(7)Mario vs (2)Samus Aran (Losers Bracket) 2018

Ulti's Analysis
In their first match I discussed the history these two have, why I love Mario, and why the rivalry these two have is so important. No need to relive it, just read about it here: https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/(2)Samus_Aran_vs_(7)Mario_(Legends_Bracket)_2018

I stand by what I said at the very end, too. It's great and all that these two had an epic rematch and gave us our best match of the entire contest, but it's awful that these two, of all people, had a rematch at all. We had a fantastic conclusion to that nonsense from 2005. This match happening and being as close as it was ripped everything back open. In the first match, Mario slowly built a lead and won, but only with 51.42%. This was great, because it proved everyone right at the same time. Samus can beat Mario, but "it's freaking Mario" kicked in even though it really does feel like Samus is indirectly stronger.

In my Crono/Mega Man writeup, I mentioned Board 8's love affair with Crono. If you subtract all the close contest losses, Board 8 has a similar love for Samus. Of all the Nintendo characters, Samus might be the coolest. Link is cool, but he's an elf. Mario is a fat plumber. The princesses were all damsels in distress until very recently. But Samus? Samus is a shit-kicking, bounty hunter badass who goes on these insane missions and pulls them out against wild beasts despite insane odds. Look at Super Metroid logically. Who else is doing any of that?

Add all that together with the contest history these two have, plus Mario being the contest villain for some, and people ''freaked. the hell. OUT'' when this thing started and Samus was close at the beginning. Then Mario looked like he was going to take off, but Samus.... built... a 100 vote lead? Say what?!

But Mario got rid of that lead pretty quickly, and we all figured he just just auto-win again. That's what he does against Samus. But when Mario caught up, Samus... built a lead again? Huh?

Then the night vote kicked in and all hell broke loose. Samus not only started winning the night vote, but she beat down any attempts by Mario to slow things down. She got that lead all the way up to 200 votes. But when we got into the dead zone, Mario finally decided to go to work. He got that thing down to 100 fairly quickly, after a mighty struggle by Samus, Mario had the lead all the way down to 30.

Yet again we all assumed Mario would auto-win. And yet again Samus got the lead back up to 100. Samus wasn't just proving she could hang with Mario and proved me and all the doubters wrong, she was sitting there actually doing it. It was quite a sight to behold, and if this was a 2010 era 12 hour night match, Samus may very well have won.

But when that morning vote showed up, Mario finally went "bitch, fuck off". Sort of. He erased the lead over breakfast, but Samus went out there and refused to actually get buried. She stalled as best she could, but Mario was finally able to build up a lead of 100. Game over, right?

Over lunch, Samus yet again fought back and started building up a tiny lead. Come ASV time (very few matches this contest had an ASV due to polls starting in the evening, but this was one match where even a miniscule difference mattered), she had a lead of 60. Had Samus won the ASV, she wins this match. But it was Mario who took advantage of the 19 middle school and high school kids combined who still visit this site. He erased Samus's lead in an hour, and for about the 17th time this match, we all assumed Mario's auto-win clutch would kick in. IT'S FREAKING MARIO, after all.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/f219/th/pre/i/2012/211/b/7/samus_portrait_by_poojipoo-d597782.jpg

"Next time someone says you fight like a girl, remember Samus."

I would love to say the final three hours of this poll were as epic as some of our famous duals from the past. Mario vs Crono. Frog vs Master Chief. The Metal Gear Solid series vs Star of the Contest. Melee vs Brawl. Link to the Past vs Chrono Trigger. Undertale vs The World. Pokemon vs Final Fantasy 7. Jill Valentine vs 27 votes. Crono vs Vincent. Starcraft vs The World. Even Link vs Cloud. These two qualify as a rivalry worthy of this list, but I know full well this match doesn't quite stack up due to the low vote totals, it being a loser's bracket rematch, and our site being dead. I get it. But by modern standards, this is as good of a match with as good of a history as you'll ever see. It's why this was my favorite match of the entire contest. People cared about who won, and were heartbroken by the result. That's what these contests are all about. Cheering on your favorite and having a result actually matter. The LOL x stats robbed us of most of that, because now you get people cheering for percentages instead of characters, but every once in awhile you get a match like this breaking through and getting everyone back to the good old days.

