(1)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (9)Final Fantasy IV 2015

Ulti's Analysis
One day after Ocarina went out and shit the bed against Suikoden 2, Link to the Past went out there and showed us that it wasn't just Ocarina having problems. It's not that Link to the Past had a bad match or anything, since this fell within the 2009 stats rather easily (or at least, as well as the 2009 stats could have looked given that dumb final). It's more that when you get nearly 90% in round 1, one expects a follow-up performance worthy of a champion.

Failing to double Final Fantasy 4 is hardly a championship performance. Yes we all knew LTTP was destined to get SFFd into the ground by Ocarina later, but the second half of the Zelda titans should have done better than this. It's not like FF4 being released 283 times boosted the game, since we've seen releases not help other Final Fantasy games much. There was serious Zelda fatigue in this contest, and the five round 2 performances from the games ranging from "just alright" to "clearly getting anti-voted" was not a good sign for later. Our voters are wise to the LAW meme and were clearly voting accordingly.

By the way, shout-out to Allen for FF4 being his favorite game ever and resisting the temptation to give it a ridiculously easy draw. Everyone on Board 8 that's ever run contests can attest to how hard that actually is to do, and all we do is run random bullshit board projects. Resisting the urge for a site-wide contest must be hard.