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Cb7-63-4

Results[]

Championship

Poll3306

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Ulti's Analysis[]

Poll 3306
Round Tournament Final
Match # 63
Match Date Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
Oracle
Expectations
Link - 33.00%
Cloud Strife - 27.05%
Solid Snake - 24.81%
Crono - 15.30%
GameFAQs
Expectations
Link first place (64pts) - 29.17%
Link second place (32pts) - 10.74%
Snake second place (64pts) - 6.55%
Snake first place (32pts) - 3.59%
Top Two
Prediction
Link - 39.91% (17,123)
Snake - 10.14% (4,350)

This contest had one final surprise for us after all. In the Summer 2008 Contest, it turns out that the most rallied, bandwagoned character would not be L-Block, the Weighted Companion Cube, Sandbag, or any of the other obvious joke characters. It would not be a random midcarder suddenly finding their wings, even though we saw really fun upsets all throughout the spectrum in this contest. It wouldn't be the legion of BrawlFEAR entrants. It wasn't even Zack, Mega Man X, or Crono, and those three had some real chops this year.

Turns out our big bandwagon would be... Solid Fuckin Snake himself!! People looked at the semis like a fluke, because there was the obvious issue of Sephiroth being in the match. But when the final started, all hell broke loose on Board 8 for a long time. Before getting into it, let's look at how Snake was building to this for quite some time.

In 2002, Snake got tripped up in an upset by Crono. He used the loss to fuel himself, and he got a little bit stronger, a little bit better every year. In 2003, he had a close loss to Mega Man. In 2004 and 2005, Snake took a step back, and I think a lot of it had to do with absurd Nintendo boosts paired with Solid Shit. But hey, if you're going to have a redemption arc you might as well almost lose to Frog and Bowser.

In 2006, Snake made a clear leap, avenging his losses to Mega Man, winning the male side of the bracket, and eating a close loss to Samus in the final. In the Battle Royal that year, he pulled a crazy upset over Sephiroth with Cloud's help. The symmetry of him upsetting Cloud with Seph's help this year should not go unnoticed. In 2007, L-Block happened to everyone, but Snake had to deal with him 4 times.

Eventually, it all led here. Very, very few characters in the history of video games deserve a rallied bandwagon more than Solid Snake. He took all that momentum, paired it with a Smash appearance and Metal Gear Solid 4 in the same year, and went nuts in this contest. Snake looked like a killer all contest long, and in typical stealth fashion, everyone forgot about him as they focused on the characters mentioned in the first paragraph. They remembered in the semis though, and they definitely remembered him in the final.

When this poll started, Snake wasn't merely in a fluke second place spot over Cloud, with an assist from Crono. Nononono. That would be the easy way. Snake does things the hard way. Alone. No help. No sound. Procurement on site. Perfectly. Solid Snake came out in this poll and took aim at the fuckin king, and when you aim for the king, you best not miss.

Snake came out in this match and took the lead over not just Crono, not just Cloud, but everyone. Including Steroid Link, the only Nintendo character here, who was out for giga-revenge after L-Block happened a year ago. It was one of the all-time great finals moments we've ever had in a GameFAQs Contest, and it's sad it's so forgotten about with how much everyone hated the format -- and trust me, I get it.

Snake didn't lead by much, mind you, but he led. It was a 19 vote lead at the freeze, and he went up with the first update. Link started coming back pretty quickly from there, and we all figured the match was over.

...nope! Snake held strong, built up a 150 vote lead, and held strong in the 100-150 range all night long heading into the morning vote. It was one of the all-time great contest accomplishments, and I would have loved if this poll were only six and a half hours long. Unfortunately, it was 24 hours long and Link went full Giga-Oni-Link when the sun came up to put a wrap on his revenge tour and end the Summer 2008 Contest. Snake did not go out a loser, though, because he would still end up in second place. Cloud, in large part due to Crono's presence and Snake's bandwagon, never had a shot. Cloud did cut a 3700 vote deficit down to losing by only 2100 and go out like a warrior in his own right, but he failed to place in the final nonetheless. And Crono? His final was the rally over Vincent and subsequent demolishing of Mario. His "final" happened long before the actual final of this contest, and for Crono he was just happy to be here.

Your winner of the Summer 2008 Contest was Link, finishing the revenge tour and retaking the crown. In second place, in shocking fashion, was Solid Snake. Given bracketeers get points for second place, I say we give Snake half a contest win for this one!

All in all, the format may have sucked, but the contest was decent enough with crazy vote totals to keep things watchable until the very end.

Stats and Analysis[]

So finally, the final match of the Summer 2008 Contest is here. Everything we have seen so far in this contest has pointed to this match as a standard Link's slaughter of Cloud, Cloud's assault on Snake and Crono being in the fourth place far behind.

However, Solid Snake managed to do the impossible and maintained a small lead over Link 6 hours into the match. During this time, a large part of Board 8 was hoping for Snake to hold onto the lead for 24 hours. If this holds, Snake will become only the third character to ever beat Link in GameFAQs Contest after Cloud's championship run in 2003 and L-Block miraculous run in 2007 (Well, fourth if you count the Jay Solano's massacre of Link in 2006).

Unfortunately, when the morning vote kicked in, Snake allowed Link to build a 800 votes lead and increasing (even Super L-Block lost about 900 votes to Link during the morning vote last year). As a result, Snake fans lost their faith and not bothered to alert the internet in a huge scale during the ASV to counteract Link's advancement. Snake would go on to freefall throughout the day, allowing Cloud to cut his lead by more than 1500 votes from 3600+ to just over 2000 votes win at the end, and Snake has lost to Link by over 9000 votes when all is said and done (it's actually just under 9000, but I can't help it).

