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| - It's a shame this was a fourway match that had no lasting effect instead of a one-on-one, because it was such a damn good match. Not to rain on anyone's parade here, but the format murdered this match's glitter. Alucard and Liquid's photo finish only mattered for points, since both advanced anyway. And since neither character had a prayer of advancing past round 2 anyway, this mattered for round 1 and nothing else. That said, a 3 vote finish is still worth talking about, and even before that a lot was going on. Zidane was actually in this match for a few seconds, but fell off the map quickly and was destined for last place. Ness was in this for a considerably longer period of time, and for the first hour of the poll this was a three horse race. But then the Nintendo Power Hour ended, Ness fell off the pace and that was that. He would never again sniff first or second place here. Which meant this was about Alucard and Liquid fighting for points, though for the longest time Alucard was in first place somewhat comfortably. He built up a 400 vote lead overnight, and given how bad the MGS day vote always is this seemed over. Yeah Alucard's day vote is also bad, because that's fitting for vampires, but two bad day vote characters don't often see wild day vote shifts. But then Liquid erased all 400 votes in a couple hours, before the heart of the morning vote even hit, and then the morning vote came in full force to somewhat bury Alucard. Liquid began building a lead, albeit very slowly, and the gist of it is he inched upward all day. Alucard's day vote is terrible, but so is Liquid's so of course any day vote build was going to be super slow. Despite Alucard's periodic stalling, Liquid had a lead of close to 700 with 7 hours left. And he would almost literally need every single one of those votes, because as we all know the sun going down means vampires wake up. For awhile, Alucard wasn't coming back so much as inching back. That 700 with 7 hours left? Yeah, it was still 600 with 5 hours left. With 4 hours left, it was still 550 or so. Even an hour later, it was still 500 votes. So it basically looked like Liquid would win, just win a little closer than he would have liked. Hint hint. It wasn't until the sun went all the way down did Alucard wake up for real, which is fitting given he's a vampire and all. In that 22nd hour, Alucard (SPOILERS this is totally not Dracula backwards END SPOILERSlol) started making his real move. A 500 vote lead became 295, making the pace to come back well ahead of what he needed. Liquid pushed back a little, but Alucard was able to get it all the way down to 170 with an hour to go. It took him only 25 minutes to get it down to 65, and if Liquid were from almost any other series Alucard getting first place probably would have been inevitable. But Alucard made the same mistake several others have made against Metal Gear Solid -- that is, he came back too early. To avoid the 25th hour MGS rally, you have to win on the very last update and/or completely crush all hope. Alucard finished his comeback to go up 11 votes with three updates left, and we all know what happened from there. 11 turned into only 3, and then Alucard pushed it back up to 17 with one update left. Everyone refreshed at midnight, and you can see the end result. To date, our 3 vote margin of victory here is a record, but in my mind the true record is still Frog > Master Chief's 7 votes. Does this 3 vote first place > second place really mean anything historically when both characters "won" anyway, only to both lose in round 2? Not really, no. 1 on 1 records > this stuff, at least in a certain context. If this were a late round match, fine, but it was a meaningless round 1 match. And meaningless round 1 photo finishes to decide first > second place matter much less than a photo finish in a 1 on 1. What do you remember more, this match or Jill losing by 27 votes twice? This match or the legendary cheating in Vercetti > Kefka 2005? I'm willing to bet most people can't name the other two characters in this poll without looking it up, too. Not trying to bash fourways or anything, because the first fourway contest was honestly pretty cool. But 1 on 1s have much better finality to them with matches like this. Or to put it a different way (and I'll even keep it in fourway context!): The exact same "1 on 1 within a fourway" happened twice, and I don't need to tell you which one mattered more.
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