Ulti's Top Ten Matches of All Time:

10 - Summer 2002 Final Four - Mario vs Crono - Mario holds a steady lead all throughout the
day, but Crono mania soon starts taking over the entire site as Crono begins making his own
push. But in the end, not only was Crono's lead eventually blown away, but we learned that the
entire push may have been the fault of one dumbassed vote stuffer the entire time.

9 - Spring 2004 Round 1 - Soul Calibur vs Kingdom Hearts - This was a choke for two different
reasons. One, the board favored Kingdom Hearts on a 5:1 scale. 5:1 doesn't seem like much, put
to put that in perspective, Link was a 9:1 favorite to win the 2002 contest. From there,
Kingdom Hearts went on to give up a lead of 720 to Soul Calibur. That was bad enough. But
after that, the entire choking theme turns around to Soul Calibur, who gave up the lead and
lost by nearly 1100 votes in the end. This might be one of the only matches where both
entrants choke. Actually, I take that back. You'll see later.

8 - Summer 2003 Final Four - Link vs Cloud - Link was favored with odds of roughly 1.5:1 to
win the entire contest after his dominance in 2002. Yet lo and behold, he turned around and
gave it all away against the first character to actuallt come along and punch him in the
mouth. With the sole exception of maybe Sephiroth in 2002, no one Link has ever faced was of
any threat to him in the first place until Cloud. Cloud punched Link in the mouth, and Link
never got up from it.

7 - Spring 2004 Round 1 - Donkey Kong vs Duck Hunt - Of all of Donkey Kong's bad matches, this
one was his biggest disgrace of them all. He was favored by around 75% of brackets to win this
match --- 3:1 odds --- and almost blew it away. He had a lead of 3250 at one point, and had it
not been for bracket voters pushing him to go 50-50 in the occasional update, Duck Hunt could
have easily won that match. Yes Donkey Kong won, but in spirit, so did Duck Hunt. We may never
see a 3100 turn like that again.

6 - Spring 2004 Round 1 - Halo vs Starcraft - Another match where both entrants inhaled on the
big one. Halo, a 1 seed, was expected to roll over and kill Starcraft. Sure Starcraft was
expected to be the best 16 seed ever, but there was no way it could actually win. Right? Well
in the beginning of the match, Halo not only proved that Starcraft was capable of taking it
down, but Starcraft went and built a 1045 lead on it. But all was not lost as Starcraft proved
it was uncapable of winning the morning vote, and Halo not only came back, but built its own
lead of 1108. Over, right? Of course not. With eight hours left to go in the match, Halo began
a slow, steady decline at the hands of Starcraft, Bnet, and the majority of gamefaqs rooting
against it the whole way. Not only did Starcraft come back, but it came back with plenty of
time to spare. Halo choked, and badly, after Starcraft did the same earlier in the match.

5 - Summer 2002 Sweet 16 - Mega Man vs Sephiroth - It was the summer of 2002, during one of
the most anticipated matches of the contest. The effects of Sonic vs Samus had yet to wear
off, and here we had this upstart robot, clean off of the two biggest blowouts of the
contests, taking it to Sephiroth of Final Fantasy 7 fame. The same game that made gamefaqs
famous. The match wasn't getting proper attention for the longest time throughout the day, but
it caught everyone's eye soon enough. After 75% of the match was done and overwith, Mega Man
was sitting pretty with a lead of just over 700 on Sephiroth. But soon after that, it soon
came massively unraveled for Mega Man. Sephiroth managed to not only come back, but make a
swing of nearly 1700 votes in around 6 hours. Call me crazy, but was this the first case where
we began theorizing about the evening Square vote? Either way, Mega Man had a perfect chance
to make history, but he blew it away. And in 2003, Mega Man had a chance at revenge in the
Final Four when he got a rematch against Sephiroth. What did he do? He got his blue ass
absolutely handed to him.

4 - Summer 2002 - Divisional Finals - Mario vs Cloud - As if the fallout of Sonic/Samus and
Mega Man/Sephiroth weren't bad enough, we were now hit with one of the best matches in the
history of the contest. Not only was this match good, but it was also the most anticipated
match from the start, with only Link vs Sephiroth even being able to come close. The Square vs
Nintendo roots began with this match, and it did not disappoint. In the beginning, it was
clear that this match was going to have a very elevated vote total, but despite this, Cloud
built a lead of 1000 votes on Mario. But Mario was not the odds-on favorite to win in 2002 for
no good reason. Aided by Super Mario Sunshine hitting stores on the exact day of this match,
Mario began cutting into Cloud's lead, albeit slowly. Soon thereafter, Planet Gamecube posted
a link to our main page on their site. All this helped to Mario coming back to win the match
by nearly 300 votes after being down by 1000 in a match that scored nearly 130,000 total
votes. The odds may have been stacked against Cloud that day, but champions find a way to get
past those odds. Cloud did not.

