this is actually a tough one.

i've recently been playing luigi's mansion and it added this whole knew layer to luigi's persona. before, he was just mario's goofy older brother (which i must betray i do identify with somewhat...) but now he has this dark period in his past where mario just wasn't there. he wasn't there, and luigi had to step up. and if you've played luigi's mansion you'll know - even though he was scared, terrified - he stood alone, tall and goofy as ever, but now with pride.

i mean no disrespect to mario and his achievements throughout the series, but seeing luigi step up to the plate like he did was almost a personal victory for me personally, so i'm going to have to say Luigi Mario for Best Video Game Character - Mario Division.

I will move this to video games. Luigi, btw.

Toad: the douche you always find in a bag fiddling around with other clones of himself when you beat bower's castle. Your real objective is to find the princess and who do you find instead? Some fucking shroom-head tripping his ass off. And instead of offering you something you may need (coins, mushrooms, some herb) he simply states that "The princess is in another castle." He doesn't even tell you where the other castles are or even that the worlds up ahead have more annoying opponents and trickier obstacles! He's all "SORRYYY DUUUDEEEEEE" and then you leave to find out the hard way.

Peach: And this.....person. What does she do at all except get captured all the fucking time. Damsel in distress? More like dumbass in a fucking dress.

Those 2 characters above make me instantly pick the ambiguously gay duo. Congratulations!

Gamefaqs.com has inspired me to do this.

I think this says it all. =[

Toad btw.

Anyone who has played SMB 2 should instantly choose Toad.

Just wondering, but wasn't it so that you needed moderator approval before you could start a contest like this? Not that I think it's explicitly necessary, but I seem to recall that this was the case at some point.

yeah this is a good rule because seriously this is a terrible thread.

there are like 50 characters and these are the ones you chose? And the final fantasy thread... there's around 300 possibilities for that and you ended up with CLOUD, SEPHIROTH, CECIL and whoever else? These aren't good choices, and you shouldn't be limiting people. These threads suck because having 100 poll options is ridiculous but so is having anything less. The only good choice is to make it vote-by-post or just not at all.

I personally think it would be more interesting to find out how people stand towards mascots from different consoles during a certain time or era. I'm mostly talking about the Playstation and Nintendo 64, since those two had an interesting standoff. On the Playstation side you had figures like Abe, Spyro, Lara Croft, Rayman, Crash Bandicoot, Croc, Raziel, Solid Snake, PaRappa, etc., and on the Nintendo side you had mostly all the usual characters.

Also this is a really good idea.