(2)Resident Evil 4 vs (15)Paper Mario 2015

Ulti's Analysis
Most 2 seeds go out there and dominate some fodder en route to an easy contest win or two. Resident Evil 4 did not do that, though admittedly Paper Mario is not a normal 15 seed. Resident Evil 4 lost the board vote, then had to do a lot of recovering to get this thing close to 60%. It would be a clear warning sign of what was coming later, though a lot of people were in denial about it.

In looking at this match, I noticed a pretty neat parallel. It depends on how close you think Paper Mario and Thousand-Year Door are in strength, but it's definitely there.

In Game of the Decade, Thousand-Year Door got 44.83% on Oblivion: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/4164-northwest-division-round-2-paper-mario-tyd-vs-oblivion

In 2015, Super Mario RPG would end up getting 54.43% on Oblivion: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6100-best-game-ever-day-13-oblivion-vs-super-mario-rpg

If you assume a constant Oblivion, that's an increase of 9.6%.

In this match, Paper Mario got 41.13% on Resident Evil 4. If you add 9.6% to that, you get... 50.73%. Hmmmmmmmmm........

Warning signs were definitely there with Resident Evil 4, though after round 1 the excuse of "we can't compare Paper Mario and TTYD this closely" was there. That excuse wouldn't stay there for long, but denying some relationship between SMRPG, Paper Mario and Thousand-Year Door would be a bit silly.

I know the stats topic is known for projecting things a little too far, but it was definitely warranted in this case! Resident Evil 4, right from the first match, looked "off".