Still, Snake has fought a great fight. His final mission (to beat Cloud twice) has been accomplished. Karma Hunter is loving it.

And Link has won his fifth Character Battle title, out of seven contests. What a beast! Congratulations!

Match Trends[]

Graph3306

Ngamer's Same Day Analysis[]

Match Prediction[]

So yeah, really good season, one of the better we've seen, and... wait, what's that? There's one more match left? Well shoot, guess I better discuss it!

X-Stats From Round Five

  • Link - 68.52% (based on '07 Mario)
  • Crono - 51.62% (based on '07 Mario)
  • Snake - 28.18% (based on '07 Kirby)
  • Cloud - 28.02% (based on '07 Kirby)

Crono's got this. That's funny, you'd think stats would be more reliable as we moved away from the fodder of the opening rounds, but instead this is probably the worst set of the whole year. Massive three way Nintendo LFF combined with massive Nintendo Sore Thumb Factor overperformance will do that to you, I guess! In any case all you really need to know from looking at this is that Link is the heavy heavy favorite going in, just as you'd imagine, but that Cloud is obviously up for a major gain now that Seph will be dropped.

Let's start with Crono. Everyone's picking him for last by a mile, which is obvious enough, but even though he'll be getting LFFed by two more powerful cool-looking swordsman I don't see him entirely falling off the map like most people are saying. CT held up extremely well against FF7 all things considered, and of course it did great against both LttP and Mario 3... I don't see that firm fanbase of his entirely abandoning him here, and so I bet he looks better than Snake did in the '07 Final pretty easily.

As to Link vs Cloud, well... Cloud had some very good showings this season, including outdoing Link's percentage in R2, and Sephiroth aside this ought to go down as one of his best years. Had L-Block survived long enough to let Vincent and Crono knock each other out with their split it would surely have moved Mario into this match, at which point I'm pretty much positive I'd have been backing Cloud. The two Nintendo icons in one poll, turning it into triple Brawl LFF due to Steroid Snake, with Cloud the lone Square option? Now that would have been some true Championship material Sore Thumb Factor! As is though it's Cloud taking the major disadvantage thanks to CT's strong SNES support, and I don't see any way this setup would not result in Link's biggest win over Cloud ever, percentage wise.

The real question of the day will be "can lightning strike twice"? And the real answer will be... sorry, but no. Crono has been great this year, but even so you'd have to figure that Snake needed Vincent in this match applying same-game LFF Sephiroth style to have any legit chance at the upset. Solid gets more bad news in the form of long time SSB star Link- yes he stood up to one Brawler fine in Kirby, but Link is much more likely to cut down his Nintendo support like Samus did back in the '06 Final, which could potentially limit his strength rather drastically. Luckily he's also got some good news! Link/Crono/Cloud, three cool looking sword-wielding RPG/action characters who peaked back in the mid to late 90s... that means Snake gets to be the one to stand out from the crowd here, and much like Kirby today and L-Block in the '07 Final, I think that will result in a decent overperformance. He'll never be in contention for 2nd outside of the Power Hour, surely, but even so I'm thinking he hangs in there closer on Cloud than most are expecting.

Alrighty, so all 4 players separated by decent margins but with no one really collapsing and Snake looking the best relatively. That ought to give us percentages along the lines of... *stirs up the final pot of the year*

  • Link - 35.95%
  • Cloud Strife - 28.27%
  • Solid Snake - 21.71%
  • Crono - 14.07%

Wanted to do something more crazy here, but ehhh, just can't see it. Great season everyone, this was fun!

Ngamer Says: Link > Cloud

Next Day Review[]

Wow, just... wow. Greatest Final of all time? Ehh, I guess I'd still have to say Zelda vs Final Fantasy was epic enough to top it. But this stunner isn't too far back!

External Links[]

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2008 Contest Matches

Round One
Zack > Wario
Link > Zidane
Marth > Duke
Altair > Lucario
Luigi > Liquid
Bowser > Phoenix
Mario > Zelda
X > Mudkip
Samus > Nightmare
Ganondorf > Frog
Vincent > Falco
Scorpion > Gordon
Crono > Amaterasu
L-Block > Ryu
Alucard > Falcon

Pikachu > Arthas
Cube > Tidus
Mega Man > Nero
Ryu H > Zero
Snake > Vivi
Sora > Fox
Squall > Yoshi
Cloud > Midna
Mewtwo > Pac-Man
Big Boss > Kirby
Master Chief > Raiden
Leon > Riku
Dante > Hogger
Sonic > Sandbag
Auron > Sub-Zero
Sephiroth > Tifa
Kratos > Jill

Round Two
Link > Zack
Duke > Altair
Liquid > Luigi
Mario > X
Samus > Ganondorf
Vincent > Gordon
Crono > L-Block
Pikachu > Alucard
Mega Man > Cube
Snake > Zero
Squall > Sora
Cloud > Mewtwo
Kirby > Master Chief
Dante > Leon
Auron > Sonic
Sephiroth > Kratos

R3 and following
Link > Zack
Mario > X
Samus > Vincent
Crono > Pikachu
Snake > Cube
Cloud > Mewtwo
Kirby > Dante
Sephiroth > Sonic
Link > Mario
Samus > Crono
Cloud > Snake
Sephiroth > Kirby
Link > Crono
Snake > Cloud
Link > Snake (Finals)
Classic > CD-I (Bonus)

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