(3)Super Metroid vs (14)Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2015

Ulti's Analysis
There were a lot of blowouts in round 1, but not many were more important than this one. Given Metroid's contest history, a lot of people were very down on the series as a whole, and were treating it almost as badly as the Big 10 got treated in the years after Chris Leak's Florida Gators beat the hell out of Ohio State in the 2007 BCS title game. Or in contest terms, it was on par with the decline of Chrono Trigger characters. People did not have faith in the Metroid series.

To shake a stigma like that, one has to win, at least do damn well in losing. Metroid's reputation is rather well-earned. It'll do reasonably well in a contest until running into Mario or Zelda, then get SFFd into the absolute ground. Some famous examples:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/1633-division-8-round-2-super-mario-bros-3-vs-metroid http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2122-tournament-quarterfinal-mario-vs-samus-aran http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2562-battle-royale-day-1 http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3304-contest-semifinal-link-mario-samus-crono http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3482-division-3-round-2-s-metroid-s-mario-kart-zelda-lttp-dk http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3496-division-3-final-zelda-lttp-s-metroid-ff3-zelda-la http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3467-division-6-round-1-gtavc-k-hearts-metroid-prime-paper-mario (all it took was a game named "Mario" in the poll, any game, to cause Metroid Prime to get third place!) http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/4567-final-rounds-quarterfinal-pokemon-trainer-red-vs-blue-samus

It's gotten so bad that even Pokemon can cause Samus or her games to lose these days. But if there was one contest where Metroid could cause some damage, it was a contest called "Best Game Ever" where the voters were clearly taking the contest name into account and favoring the 1990s. Super Metroid pops up on any objective list talking of the best games ever made, so this was really the time to shine.

And boy did it ever. I know Call of Duty is a hated-beyond-belief series on GameFAQs, but it has done some stuff in polls here. It finished second place in our Game of the Year voting in 2007, and got to round 3 in the 2009 Best Game Ever contest in spite of facing multiple Nintendo games. It might have gotten a round farther with a better draw, too. Then in Game of the Decade, it beat Prince of Persia in round 1, then got 55% on Perfect Dark in round 2 (which seems relevant given how MGS5 did in this very 2015 contest: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6093-best-game-ever-day-11-metal-gear-solid-v-vs-perfect-dark), then got 31% on Melee. Call of Duty 4, much as we hate it, is not some joke here.

So to go out and just get absolutely fucking murdered by Super Metroid says a whole lot about Super Metroid's contest strength. Remember, we had so little faith in it that we thought it would win this match before getting SFFd into the ground by Galaxy. Then this happened while Galaxy was sitting there looking rather pedestrian against Dragon Age, and reality set in. Mario Galaxy, in one of the biggest twists of fate ever, would have to rely on Reverse SFF to beat Super Metroid. Because there was no way one could look at these round 1 results and think it was indirectly the stronger game.