where you're happy the contest is seeing good stuff like this, but it sucks when you're on the wrong side of it like so many of us were. So for Board 8, we reveled in a meaningless 1 point JRPG SFF match because we got dicked over on the 8/9 all first round long.