Results[]
Friday, December 4, 2015
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 6 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 108 |
| Match Date | Friday, December 4, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Zelda: Majora's Mask - 56.90% 75 for - 3 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Zelda: Majora's Mask - 42.76% |
I know Undertale's rallying and Undertale in general was the story of this contest, but to me this match was the best match in round 3. Not only did Super Metroid finally get over the Mario hump by demolishing Galaxy in round 2, it was one ASV away from actually beating a Zelda game. And not just any Zelda game, but our Game of the Decade in Majora's Mask. I'm convinced that Super Metroid could have won this match if people didn't want Game of the Decade validated so hard, but I can understand why Majora's Mask was the rooting interest here. The anti-Brawl sentiment and people just loving Game of the Decade in general outweighed rooting for the cool upset.
But man this upset would have been awesome, and seeing Super Metroid pull this off just to get pasted by Link to the Past again would have been something else. It would have been a third loss to Link to the Past! At some point I really need to mention how this was the best picture for round 3, too. That might be the most badassed picture Samus or Metroid has ever had, and Majora's Mask had without a doubt its best picture ever. Pretty much everything about this match was top notch, from the background of the games leading up to this, to the pictures, and finally the match itself.
At the beginning of the match, Majora's Mask won the board vote, but not by much. This was only a 52-48 style match early, and when Super Metroid started fighting back the second Majora's Mask got a lead of 100, it was on. Super Metroid fought back until Majora stalled and got it to 100 again, but then Metroid went on a rampage to tie it up. The two games then proceeded to be completely even overnight. And by "completely even", I am in no way joking. Super Metroid tied this match at 2:20 am. From that time until the morning vote hit, the lead was never more than 40 votes in either direction and was often far closer than that.
Come the morning vote, most people assumed Super Metroid would just collapse. After all, we've seen Samus and her series in action for 13 years. We know how the series behaves when the day vote hits. But in this match, for some miraculous reason, Super Metroid won the morning vote. Majora made a small push to prevent it, but once Samus got going, she took off for the moon. A tie match at 7:50 am turned into Samus building up a lead rather quickly, and it would ultimately peak at 332 later that morning. It was surreal to watch, and seeing Samus beat Link in ANY capacity was insane. Seeing her doing it with the morning vote was even more nuts. When this was going on, people really thought the match was over and started realizing how silly it was for us to see a third Super Metroid vs Link to the Past match.
But that dastardly Metroid day vote would rear its ugly head eventually, and the dream would quickly die for Super Metroid. Majora's Mask began to slowly fight back by lunch, and after a very prolonged stall where the lead stayed in the 200s, the ASV showed up and would thoroughly favor Majora's Mask. Super Metroid tried to fight back, but Metroid isn't exactly good at doing that during day votes. Majora's Mask would quickly erase the lead and bury Super Metroid, to the tune of winning by 520. People were mostly happy about this, because people really wanted Game of the Decade validated. Brawl had pissed off this board that much, and thank god for that. Fuck Brawl.
It was an anti-climactic finish once things truly got going, but still, it doesn't erase how good this match was. Super Metroid may have lost the ASV and lost the match, but even winning the day vote here was a moral victory. Remember, most people expected this game to get pasted by Galaxy last round. Not only did it thoroughly annihilate a Mario game when everyone expected it to lose, but it was 8 hours and one ASV away from beating a Zelda game. That is mighty impressive given Samus's entire contest history.
Ctes' Analysis[]
This match was quite possible the single best match of the entire contest. It was not only completely unexpected before the contest began that there would even be a match, it was also unexpected after the past two rounds. I mean, Super Metroid had really impressed the past two rounds, first scoring 80% on a game and then easily taking care of Super Mario Galaxy. That's after looking terrible in previous contests though, even if SFF was involved. Majora's Mask won Game of the Decade, which despite the less strong field is still quite the impressive achievement, and this contest, its performances had been just in line with Game of the Decade x-stats, proving its strength from then was no fluke. I know I've disposed of this theory a lot of times, but again, when does Metroid beat Zelda? Pretty much never. It would be such an obscure thing to see when it's a N64 Zelda, even it's not the biggest one.
