| abstract
| - This match was more or less a continuation of the Mario 64/CT round 2 match, but with different games stealing votes. Chrono Trigger needed a complete miracle to pull this off, in the form of not getting hammered by Final Fantasy 7 while Goldeneye leeched Mario 64 half to death -- it also needed weird SFF from Yoshi's Island's votes, to the tune of CT getting like 80% of the votes from SNES SFF in round 2 while Mario 64 got next to nothing.... from a fellow Mario game. Yeah. The funny thing here is Chrono Trigger almost did manage to pull this thing off. Mario 64 jumped out to a 140 vote lead in 25 minutes, but erased the entire thing 20 minutes later. It then built up a 600 vote lead overnight, with Mario 64 doing little stall-wise. For six hours, everything Chrono Trigger needed fell right into place. It wasn't getting 40% on FF7 like it did in 2004, but it was only a couple of percentage points behind in spite of Final Fantasy 7 dominating this match. FF7 ended up with 41% in a poll with two top ten (and possibly top five) games and a game in the 15-20 range in Goldeneye. All contest long, FF7 and Ocarina were a gigantic cut above everyone else, to the point of laughable results. If we ever get another games contest, I think most people would support a Tournament of Champions style where FF7 and Ocarina are removed from the main bracket and other games are given an opportunity to be paper champions. Chrono Trigger was also enjoying a clear case of Goldeneye leeching Mario 64 a lot, as evidenced by Mario being totally unable to stall CT on its way to building a 600 vote lead. But just like round 2, everything fell apart when the morning vote showed up. The 600 vote lead became 100 in just a couple of hours, and it took one hell of an effort from Chrono Trigger during the DSV (as well as a lot of N64 leeching) to prevent Mario 64 from opening a can all over the poll. Chrono hung tough for a damn long time, even using the second half of the DSV to build its lead back to 300 votes. Right about here is where CT fans let hope turn into expectation, and right about here is where CT predictably fell apart. Chrono Trigger's ASV failures are well documented, and this match was no different. That 300 vote lead it worked so hard to get turned into 0 in all of 30 minutes, and we all know what happened from here. Mario dominated the ASV, then hung on tight in the evening to secure a 1337 vote win. Nice final number. This wasn't the horribly embarrassing ASV collapse that led to a 3200 vote loss in the previous round, but it was an ASV collapse nonetheless. Everything Chrono Trigger needed to see line up happened, and it still was not enough to win. It held up on an FF7 that hadn't lost a beat since 2004, it saw Goldeneye put a huge log on Mario's path -- enough to make a nearly 2000 vote difference from the last match -- and yet it still predictably and sadly fell apart once kids came home from school. For whatever reason, Chrono Trigger has turned the ASV collapse into an art form. Can you imagine how a 1v1 match between Magus and Master Chief would go? This match set up a very interesting FF7/LTTP/Mario 64 trio. As good as LTTP was to this point in winning three matches, it seemed just a tad bit off compared to how well Mario was doing this contest. And because of two game contests featuring generational gaps, we'd never seen a match between 2D Zelda versus 3D Mario with both games nearly even in strength. FF7 was the obvious first place there, but LTTP vs Mario 64 was shaping up to be a very good match. This was especially true given the insane Mario 3/Mario World/Zelda 1 match that would go down one day prior.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)