3 - Summer 2002 Sweet 16 - Sonic vs Samus - I keep bringing up this match, but I haven't
spoken of it yet. It was the summer of 2002, and it was the beginning of three of the best
matches we have ever seen. For that reason alone, I don't think we'll ever see the popularity
we saw in 2002. Not only were the matches hyped, but they all came in a row and were
unpredictable and close from the beginning. They also featured the biggest names in gaming.
It's one thing to see Halo, Starcraft, Soul Calibur, and Kingdom Hearts giving us thrills, but
it's something else entirely to see what we saw in the summer of 2002. It all began with Sonic
vs Samus. Despite Sonic being a 1 seed, he was a weak 1 seed. Believe it or not, Samus had
better odds of winning the entire contest (36:1) than Sonic (45:1). All this said, the match
finally went underway, and Sonic slowly began building a lead. Despite the match starting 2
hours late, Sonic managed to have a lead of 1500 with around 3 hours left in the poll. What
soon followed was one of the fastest meltdowns ever. Within the next three hours, Samus went
on one of the largest pushes ever seen in the contest, and she kept it up with relentless
assault all the way until the end. At the end of the poll, both Sonic and Samus were virtually
even, but it was not to be for Sonic that day. After we crashed the server to see the results,
they showed Samus winning by a mere 34 votes. It's easy to feel sorry for Sonic, but he blew a
lead of 1500 in a matter of 3 hours. He never should have lost to begin with, and he has yet
to recover from that day.

2 - Spring 2004 - Starcraft vs The Wind Waker - Starcraft was a cute story through its first
two matches in the spring, having taken down both Halo and Kingdom Hearts in succession. But
its run was supposed to end here. After all, Zelda and Final Fantasy rule everything else here
on gamefaqs. In the very beginning of the match, Starcraft managed to hold a slim lead on The
Wind Waker (thus proving that Starcraft was no joke in this contest) before finally going
under to the morning vote. The Wind Waker caught a good chunk of the morning vote against
Starcraft, and kept rolling with it all the way to a lead of 2008. All it needed to do from
there was to hang on through the inevitable Starcraft evening vote. It did a good job of it
for the first few hours in the evening with Starcraft only managing to trim the lead down to
1750 or so, but soon after that, Starcraft picked up the pace. It began cutting into The Wind
Waker's unstable lead a little faster, and with three hours left in the poll, The Wind Waker
only found itself up by 1000 votes. Still, being up by 1000 votes with the voting slowing down
was sure to be enough for The Wind Waker. But after the clock struck midnight here on the east
coast, The Wind Waker began one of the worst unravelings we had ever seen. Not only did
Starcraft come back, but it came back with plenty of time to spare. Only one match could be
seen as a bigger choke job than this one in my eyes, and everyone already knows what it is.

But that being said, Starcraft's next match, against SSBM, put all of its previous wins into
serious question. After SSBM took a lead of nearly 3700 vots on Starcraft, Starcraft managed
to slice off 1350 votes from the lead in 30 minutes. This group of updates still makes me
crack the hell up:

17:30 | Starcraft | 35757 | +0452 | 47.55% | SSBM | 39448 | +0553 | 52.45% | Lead of 3691 |
(Up 101)
17:45 | Starcraft | 36719 | +0962 | 47.89% | SSBM | 39958 | +0510 | 52.11% | Lead of 3239 |
(Down 452)
18:00 | Starcraft | 38156 | +1437 | 48.51% | SSBM | 40500 | +0542 | 51.49% | Lead of 2344 |
(Down 895)
18:15 | Starcraft | 38735 | +0579 | 48.55% | SSBM | 41050 | +0550 | 51.45% | Lead of 2315 |
(Down 29)

That group of updates put Starcraft's entire contest in jeapordy, whether it cheated in the
matches or not. It's unfair and unfortunate, but the suspicion will always be there.

1 - Summer 2003 Sweet 16 - Mario vs Crono - It was the summer of 2003, and the year that Crono
was supposed to go out and prove that 2002 was no joke. This poll was massively hyped right
from the start, and with Shadow the Hedgehog managing to score 45% on Mario, Mario looked to
be in a ton of trouble after Crono's dominance over his first two opponents. The match itself
lives up to its hype right from the start. Mario jumped out to an early lead, but Crono fought
back quickly and built a lead of around 850 votes. Not to be outdone, Mario made his own
comeback attempt by the time the afternoon vote rolled around and took a lead of around 150
votes on his own. But Crono was not about to let this thing slip away, and he soon showed
Mario that he had what it took to win this match. Right as Mario came back on Crono, Crono
fought back to once again go up by almost 850 votes. After that, it looked like it was all
over for Mario. With each new update, time was running out on Mario. It was 10:30 PM EST here
on the east coast, and it looked like Crono was finally going to get his revenge on Mario.

But right then and there, the meltdown to end all meltdowns took place. Mario won the next
couple of updates. It wasn't much, but he managed to cut Crono's lead down to around 800 with
2 hours left in the poll. But after that, Mario managed one of the most miraculous comebacks
we had ever seen. He began winning updates in dominant fashion, and with the 1 AM update, he
took over the lead, as well as the match. Even if you forget about CJayC letting the poll run
an extra seven minutes, Mario had the most votes at 1 AM.

No matter who you sided with in that match, Crono had a meltdown at the end. No question about
it. And in my humble opinion, it was the worst emltdown we had ever seen. That was the
craziest night I ever saw here on gamefaqs. It was the mother of all board explosions, CJayC's
'There was no cheating' topic filled up in record time, and before Crono saw what hit him, he
had lost a match that looked to be over. To make things even worse, there is still a myth
about the Male/Female poll floating around which has yet to be proven. No matter the case,
Crono had it won and dropped the ball. Badly.