(5)Golden Sun vs (4)Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 2010

Ulti's Analysis
Golden Sun winning this match was obviously a massive upset among casuals, but the board more and more knew better as the match grew closer. And for the few left over holding out hope for San Andreas, the match picture just murdered that. Golden Sun couldn't have possibly looked any better, and San Andreas couldn't have possibly looked any worse.

And then you add in all the other factors just blatantly favoring Golden Sun... what else was really going to happen? The site is anti-Grand Theft Auto, heavily in favor of RPGs, and the match took place on the release day of Dark Dawn with a full-page ad on the home page. This felt like one of those college preconference games where a school like Florida pays 500k to some tiny school to come in and get their asses whipped, except this was a legitimate contest match.

So of course Golden Sun was going to win. Sure the final percentages were close and San Andreas made some cuts here and there, but by and large this match was never close. It's not really the fault of RacistFAQs, either, so much as extraordinarily bad timing for GTA. Run this next year under even conditions, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if GTA won.

The true entertainment from this match came in the form of all the whining. No other match, not Deus Ex or final, drew out so much complaining as this one. Toss out Albion's topic (you know, the legendary "This is why GameFAQs is made fun of" topic from someone with a list of 300 beaten RPGs, from a guy who spends more time on this site than anyone else) since it wasn't serious, and you're still left over with people feeling like the poll legitimately offends them. I didn't save any examples because I didn't really care to, but I'm sure you guys remember most of them. Whining, for better and worse, is a huge part of every good contest and we got a lot of it here.

But this wasn't really the match for it, since one look at the home page on match day should have shown you how this would turn out. This wasn't even the worst result this contest, let alone ever.