Many of you protested for your own personal favorites, but we only took the general top five characters based on universal opinion & my own limited gaming knowledge. Let's take a look at the results...

Winner: Link (Adventure of Zelda, Zelda 64, etc) (32%, 479 votes)

The race was pretty close, but Link pulled through the race to become the champ! Most would attest Link's victory to the fact that he was the main character in arguably the greatest games for both the original NES and the Nintendo 64, however I like to think it had more to do with his unique style of fashion.

Picture Ganon, sitting in his little throne room, waiting for an enemy to be stupid enough to try to fight him. Picture Link, a veritable dwarf wearing Peter Pan's clothes walking through the door. Link really didn't have the power of intimidation on his side, yet he managed to save Hyrule again and again, using magic powers. Yes, magic powers. How else do you describe his entire outfit changing color whenever he got a power ring?

In any event, he's had several successful games...he had a princess....a cereal...a tv show...a t-shirt...sneakers...he's Link...and he's your champion.

Silver Medal: Mario (Super Mario Bros., Mario 64, Mario Kart, etc) (30%, 452 Votes)

My personal vote was cast for Mario - the character that changed video games forever. I remember the day I got my Nintendo complete with Super Mario Bros. It was a family event. We were used to the somewhat dubious nature of Atari 2600 games...but once we saw Mario warping through pipes and squashing mushrooms, we knew we had a winner. But it didn't end there - Mario still rocks the charts, even till today.

Maybe Mario came in second as a result of all of our combined non-conformist attitudes. Surely, we all know that Mario is the biggest star to ever grace the video game screen. He's had movies...several television shows...and Captain Lou Albano. There's no denying his place on top, but not withstanding that, Mario accepted his silver medal like the gracious & humble Italian he truly is.

Bronze Medal: Mega Man (Mega Man 1-100000) (25%, 375 Votes)

This was really impressive. Mega Man had none of the mainstream media attention Mario and Link were accustomed to receiving - yet still he came in third, just inches away from actually beating the two Nintendo super powers.

So how did Mega Man reach this prestiege? He was a part of a huge collection of invariably fun games with some of the weirdest bad guys in gaming history. He had cool power-ups. He had a robot dog. All the tools necessary. While he didn't come in first, getting the bronze medal is nothing to cry over. Mega Man was just happy we've all forgiven him for signing on to that horrible cartoon rendition of his game.

4th Place: Sonic The Hedgehog (Sonic Adventure, etc) (6%, 100 Votes)

I'm surprised Sonic didn't have a better showing, but I guess that's what happens when you're part of the Sega team - you get screwed. Truly, Sonic deserved better than this - most all of his games were terrific, the first Sonic game for Sega Genesis was revolutionary in it's speed & style, forcing Nintendo to up the ante and put out better games themselves.

I never had much of an axe to grind with Sonic, but it looks like a lot of people like to blacklist him since he's part of Sega - a company which a lot of people have refused to forgive, especially after paying over 150 bucks for the amazing flop known as Sega Saturn.

Course, Sonic may have only come in 4th since a lot of people realized after playing Sonic Adventure that he was, in fact, a retard. 'Whoa! Cool! Oh yeah! Man!' Sonic's strange choice of dialect was like a combination of that Kool-Aid guy & a raving derelict.

Loser: Simon (Castlevania) (4%, 71 Votes)

For the most part, your reaction to Simon's appearance in the poll was pretty simple: 'Who the fuck is Simon? My sentiments exactly. Sure, he may have been in some pretty cool games, but Simon had the personality of a brick. Upon realizing that, Nintendo made a crucial error, and dolled up Simon for his role in the Captain N cartoon...what we got was this:

Simon: Vampire-slaying Eurofag with a penchant for snowgear. Blah.

Now it's time to take a look at some of the infamous poll comments made by you, the readers. Some of them were even stranger that the ones from our villain poll...

"Anyone who votes for that queer ass mario must be a bigger queer than mario..... and anyone voting for sonic needs to be shot."

I wonder if this guy voted for Simon...he seems really upset about the way the poll rankings went.

"Who the hell is simon?"

See what I mean?

"link's a retard, mario #@&$s anything with a hole, sonic sucks his own dick, simon whip himself , and mega-man screws his dog, they're all pussies!!!!"

Spoken like a true scholar.

"who the hell is simon? hunh it better not be that character that look like a wanna be mega man and then only turned out to be some ugly bitch"

I swear to God, this only proves that everyone who reads X-E is either on heavy medication or using the asylum's computer.

"I am Britney Spears..Please eat me out and suck my hard nipples"

I kept telling my friends that celebrities were reading X-E. No one believed me. Well, now I have proof. Sexually liberated proof.

"Why would Mario Rape Goats when he has that sweet assed Princess?"

Did you ever get freaked out wondering what the person on the other side of the computer screen was really like? Five dollars says this kid stabs his mother to death and eats her intestines within six months.

"MATT YOU ASSHOLE! I'm the one who bought the infinity fortuna spellkit, you con-artist bastard!!! #@&$ YOU!!!"

You couldn't have bought the Infinity Fortuna Spellkit. The person who bought it is now a multi-millionaire who owns a tropical island off the Pacific. His hair grew back and he can shoot lightning from his fingertips.

I swear, reading the poll comments is a surreal experience.

Anyway, the poll is now officially over - Link wins the gold, and gets to have a special dinner meeting with our greatest cartoon villain champion, Megatron. They'll probably end up arguing over the pros and cons of nuclear power. But while they're doing that, you have a chance to make your voices heard once again, as our newest poll has begun!

The topic this time around is for Coolest TV Dad of all time. Through talking with many (read: 2) people, we've narrowed down it down to five choices - cast your vote by going to the poll on the main page of X-E!