Dragon Warrior III vs Contra vs Metroid vs The Legend of Zelda 2009

Results
Round One Friday, April 10th, 2009

Stats and Analysis
The Legend of Zelda was expected to kill this match (which it obviously did), but it was also expected to kill Metroid so badly that Contra could sneak into second place. Zelda in general might not have gone Mario 1 and broke 70%, but this was a very impressive performance nonetheless. If I recall, Zelda 1 > Mario 1 was the consensus pick in future rounds. This poll really did nothing to prove otherwise. I forget the exact stats charmander posted in the stats topic, but the Mario 1 > Duck Hunt SFF compared with the Zelda > Metroid SFF here meant something like a 52-48 win for Zelda. This whole thing became more clear once Mario 1 got the chance at crushing Donkey Kong like a beer can, but more on that later.

Metroid did exactly what it was supposed to do here. It got crushed by SFF and scored 23% on Zelda --- it got something like 21% on Mario 3 in 2004, if you recall --- so this is exactly what we all thought Metroid would get.

So, easy pickings for Contra, right?

Yeah, what the hell happened to Contra here? Either it just completely sucks these days, it too is subject to some heavy Nintendo SFF, or the 2004 stats are completely wrong. Probably a mix of all three, though I lean to the former. Contra was the first in a long, long line of casual shooters to disappoint based on expectations. Losing is one thing, but it didn't bother showing up.

Another good theory to explore here is Nintendo LFF not mattering quite as much as initially expected, which pops up over and over again in future matches. It's rare to see a consensus pick bomb this badly, and Board 8 bracket people have a big ego about this sort of thing. Clearly something weird was going on <_<