Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Round | Dream Division Final |
|---|---|
| Match # | 52 |
| Match Date | Thursday, September 8th, 2005 |
| Vote difference | 3,535 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Bowser - 58.25% 70 for - 4 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Bowser - 38.18% (12,902 brackets) |
After Solid Snake's trouncing of Sora, Snake was once again looking to be the favorite to make the Final Four from among the Gear/Dream divisions. However, both Bowser and Kirby had aspirations of taking Snake down and claiming said Final Four slot for their own; Bowser moreso, because his Spring 2005 performance gave him an excellent shot at beating Snake if he were able to repeat it.
But first, Bowser had Kirby to deal with, and Kirby was no slouch in this contest. He blew the hell out of Cecil before making Tidus look as weak as Ramza, both of which are extremely impressive tasks given that Tidus was the favorite to win the fourpack. And while Bowser was still the board favorite to win the match, Kirby had a very real chance at winning this thing.
Early on in the match, it seemed as if Kirby's 1 seed bracket advantage would allow him to pull of the stunning upset. Bowser caught most of the board vote, Kirby the bracket vote, and Kirby found himself tied with Bowser for the first few minutes. But Bowser was soon able to shake Kirby off, and after the next few updates was ahead by a few hundred votes.
Kirby still had a decent chance at coming back to win at this point given that it looked as if he was stalling Bowser's lead increase, but Bowser hung tough before just catching enough momentum with the morning vote to put Kirby away. Bowser didn't blow Kirby out of the water, but he slowly and methodically built his lead to 3700 votes by the time the afternoon vote was over. It was at this point that Kirby stalled Bowser for good and took off 400 votes from Bowser's lead before Bowser was able to recover to win the match by just over 3500 votes.
One could look at this match in two ways. If you were like me and picked Bowser to beat Snake, this match caused all sorts of problems when compared to how badly Sora just got his face kicked in by Snake one day before this match. On the other hand, one could claim rSFF in this match. Kirby was the 1 seed, likely had much of the bracket support from casuals, and recent starred in Canvas Curse as the main character. Kirby has also been the main character in his own little platformer series for years, while Bowser is simply Mario's villain. It's possible that Kirby stole a few percentage points from Bowser based off of all of this, and even if Bowser would go on to lose to Snake rSFF was still a viable factor to blame his underperformance on. The issue naturally is that characters looking to upend the Noble Nine shouldn't be subject to rSFF in the first place.
Match Trends[]