For the last three hours of this poll, these two characters were never more than 27 votes apart. They only had five updates, or a grand total of 25 minutes in the last three hours, where they were more than 20 votes separated. They had 27 updates where they were between 10 and 19 votes.

They had 16 updates in the single digits, which is just insanity as a poll is closing up. It's the best we could have asked for, and it all came down to the final update. With one update left, Mario was leading by only 2 votes. 15 minutes prior, he was winning by 21, meaning he was trending down fast and Samus was the favorite to win this match and slay a 13 year old contest rival. This was going to come down to who rallied the best at the end. Simple as that.

When this match was closing up, I was helping tutor my classmates in clin lab hematology animal nursing. I've been in this profession for a long time, and in most of my labs I end up either officially or unofficially tutoring people, because I already know everything going in. There's a long story about why I left vet school and went back to nursing school to finish that certification instead, but the short of it is I'm not interested in being a doctor. I have enough money to where I can just choose the career I want, and nursing makes me happier than being a doctor. They don't tell human doctors or veterinarians that well over half the job is spent writing medical notes or joining up with the cover-your-ass please-don't-sue culture. You're ordering supplies, treating people or pets or employees as a way of making money or cutting costs, as if they're just another bill to be paid or another source of income. You're managing egos and worrying about a bunch of dumb shit. I want to go to work, interact with clients and their pets, help them, get along with everyone, do my job the best I can, and go home. I'm not interested in all the side show BS that comes with medicine. Shows like House and Scrubs are a lot more accurate than you guys might think. Granted I don't have experience on the human medicine side of things, but I've been around the block with animal medicine and good hell. Give me nursing and a patient schedule any day.

It also might not seem like it based on Board 8 interactions, but I'm very well liked in the real world. I know, sounds weird. So at 6:55 pm in that clin lab hematology grind when I was tutoring people on the coming final, I said fuck it and asked for Mario votes on cell phones. All 15 fellow students voted for him, plus myself. Imade sure to save my vote for late, like I did all contest because wasting a double vote early is just silly. You know the rest. Mario got 54 votes in the final update to Samus's 37, and Mario won the poll by 19 votes. It was Mario's biggest update in over six hours. Make fun of me all you want. I give no fucks. I think I explained pretty well during the last match these two had why I love Mario so much, but I also hope this writeups shows how I also love Samus. Mario's just a 10 to Samus's 9.9 is all. Simple as that.

Some people in the stats topic had epic meltdowns over this result and THE CLUTCH kicking in when Samus was clearly about to win, but there are some things to discuss here. A couple people said I made this up about classmates voting (a common accusation of late is saying I make things up, which is just outright stupidity), but it's easy enough to prove if Allen ever wants to show us voter logs. Anyway. Me plus my classmates amounted to 17 votes. Mario won by 19. Even if you remove all their votes and I switch to Samus, it's only a tie. I also played by the same rules as everyone else. Samus only got 37 votes in the last update, which was about the same as she had been getting. Where were all the Samus rallies? Any of the people rooting for her could have asked for a few votes. Was no one playing Smash with some friends or something? In looking at this match, I'm pretty disappointed with the effort of Samus and her backers in those last five minutes.

'''It's. Freaking. Mario.''' You can't stand pat and hope he loses. You have to go beat his ass. Why Samus backers didn't rally there, I have no idea. The other major reason Samus folks were upset over her losing is this loss symbolically ended the contest, which is logic I can actually understand. When this match happened, people assumed the rest of the contest would just be Link > Zelda, Mario > Cloud, Zelda > Mario, and then Link > Zelda again.

Whoops. That, as Chris Berman would say, is why they play the games. But yeah, shout out to Mario and Samus for becoming our new hot rivalry. I wish people acted a little better as this was ending, but I think a bunch of passion is better than people being boring. I'll take meltdowns over nothing any day, even if they're idiotic meltdowns like what TheStupidRaptor was doing. It's part of what makes contests fun.

Last point, and I'm putting this one the record now. If these two have a 1v1 rematch after Metroid Prime 4 and that game is good, I think Samus can finally win and I would pick it. Mario Odyssey came out only a year before this contest, and outside of some funny wedding pictures and Mario dabs, that game didn't really boost him. Samus is already a badass and is on the cusp of great things here. One more game could do the trick. I miiiiiiiight even root for her to do it! :p