Tickled pink by the result

As part of the celebrations for its 15 year anniversary, well-known Japanese developer Level-5 recently held an online poll to allow gamers to vote for their favourite characters from the company's lineup. With franchises such as Professor Layton and Inazuma Eleven in its portfolio, some would have expected the voting to be fairly predictable, with the top 10 characters to all receive new desktop wallpapers to celebrate.

The problem is that it can be dangerous entrusting an open vote like this to the internet as a whole, as Level-5 has discovered. Rather than its most successful IPs populating the list, the number one winner with 46,263 votes was... the airplane from Guild01 title Aero Porter. That game's success continued with the presence of the rather orange porter from the same game in 9th place.

Apparently Level-5 boss Akihiro Hino had made a plea on Twitter for those manipulating the results for strange outcomes to cease and desist, but that certainly didn't have the desired effect. You can see the 'top 10' below. For the record, Professor Layton was voted into 13th place. Oh dear.

Level 5 Top 10

[source kotaku.com]