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| - It took until the fourth round, but we finally got to watch some matches that weren't inter-generational. Generation divisions are decent enough, but a big mix of games can be exciting as well. Not that 3 Marios and a Zelda is the greatest concept, but this made for arguably the most exciting match of the contest.First, the obvious. Mario World took advantage of a 3 NES vs 1 SNES split and turned the tables on Mario 3's performance of the previous round -- where Mario 3 slipped by Mario World with the help of 3 SNES era games splitting. Mario 3 was in the match for a couple hours, but Mario World and the 3 NES split was too powerful for Mario 3 to overcome. Mario World would eventually win fairly easily, by a final margin of 2200 votes. Super Mario Brothers, despite coming in last place, d
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| abstract
| - It took until the fourth round, but we finally got to watch some matches that weren't inter-generational. Generation divisions are decent enough, but a big mix of games can be exciting as well. Not that 3 Marios and a Zelda is the greatest concept, but this made for arguably the most exciting match of the contest.First, the obvious. Mario World took advantage of a 3 NES vs 1 SNES split and turned the tables on Mario 3's performance of the previous round -- where Mario 3 slipped by Mario World with the help of 3 SNES era games splitting. Mario 3 was in the match for a couple hours, but Mario World and the 3 NES split was too powerful for Mario 3 to overcome. Mario World would eventually win fairly easily, by a final margin of 2200 votes. Super Mario Brothers, despite coming in last place, didn't do that badly given it was clearly eating the ass end of SFF from three different games. One could even argue Mario 1 being in the poll cost Mario 3 first place.The true match however was the unbelievably epic and simultaneously weird match between Mario 3 and Zelda 1. Remember, in the previous two rounds Mario 1 took out Zelda 1 fairly easily. Now thanks to the perfect storm of SFF split and circumstance, Zelda 1 was able to blow right by Mario 1 and take its crack at the vastly stronger Mario 3. But early on, this match had no indication whatsoever that it would be the best match of the contest and a down to the wire affair. This match was all about Mario 3 vs Mario World for a few hours, to the tune of Zelda 1 stuck back in third place by 1000 votes within two and a half hours. Mario 3's lead increase slowed down overnight when it was clear it couldn't beat Mario World, but it was still never threatened by Zelda 1 at all. It just slowed down and took until the morning vote to build a 1400 vote lead. No sweat, right?Well from there, Zelda 1 stalled. And stalled. And stalled. And then it stalled some more. It stalled the match at that 1400 vote margin all the way until the ASV, but even then there was no indication at all of having a close match. We were just seeing another weirdly powerful Zelda 1 result, to the tune of keeping the match even for something like eight hours.Then the ASV hit with full force, and all holy hell broke loose. Zelda started cutting into Mario 3 pretty heavily, and before long each of Mario 3's stalls seemed like a divine prank to give us the coolest match possible. Amidst a ton of 30-50 vote gains, Mario 3 would stall now and then. But even with Zelda cutting into Mario 3 like crazy for a little while, it was starting from down 1400 votes. That is a long way back in an SFF match, hence all the strange updates from all four games all through the poll.There was however a trend during the ASV, which was Zelda 1 kicking Mario 3's ass. It kept up the pace of 30-50 vote cuts all the way through the ASV, and all of Mario's stalls seemed a desperate attempt to tread water before the inevitable. It's rare we can call a 1400 vote comeback inevitable, but the pace Zelda 1 was on during this match's ASV was unheard of. Zelda's gains slowed down as the ASV wore down and the evening vote began, but the overall trend remained the same: Zelda 1 was coming fast.The lead was cot all the way down to 200 by 9 p.m. Given Zelda's pace, it seemed as if it could take the lead with plenty of time to spare. But much like the previous round, Mario 3 began holding serve during the second night vote, giving us one of the most memorable down to the wire finishes of all time.Though Zelda's gains were drastically slowed, it was still able to overall win updates and it got the lead down below 100 with over 90 minutes left in the poll. With one hour to go, it was down to 50 votes. One update later, 33. Two updates after that, 15. Zelda's win was all but guaranteed at this point, and come 11:30 it finally took the lead. All it had to do from here was continue kicking Mario's ass, much like it had been doing for 9 hours prior.Zelda however made one crucial miscalculation here, which is that it forgot it was in a down to the wire poll against Mario. When you're in a close match against one of the most notorious clutches in the history of contests, you choke Mario out when you have the chance. Zelda did not. In the update following the lead change, Zelda only increased 4 votes for an overall lead of 13. Mario began coming back after that, taking the lead down to 2 with 15 minutes left to go. Before Zelda even knew what was going on, Mario pulled out the most questionable update of the entire contest -- a 55 vote swing that gave Mario 3 a lead of 53 votes with only three updates left to go. This gave Zelda time to mount one final offensive. It took the next two updates getting Mario's new lead down to 23 votes, which gave us the first final update match in recent memory. The damage however was done, and Mario secured second place with one final lead increase. The story obviously was the mysterious 55 vote swing (the update graph shows how fishy the whole thing seemed), and after the two winners were put into the overall bracket, Bacon removed them to make cheating checks.He never did make a topic explaining what he saw that night, but he eventually penciled in Mario World > Mario 3 as the official result, setting off a whole new firestorm of GameFAQs being on the take for Mario. If you were here in 2002 or 2003, you need not be reminded of how badly Crono was screwed over in both Mario matches. Six years later, we had a different cast with the same story and the same ending: Mario pulls fishy updates out in the final few minutes to win.The sad thing here is even if you cut that 55 vote update in half, Mario 3 still wins the match given how good a final update it had. But as things stand, Mario is once again convicted by the court of Board 8 public opinion as a cheater. True or not, Mario has pulled off some stupidly fishy matches for seven years now. As for how Zelda managed to get this close at all, this match had some really weird splits going on. 3 Marios and 1 Zelda meant if you weren't a Mario fan, you voted for Zelda here. It's the only way to explain Zelda losing to Mario 1 twice, then nearly beating a far stronger game.The irony here is this set up an equally weird match in the semifinal. Had Mario 64 pulled off the comeback against Link to the Past, we would have had FF7 against the three strongest Mario titles. Can you imagine how good FF7 would have looked here?
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