Results[]
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 3 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 17 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, March 31, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Smash Bros. Ultimate - 80.60% 66 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Smash Bros. Ultimate - 93.92% |
| User Votes |
Smash Bros. Ultimate - 7104 Tekken 7 - 1404 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5646 Tekken 7 - 1270 |
This match was never going to be in doubt, but seeing Ultimate pull off this absurd blowout was beautiful to see nonetheless for one very specific reason.
Whenever a disruptor comes along, the status quo always gets defensive and pissed off instead of evolving to meet new demands. We see it with the Trump presidency causing legacy politicians and their ignorant supporters to lose their collective minds. We see it with the taxi industry not liking Uber. We see it with retail chains blaming Amazon for their own failures. Microsoft and Apple have gone back and forth on this for decades. We saw it with Blockbuster not thinking streaming would take off. We see it with any paradigm shift, really.
Most importantly, we see it now among all of the morons who think Smash Bros isn't a "real" fighting game series. This was never really an argument to begin with, but fighting game fans are hilariously insecure pseudo alpha male types who go around festooning greatness, so seeing them get embarrassed in this non-argument time and time and time again is so good. They are clearly threatened by Smash Bros being the most popular and highest selling fighting series in the history of gaming, and they can't handle people who aren't "real men" (whatever their stupid definition of that is) being more popular than they are. It is hilarious to watch, and so was Smash Ultimate getting 83% on a garbage can with a garbage can fanbase. Protip for those playing the home game -- if someone constantly tells you they're an alpha male, you are dealing with an insecure loser. The best way to deal with those goofs is to laugh right in their face.
We've won this argument, and we just set the viewership record at EVO. Yeah, the same EVO that you thought Smash didn't deserve to be in. We just took your space over and kicked you out of it, losers. Go watch some more UFC and pretend you could have been a pro athlete if not for that one injury you had in high school. Oh, and I'm a so-called nerd and odds are I've slept with far more women than you. It's called deodorant. Try wearing it. Oh, and maybe tell your old school fighting game developers to evolve a bit. They all got embarrassed in this contest for a reason.
The only real issue here was Smash being in the same half of the bracket as Zelda, but given how this contest ended I have to say it was the right decision. Smash showed here, despite the blowout, that it was not in Zelda's league. No game was.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Prior to the contest, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was considered by many to be either the second or third best game here. It was obviously behind Breath of the Wild, but a fear amount of people considered it second. Skyrim was before the contest mostly considered the potential second ahead of Ultimate, but a few other games were in consideration too. Wherever we predicted it to be exactly, we all agreed that it was among the very best. Nintendo is so big these days with the huge success of the Switch. It had to be up there. Most people expected it to have a really boring contest run because the Nintendo hierarchy would mean it had a free pass to the semifinals before being fed to Breath of the Wild.
The biggest case against Ultimate’s strength was its final Game of the Year poll against God of War. It was only a little more than year ago, so likely still in full relevance. It “only” won with just less than 55%. A reaction to that was considering God of War to be a top game here. Another was the thought that perhaps Smash Bros has stronger hype that games. I don’t think anyone here will deny that the Smash Bros franchise can boost things prerelease more than anything else. We’ve seen characters clearly boosting significantly due to be revealed for Smash. We’ve even seen that happen mid-contest before with Sonic being the key example. Even so, there’s a good case to be made for Brawl and Melee to be the strongest games last decade, even if Majora ending up getting past Brawl in the final with a bandwagon. That was a while after the release of even Brawl.
There’s also the argument that the site has shifted away from multiplayer games. While Smash has had good single player, it’s always a multiplayer game first and foremost. We don’t really see games that are primarily multiplayer doing well here much anymore. Ultimate is considered a celebration of gaming more than it’s considered a fighting game by Mr. Sakurai himself, and there’s something to it. Fighting games and multiplayer games have had a clear roof in these contests, which Smash has always been quite a bit better than everything else in those categories. But maybe it still hurt it a bit as well. It was most likely put in this half of the bracket to avoid a pure Nintendo finals, but some regulars were using this multiplayer decline to argue that it wouldn’t have stood much a chance in the lower half either, perhaps not even getting past the critically acclaimed Super Mario Odyssey in round 4.
