Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Hyrule Division Semi Final |
|---|---|
| Match # | 18 |
| Match Date | Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 |
| Vote difference | 6,403 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Metroid - 66.37% 128 for - 3 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Metroid - 57.29% (26,467 brackets) |
Any Nintendo vs Nintendo match involving Metroid has the potential to be hilarious, and this one was yet another chapter in the tale of how badly Samus sucks in matches involving her own company.
After Pokémon shocked people by blasting the holy hell out of Star Ocean, the Pokémon > Metroid bandwagon started going. And because most people were only doing it for fun and didn't actually expect Pokémon to do anything of note, Pokémon coming out and holding its own here was one of the highlights of the entire tournament. Remember, Metroid was essentially expected to win its first two matches with ease before bowing out to Zelda.
Stage 1 of this was done easily enough, though Stage 2 never really happened. Metroid came out of the gates slow as hell against Pokémon; if it weren't an SFF match, some people would have assumed that Metroid's measly 54% updates early on were signs of future trouble. Technically it was (there was no way that Metroid wasn't going to go out and get its ass whipped against Zelda in the next round), though Metroid managed to save some face in building a 1000 vote lead in just over an hour. Pokémon was actually able to win an update at the 1:30 mark, which set the tone for the rest of the match. Metroid was never in any danger of losing and actually built a lead steadily, but the fact that it was even struggling at all was telling enough. Pokémon, a series that is supposedly hated to hell and back all over GameFAQs, managed a respectable showing against a Noble Niner's series and even managed update wins every now and then.
Why Samus can't hack it against Nintendo is beyond me. Metroid being the third series on the echelon isn't really enough of a reason, nor is Metroid only being popular in America -- GameFAQs is an American site. The only thing I can think of is that people like Samus for her appearance in the two Smash Brothers titles (I had never heard of her before the original SSB) moreso than they do for the Metroid games. None of the other theories make any sense, and there's enough proof that SSB/M is more than capable of holding its own weight. We would see it again less than a week after this here match, in fact.
That said, time to give Pokémon some much-deserved credit. Its one win was over PaRappa the ****ing Rapper, for crissakes. Pikachu's other two matches were on the bad end of killings, and GSC got stuck behind a wall of SFF in 2004 and made to look more hated than it really is. Not only is Pokémon hate all but dead (and perhaps it never really existed to begin with), but Pikachu might have been the wrong proxy to use in 2002 and 2003. Something tells me that Mewtwo could wreak havoc if in the right spot, for reasons related to both Pokémon and SSBM.
Match Trends[]