Then this absolutely intense match happened. It was very close already from the get go up until the freeze. It came pretty unexpected. Majora's Mask was only leading by 34 votes when the freeze happened. It almost doubled that the next update, giving the illusion that Majora's Mask would be winning now, but then it barely gained anything for a couple of updates. It just managed to get slightly above the 100 vote lead before actually being cut. Nothing was decided at this point. Majora's Mask took two serious cuts before gaining a bit again and essentially stalling. About an hour later it had got the same 109 vote lead it first had. Then it started going down and down, further than before, stalled a bit halfway down but continued down to having a 1 vote lead. This was a match would make board 8'ers lose sleep.
The next update, we finally saw a lead change. This was it. The Game of the Decade winner was behind to a game it was supposed to be much stronger than. And no shame in this from Majora, it was just Super Metroid proving itself to be near elite. Majora's Mask took the lead back next update, but lost it right away once more. Super Metroid fought like a champ. It was making a slightly boring Zelda dominant division really interesting right now. It struggled actually keeping its lead though. It couldn't really run away. After four updates, Majora's Mask would take it back followed by another exciting 1 vote lead in Majora's favor. Super Metroid swung this to a 1 vote lead in its own favor, then for an update or maybe two, it seemed like it could build, but not really. A few more updates of stalling and then Majora's Mask took the lead back another single update. Super Metroid had the lead once again, but still couldn't do anything with its lead. The match was going back and forth. Super Metroid was ahead most of the updates since the match started having lead changes, but ultimately the match didn't go either way.
The next time Majora's Mask took the lead, it actually didn't let go of it, though we did get the first tiebreaker of the match in between its lead updates. It would be the first of quite a few actually. After yet another 1 vote lead in Majora's favor, Super Metroid took the lead for a single update before Majora's Mask kept it for a while, switching their roles. Although three tiebreakers came, Super Metroid didn't get lead back again for two hours. Majora's Mask managed to get a lead of 39 a few times during the two hours it had the lead, but couldn't extend it further than that at any point. Every single update was exciting. The update after the third tiebreaker in that period would be the last of Majora's long leading streak. Super Metroid took back the lead, lost it again, then took it back in a more convincing manner. The lead actually rose all the way to 50 in quite a short time! More than it had been for either side in quite a while, although it then fell again. It feel slowly and steadily down to a lead change, which was the fourth 1 vote lead for Majora's Mask. How come only that had those 1 vote leads anyway. The next update, Super Metroid took the lead by 28 votes and from here, things got crazy.
We were 8 hours into the match and it had been incredibly intense the whole way so far. But now Super Metroid started showing that it wasn't just fooling around, giving Majora's Mask a run a bit for it. It was gonna take the match by storm. It would lead the next 8 hours of the math exactly, but it would look like it was gonna take it. It took it no less than four more updates to extend its lead above 100 votes. It made it seem so easy despite them being neck to neck for so long. Despite cuts and no difference updates on the way, it only took 45 minutes more for it to get a 200 vote lead, going way above what Majora's Mask had at any point of the match. Super Metroid would be taken it slowly, but it was going somewhere. It looked like it had taken full control of this match. An hour and 15 minutes later, its lead had exceeded 300 votes. Few matches change that and the ones that do almost all involve rallying. This match had close to none of that.