Despite most of us thinking Ultimate had the most predictable path possible, it had to prove itself to a good bunch of it. Getting 83% against anything can hardly be considered a bad result, but it’s also extremely unreliable. Tekken 7 is all the things we talked about before, so it doesn’t really tell us much in itself. However, seeing as Super Mario Odyssey was facing Mortal Kombat 11, there was a good way to compare them through those.
I never thought it’s a good measure for predicting the division finals, but it gave us something to discuss at least. The main reason I never thought so is that I could not see Ultimate vs. Odyssey coming down to what game is stronger indirectly, unless one of them was way ahead, which I don’t think anyone thought. Ultimate also has some overlap with Tekken 7, making the uncertainties even greater. Finally, when something gets percentages this high, the uncertainties are already so great that it’s tough to conclude anything from, so we’d just have to wait for now.
Let’s talk a little bit about Tekken 7 first though. Most people believed Mortal Kombat 11 to be the stronger of the two, because Mortal Kombat has always been better than Tekken here. The debut of both series all the way back in our original character battle saw Scorpion slaughter Kazuya and that’s a perfect picture of how they’ve done since. Scorpion is decent here and Sub-Zero has showed some really good results. Three characters from Tekken have made the field and there was no point of them returning. The best result was when Yoshimitsu actually won a match in 2013 before dying in round 2, but that was lucky bracket placement more than anything.
Despite that, I honestly wouldn’t be surprise if Tekken 7 was slightly stronger at least indirectly. We can’t tell for certain, because most matches to base things on are unreliable. I expect the gap to have closed quite a bit since our first contests. Sub-Zero will still be good most likely, but anything released in the past chunk of years from the franchise likely would not. It’s far past its prime. Tekken 7 however is actually rather good! I wasn’t a big fan of the story mode ending, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I was in a small minority and story mode has never been Tekken’s selling point anyway. The real reason for Tekken 7 doing better than Mortal Kombat 11 is probably most of all that Ultimate is a bit less respected than Odyssey, which matters at those percentages, but I won’t rule out that the gap between those fighting games have closed!
Tsunami's Analysis[]
The expectation here was that Ultimate would stomp all over Tekken 7, which had never been higher than the #4 fighting game series on this site--#5 if you count Smash itself--and possibly even lower, though it would be a bit hard to gauge. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were obviously 1-2, and Tekken's sister series Soul Calibur was likely #3 as evidenced by Nightmare's repeated decent showings in character battles. The only Tekken character to ever win a match was Yoshimitsu...who is also a Soul Calibur character. But in the early contests, there were a lot more fighting game characters, and some of them managed to make Round 2, most famously when Gordon Freeman barely broke 40% on Tina Armstrong. And, well, in a vacuum this was a stomping--nearly a quintupling. But this match came one day after both Resident Evil 2 and DOOM managed higher percentages, with the latter breaking 86%. So it seems strange to say that a game scoring almost 83% of the vote disappointed, but that was the perception, and the board eagerly awaited Super Mario Odyssey's performance against Mortal Kombat 11 to gauge their expectations for a potential Divisional Final.
Safer777's Analysis[]
So here we have what most people believe it is the 2nd strongest game on the bracket. Smash games are a phenomenon. When these games come out it is an event. Because they have so many characters and all of them are excellent games. But here is the thing. A lot of games have a lot of characters like the Warriors series which I am a HUGE fan of. BUT no other series ever has so many characters from so many franchises. And Ultimate has characters, spirits, costumes, stages from so many franchises that I can't even count them. No matter who are you, what you like and you don't, you are bound to have characters you recognize and like. And it is amazing for casuals and pros alike. Oh and Ultimate is the best selling fighthing game of all time. And the game isn't even out 1.5 years yet! We still have DLC and much more stuff too. Truly a phenomenon series. Tekken series everyone knows it. Really good and popular especially in the PS1 Era. After that it fell a bit but it is always popular.
So for the match. Let's be real maybe 1-2 games can challenge Ultimate on this contest and maybe even that is high. So a slaughter as expected. As for Tekken 7 it can beat some indie games from the bracket for sure. But then again not everything can go against weak indies. But well yeah we don't care for fighting games not names Smash in this site. Characters are a different story but even there they all mostly suck anyways.