Round 3 Bracket 12

[Nebuchanezzar]

Street Fighter II (multi-platform)

vs.

Legend of Zelda, The (NES)

[cars01]

Legend of Zelda, The

[skittlebrau]

I already voted for both ALttP and TP, and I am content.

Besides, SF II is a classic unto itself. Very deserving of my vote.

[Sniper Squirrel]

as melon scratchers go, this is a honey-doodle, I love both games, I love LOZ, but this would be the third game in the series to advance, I'll go SFII

[Orzabal's Eleven]

Never been too struck on the NES Zeldas, and I can't turn down an opportunity to let SFII through... oh, how I wasted my childhood on that one.

[erock]

sf 2 was really one of the best fighting games.

[bovine_university]

What to pick, what to pick....

Legend of Zelda is probably the more important and more legendary game, but we have a number of Zelda games already. Street Fighter II was a break-through for tournament fighters and arcade games, but the genre has been greatly improved since. A tough choice indeed. Well, keeping in tune with the other two rounds involving Zelda, I'll go ahead and vote for Street Fighter II.

[Channel Surfer]

I really don't care if Street Fighter II wins this or whatever. I mean, the game is certainly deserving of most of the praise it gets. But the "too many Zeldas" thing seems kind of weak to me as a reason. Isn't it better to vote for the games on their own merits - their legacy, innovations, entertainment value, etc. - as opposed to trying to limit how many games from a franchise gets through regardless of whether the games actually deserve their praise or not?

[bovine_university]

It is a weak reason to vote against a game because other games in its series are also around, and I always feel a little guilty whenever I do so, but I always felt from the beginning of this tournament that we should really be trying to get to know and examine a whole spectrum of games from various platforms, time periods, and genres. Of course this tournament should be about choosing the best games, but I feel like we're also missing the point when five games from the same series all go on the the second or third round, because instead of really getting to know a variety of titles, we're going back to drink from the same well over and over. It's a flawed way of thinking, but it's how I feel, and it will make for a very uninteresting final round if we see Twilight Princess go up against Link to the Past in my opinion.

[sacrelicious]

I am completely with channel surfer on this one. So what if A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess already won this round? I say the original Zelda tops them all, and if the consensus votes it out, it'll be one sad day.

[H Thompson]

And To be fair there is a bit of a difference when we're talking about different generations of console it is kind of boring to see Ocarina, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess all together, but there's a bit more of an excuse when the generational gap between them is so wide it actually makes the gameplay in them quite a bit different.

[Xt'Tapalatakettle]

SFII should beat the hell out of Zelda. A whole damn genre practically came out of SFII. Zelda just spawned more Zeldas.

[Chuckles Manson]

I liked the spawned Zeldas. Also, the various Zelda titles really did a lot for the entire RPG style genre.

[Simpson Purist]

I love the original Zelda, but I really really really love Street Fighter II. It's one of a few games that made going to the arcade such a great experience.

[skittlebrau]

I honestly gotta say that the original Zelda gets repetitive and bores me quickly depending on my mood. That's not to say it's still one of the greatest NES games ever made, but the series has improved tremendously overall and there are certainly better installments in the series (thus the decision for my votes for ALttP and TP). Don't care if it spawned what it did, and I didn't vote against it because there's "too many Zeldas", but because of what has been said: legacy, innovations, entertainment value, etc. Street Fighter II in a nutshell.

I will, however, say that seeing two Zelda games at the end of this tournament would be kinda boring when you consider just how many fantastic games have been made in 20+ years. It'd be like all Pink Floyd or LCD Soundsystem songs in the final three for Musical Showdown. Total zZzZz-fest.

[Channel Surfer]

I will, however, say that seeing two Zelda games at the end of this tournament would be kinda boring when you consider just how many fantastic games have been made in 20+ years. It'd be like all Pink Floyd or LCD Soundsystem songs in the final three for Musical Showdown. Total zZzZz-fest.

Oh I certainly agree with you that it would be boring if that happens. It's not like I think they all deserve to be this far. Problem though is that there really is not another franchise that is generally regarded for producing so many triple A titles while still having a large number of people following it. Any one of them would have killed something like Silent Hill 2 or Shadow of the Colossus or whatever long before their time. But eh, what can you do?

Anyway, the thing I like about the original Zelda (and Metroid for that matter, despite its sometimes blatant problems) is that, more than really any of the sequels, it really is more of a contained little adventure driven by exploration and discovery. Future Zelda games from Zelda II on up usually have a clear dividing line between the linear main quests and the nonlinear side stuff. The original Zelda, despite having a clear goal, isn't so schematized in what you have to do and how you have to do it, leaving it more to you to find what you need to progress and what order you want to do it. It's a somewhat different approach from future installments, and it's somewhat disappointing to see the approach increasingly discarded over the course of the series, even if I understand that it makes storytelling a bit trickier.