(8)Mega Man vs (5)Crono (Losers Bracket) 2018

Ulti's Analysis
At a glance, this will seem like just a regular close match in the losers bracket. For Board 8, it meant so much more. This board loves Chrono Trigger. Always has. And from the very first contest, we have watched Crono and his game get beaten down and screwed over so many times that we've just come to expect it at this point. The close losses and embarrassing choke jobs are too numerous to list in one writeup, but I've done it many times in the past and those examples are easy enough to find. The losses to Mario in 2002 and 2003. The Melee rally. Missingno. The Sonic comeback. The Knuckles comeback. Being the first one, ever, to break the Noble Nine's streak in any format. Crono and Magus killing each other so a mouse could get a win. Magus losing to a punching bag. Crono's only win over Mario meaning nothing. I could go on for a long time.

Read MWC's writeup on this list: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/top10/2153-the-top-10-games-of-all-time-according-to-gamefaqs-contests

That's our top ten games list that we submitted with DDJ back in the day. Chrono Trigger was #6. I'm almost positive it would be #1 if we reran that list.

This site in general agrees: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/10year

Nick has a Chrono Trigger fan page on Facial Book. I could probably make the argument GameFAQs is the #1 fan site for that game. I know it's 2018 and our vote totals suck and our site is dead now, but dammit, this was a convergence of so many things and so many people finally deciding to say fuck it. Enough is enough and we want the guy to finally clutch up. I love you too Mega Man, but Crono needed this a lot more than you did. Crono did this against a guy boosted by Smash, too, which makes this even cooler.

Not that it wasn't one hell of a grind. After some early struggles, Mega Man built up a lead of 249 votes. It's the widest this match would get, and as of this match it would be second place on the list for closest 1v1 24 hours matchups -- topped only by Pikachu beating Mega Man in the legends bracket. Mega Man had quite the doozies this year, huh?

After the lead peaked, Crono started to very, very slowly chip away. Come midnight, he was only down by 12 and coming on strong. Given Mega Man has the murdered-a-puppy night vote in Europe, one might expect Crono to start building a lead there. One problem. Chrono Trigger didn't come out in Europe until 2009. The one guy Mega Man might be able to win a night vote against is Crono, and it's like really?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A949JshqvbI

Mega Man spent the next few hours getting a 200 vote lead again, and given how bad Chrono Trigger is during the day time (the game and all the characters seem to go from bad to worse once the morning vote hits), the match looked over. But thanks to some random miracle, cosmic vortex, black hole, happenstance, coincidence, or whatever you want to call it, Crono actually fought back with the morning. I don't know why or how, and I don't even care. Our boy was back in this thing!

These two then proceeded to have dual open heart surgery all morning and half the afternoon. It was a lot of stalling, back and forth, and chipping away at each other. Think the 20 inning game this past world series, except this poll in the grand scheme meant nothing. Although I guess the Dodgers winning that game meant nothing either, thanks to the metrics idiots actively ruining baseball. Way to sit your top four home run hitters in game 2, guys.

Anyway, this ultimately led to the poll being tied with five hours left. When Crono finally decided to take a lead in this damn match, he was not letting up for any reason. He would end up ultimately winning by 112. I know this poll doesn't mean much at the end of the day, but for long suffering Crono fans it was something. When you have a starving human being on death's doorstep, you can't just jump right in and feed them ice cream and weight gain shakes. It'll shock the system to death. You have to slowly ease into a normal metabolism. That's basically what this match was for Crono fans. Our boy finally clutched up. Outside of maaaaaaybe that Vincent match in 2008, when has this ever actually happened?

I do love Mega Man, don't get me wrong. I wrote two guides for his games. But Crono deserved this. No one can argue otherwise.