2001 vs 1998

Ulti's Analysis
Hey, a match in this contest finally cleared 20,000 votes! It took until the final, but hey!

All hope for 2001 pulling a miracle ended in literally five seconds, and it wasn't much longer until we realized we were about to get our biggest final blowout of all time. I believe the record before this was Link > Mario in the 2002 contest, where Link got 62.53%. 1998 completely blew that record away, and 2001 was lucky to not get doubled. 66.19% in a contest final is a record we may never see fall, because contest finals are usually close by definition no matter who is in them. Not this year. 1998 was just too strong and was too deep of a year gaming-wise. The only actual excitement for me was finally getting Final Fantasy Tactics Leviathan into a match picture. I played politics and pulled rank to do it, but I don't care. I've wanted that match picture for 14 years and finally got to see it. I'm good.

Speaking of, I've avoided doing a 1998 retrospective until the final, because a year like 1998 deserves a retrospective in a writeup that people will actually read in the future. This may be the only wiki article on this contest anyone actually looks at. I love the 2001 games, but 1998 absolutely deserves to set the contest final blowout record.

Let's start with the obvious. Final Fantasy Tactics came from 1998, and it's the best game ever made. I actually cheesed out for getting Leviathan into a match picture, and by now I doubt I need to give some long writeup about loving the game. I put thousands of hours into it for a reason, and I can finally say Final Fantasy Tactics won a contest.

On top of that, there are so many great games that so many great users can say finally won a contest. FFD can say Resident Evil 2 won a contest. futuresuperstar can say Metal Gear Solid finally won a contest. My best friend in real life can say Xenogears finally won a contest. The anti-rally whackos can finally say Ocarina of Time won a contest (Link not winning in 6 years must feel like a lifetime for those people!). CJayC can say Grim Fandango finally won a contest. Sir Chris and Team Rocket Elite can finally say Pokemon won a damn contest, and I'm sorry but that one is well past overdue and it's good to see that drought end. I don't care if it's on a technicality. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green finally won, bros! LordOfDabu and the other Starcraft fans finally got their get-back for 2004. Starcraft finally won a contest!

Then you have all these other games and characters that get all this love that never get to go deep in these contests. Games like Half-Life, Spyro, Einhander, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Banjo-Kazooie, Breath of Fire 3, Fallout 2, Half-Life, Thief, Baldur's Gate, Unreal, Turok 2, F-Zero GX, Suikoden 2, Star Ocean 2, Soul Calibur, and tons of other examples. I know this contest sucked and I'm as happy as anyone to be past it, but I did want to take a few moments to really give 1998 some credit here. It really did deserve this dominant contest run, because it's unquestionably the best gaming year we'll ever see. This contest blew, but it went out on a high note despite giving us our biggest finals blowout ever. Hats off, 1998. You deserve it.