Duck Hunt vs Galaga vs Ninja Gaiden vs Super Mario Bros. 2009

Results
Round One Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Stats and Analysis
We've seen pretty much every type of SFF possible in contests, until this very match. For the first time ever, we got to see Same Cartridge SFF. In a transitive world, Mario Brothers > Duck Hunt > Ninja Gaiden would have been easy. Duck Hunt proved itself reasonably strong in 2004, and any Ninja Gaiden has completely and utterly stunk it up in every single poll it's ever been in. Ever. Look it up yourself if need be.

The problem here is Duck Hunt got stuck with the worst possible opponent in Mario 1, but a lot of people still thought it would retain an original audience and beat Ninja Gaiden anyway. NG is seriously that bad in any poll you look at, barring Ryu Hayabusa's character battle results.

The match began, and Duck Hunt had a small lead for 30 minutes. But then Ninja Gaiden came back, built up its own lead and the match was effectively over after the first hour was up. It wasn't Ninja Gaiden's strength so much as it was Mario completely dominating the poll. Mario stole all the votes, which is especially crippling to something like Duck Hunt, and there was simply nothing left over for Duck Hunt to make a move with. At times overnight, Mario was only leaving 50 votes per update for the other three games to work with. You can't mount comebacks that way.

The morning vote was even worse for Duck Hunt, because as Mario went up, Duck Hunt went down. This match ended the moment Ninja Gaiden made it close, because Duck Hunt leeching Mario 1 and staging a comeback is an impossible task. Mario 1's dominance of this poll was nearly the best of the entire contest, but the fourpack Mario 3 got placed in was even funnier. But hats off to Mario anyway, because 70% in a fourway is no joke.

By the way, make no mistake here. This match was decided entirely by Duck Hunt's weakness at the hands of Mario, and it would flatten Ninja Gaiden in a better situation. Beating a Same Cartridge-SFFd Duck Hunt isn't some monumental task and it did not prove Ninja Gaiden had any strength whatsoever, as round two went on to prove.