(3)Solid Snake vs (4)Zelda (Legends Bracket) 2018

Ulti's Analysis
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/365/228/5f6.jpg

Blizzard got the full brunt of my wrath, but Konami isn't out of the woods here. What those idiots have done to gaming is completely unforgivable, and it wasn't just one dumb decision. Konami literally and intentionally murdered Suikoden, murdered Silent Hill, murdered Castlevania, murdered the Yugioh card game, murdered arcades, and ruthlessly murdered Metal Gear Solid. And for who? For what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko

For the unaware, remember Plinko from The Price is Right? Imagine that as a slot machine and you have pachinko machines. Konami decided to kill off all of their gaming franchises to focus on licensed slot machines, largely because Japanese people apparently have a massive gambling problem and spend all of the time and money on the damn things. Which means nothing to you, outside of not getting to play good games from that shitty-ass company anymore. That's the main difference between Konami and Blizzard, and why I'm not writing a 9500 takedown of the former. Blizzard is trash because their games all suck. Konami is trash because their games are almost always good, so them leaving the gaming business for dipshit slot machines was garbage. It's unforgivable, and Solid Snake clearly has the sins of Konami crawling on his back. He has to eat shit twice, because of all the franchises listed, Metal Gear Solid was the only one murdered three different times. One when Hideo Kojima was fired. Once when Metal Gear Solid went full pachinko.

And once when this bullshit happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rznqHawp4Oc

All that paired with the Zelda boost and Snake's Nintendo support always abandoning him against Nintendo characters made for some very, very bad news for Solid Snake. Had Tails never happened, this would be my favorite call of the contest. I just knew this was coming. Board 8 loves Solid Snake and has developed a habit of anti-voting Zelda characters. You guys tried your best for 15 minutes to save Snake, but it was not to be. After those 15 minutes were up, Zelda slowly and methodically marched her way up to a lead of 350 around midnight. Well, 342 to be exact. Snake fought back overnight, and tied things up as the morning vote showed up. We all kind of assumed Zelda would bury the guy in the morning and that would be that.

But miraculously, almost as if Snake knew this was his last shot, Snake started mashing that damn triangle button like he was getting cooked alive in a microwave hallway. This match was pretty much tied all morning, and Snake battled his ass off to try building a lead. But any time he got anything going, Zelda just bitch slapped him. When lunch time hit, Snake just ran out of gas and finally got buried for good. The match stayed between 100 and 200 for the last seven hours of the poll, but I remember watching it and never once feeling like Snake had a chance of winning. 342 puts this in the top 10 of the wire to wire list, but if you look at it this was the one match on there where you never really felt like the losing character had a prayer of winning. There was just too much in Zelda's favor combined with way too much going against Snake here. Snake has had a lot of close non-Noble Nine calls over the years, most of which coming with people blaming the sprite round, but at the end of the day he simply had to kneel at the altar of the Zelda series like everyone else.

If I wasn't such a big Zelda fan, I'd be sad about this. But I love the series, so this was great to watch. Zelda deserves all the run she got this year, too. It's about time. Right after Pikachu broke the Noble Nine, Zelda dug its grave. Not long after this match, Zelda and Tifa would combine to bury them for good. The Noble Nine is officially dead. There is no coming back from what happened to them in this contest.

The saddest thing of all is something I actually saw ExTha post on Facebook, so shout out to @ExThaNemesis here. Remember Smash Ultimate hype and how great that game would end up being? I do. This video is a huge part of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q05VKcXoT6A

(nice job to all the idiots who thought it would be a port, by the way)

The best part of that video was Solid Snake -- "everyone is here" -- but then it dawned on me.

Nintendo is treating Solid Snake better than Konami ever has. Even worse, Smash Bros Ultimate might be the last game Solid Snake appears in.

Bolded for emphasis because let that sink in. That is a really, really big deal. It's also the reason Snake lost. He should have cashed in when he was actually close to Link's level a few years ago, because he is never again coming close to winning a contest. It's unbelievably, incomprehensibly sad.