However, it wasn't over despite how it may have seemed. Once Super Metroid went above 300, Majora's Mask had apparently had enough. It wasn't really allowed go go above that. For some updates it hovered slightly above being Majora's Mask cut it below the 300 vote lead again. It would hover around just below the 300 vote lead instead for the next couple of hours, crossing the halfway point in the progress. It's always fun to notice what game would've won a 12 hour match. Seriously, so many matches would've had different outcomes if they were 12 hour matches. Almost exactly two after after falling below its 300 vote lead, Super Metroid took it again. It would only be for one more update though. Majora's Mask started making a real comeback attempt now, after having just stalled for quite a while. It took a bumpy road down to where Super Metroid was only slightly above a 200 vote lead in about an hour. That would leave it winning with plenty of time to spare, though Super Metroid didn't let go that easily. It stalled at that mark for over another full hour before Majora's Mask could finally continue with its comeback attempt.
This attempt actually got the job done though. Majora's Mask cut the lead below 200 votes and after staying just below for a few updates, it kept cutting effectively until the lead change. This took it just below one and a half hour. The lead change was quite exciting. Super Metroid had its final lead of the match with just 2 votes and on the next update, Majora's Mask was leading by two votes. Majora's Mask would never lose the lead again, but Super Metroid would struggle two more times. As Majora's Mask went above a 100 vote lead, Super Metroid took it below with a very convincing update, greatly stalling Majora's Mask. Majora's Mask got above the 100 vote lead again, only for the same thing to happen. Well, third time is the charm, at least that's what happened now. Majora's Mask went above the 1000 vote lead yet again and would never really look back. It was moving slowly and steadily upwards for the remaining hours of the match, ending above a 500 vote difference.
Something I thought this contest truly lacked was a match that was exciting until the end. A lot of bad things can be said about the 3-way contest we had last time, but it had some very incredible matches like that. This contest didn't really. Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs. Mass Effect, Xenoblade vs. DKC2, Starcraft vs. Mass Effect 2, lots of Undertale matches, Chrono Trigger vs. Melee and this. All fantastic matches, but no excitement near the end. Xenoblade vs. Donkey Kong Country 2 in particular comes close, but it wasn't nail biting near the end, we knew what would happen. This match however was very exciting for 16-17 hours except for perhaps some of the time Super Metroid had a convincing lead. It's insane how long it was so close. Our votals aren't exactly the best they've been, but for the two games to be neck to neck for so long with almost 50000 total votes is still pretty crazy.
Super Metroid didn't pull off the miracle run in the end, but at least it had what could be considered an upset in round 2. That said, there is no shame in losing this match, Majora's Mask is legit, and so has Super Metroid showed us it is. It had in the two previous contests jobbed big time to A Link to the Past and it came so terribly close to being able to do that once again. How ironic an end that would've been to such a run. It is the Year of SNES indeed, but Super Metroid has definitely been SFFd more in the past than we thought. This was such an impressive run. I can't wait to see it return to the field again. It's definitely a top 20 game on this site at least, it'd be great to see it fighting some top games around Majora's level. As for Majora's Mask, it was supposed to easily advance to the division finals and struggled big time today, but as I've said, no shame in that, it's actually pretty impressive it pulled this off. One could argue that sharing a poll with A Link to the Past gave Majora's Mask the victory today, but I don't think that has been a big enough factor this contest, unless we're talking about rally factor, for it to have made a difference. Especially because A Link to the Past has quite a few things in common with Super Metroid. That's more clear now than ever from previous contests. It might have mattered a little bit, but I doubt it's enough. Also, this proves that we should all nominate Super Mario Kart next contest, because that game fought neck to neck with Super Metroid in 2009, so it's probably really legit. It is a contender for the strongest snubbed game of the contest.
Despite the last couple of hours not being very exciting, I really do think this was the actual best match of the contest. It was exciting for so long and it came quite unexpected in the middle of some boring matches. Unlike some other close matches, both games seemed like they would win for sure at some point during the best, surprising us a few times. Another thing is that this match had no rally controversy, board explosion, trolls from inside or outside board 8, spillover on other matches, or anything bad. It was just a legit good match between two good games fighting with their contest strengths and it was very refreshing.