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| - "Brother... it's been too long!" -Ocelot Contests just aren't the same without a solid Mario v Crono match or two. This was a beautiful, beautiful match. I love Chrono Trigger, but I love Mario 64 a tad bit more. Seeing Symphony of the Night become a bottom-feeder sucked, and it equally sucked seeing Yoshi's Island get SFFd to a 7% last place finish. But for once, a 7% last place finish was relevant. More on that in a second. Pre-contest, I swore up and down that this would be a tossup, and picked Chrono Trigger > Mario 64 solely because of Chrono Trigger's 2004 performance. Not only did it defeat Mario 3, but a 60-40 win over Mario World is no joke. I've always figured Mario 64 was around Mario world's level (best guess I can make given the OOT > Mario 64 SFF result), and that even a slightly weaker Chrono Trigger could beat Mario 64 heads-up especially given the recent DS Chrono Trigger release. Early on, it was clear Chrono Trigger was in trouble. Mario 64 kept the poll even for a solid 30 minutes before the CT night vote kicked in, and even then it took until 2 hours in for Chrono Trigger to get any momentum going. Once the night vote kicked in, Chrono Trigger built up a lead, but Mario 64 was still managing to score some prolonged stalls. CT managed to build up a lead of 650, but it felt like one of those really frail, "This could blow up in my face at any time" leads. And it was. The morning vote hit, and Mario 64 began dominating the poll. The lead was gone by 9:30, and then Mario started ballin' all over Crono's face. By the time this match ended, it was a close-match-turned-3200-vote-blowout. Crono's performance come the morning vote was embarrassing, but not at all unsurprising. I love CT and all, but this has become a very debilitating problem. Blowing big leads is supposed to be very rare in contests, but all things Chrono Trigger are turning it into a routine. 4000 vote swings are not supposed to be common, but CT is making us expect it. That's legitimately insane, and this result was one of those rare results that altered an entire contest midstream. Remember, CT > Mario 64 was the expected result, and we were supposed to see a hotly contested LTTP vs FF7/FF6/CT match with a possible LTTP > FF7 upset, and the following FF7/CT/Mario 1/Mario 3 match was supposed to be an aesthetic Mario vs Crono clash. And beyond this, remember all the pre-contest chatter about a potential CT/LTTP rematch getting ruined by the format? Of course you do. At this rate, there would be no CT/LTTP match at all. For round 3 to have a CT > Mario 64 result, CT would need a perfect storm of Goldeneye leeching the hell out of Mario 64 while Final Fantasy 7 barely affected CT at all. It was possible, but CT's years-long track record of choking paired with Mario's dominance this contest put the odds around 3% or so. It was bad. As for Yoshi's Island legitimately affecting this poll, one could claim an SNES relationship with Chrono Trigger and a Mario relationship with Mario 64. Rarely do you see a last place game do so badly, yet be so widely debated. If you weren't in the stats topic for the CT/Mario 64 round 3 debates, you missed everything that makes the stats topic the place to be in a contest. We have a legitimate reputation for being elitist and closed-minded, but we're still the best topic during contest season anyway.
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