(6)Alucard vs (13)Captain Falcon vs (22)Rydia 2013

Ulti's Analysis

This was our first photo finish of the contest, depending on how close you thought Tharja winning was. But it goes a bit deeper than that.

Until this match, you know what our last true photo finish in a contest was? Not RBY beating the FF7 dudes, that was a bonus match. It was Ryu upsetting Dante all the way back in 2010 with HOCKEY FACTOR. And even then, one could argue that match wasn't crazy close late because Ryu pulled away to win by 500. So you'd have to go back to Crono/Missingno, which was much closer than the final vote margin but Missingno went berserk late. You could go back to Wesker/Ken, but that match wasn't really in doubt for the last few hours. Meaning our last legit, mash-F5 photo finish was Red's comeback on Ocelot in 2010's third match.

Point being, it was a freaking long time for us in terms of a balls to the wall match where everyone went nuts at the end. Make fun of us all you want, but this is our Superb Owl and we love it.

Alucard and Falcon were close in the stats, but Alucard was the favorite simply because of this being a night match. Except that logic went south really fast, as Falcon built up a 500 vote lead in 3 hours and made this match seem all but dead. Alucard would not only have to come back, but survive the inevitable Nintendo day vote to win.

Yet somehow, he did just that. It was just weird, and to this day I have no explanation for it because it defies all the trends we know. I can see Alucard going nuts at 3 am to erase the 500 vote lead, but come the morning vote, Falcon just.... didn't do anything. The match stalled and stalled and stalled, which is weird when thinking about how badly Sora beat Alucard with the morning vote a few years back. Yet there it was, Alucard and Falcon tied in the morning and Falcon doing nothing whatsoever to win the match.

From there, Alucard made the slowest of pushes. It only lasted two hours, but this was a 12 hour match and 2 hours was enough to win. He would end up winning by 103 votes, in one of the weirdest first round matches I can remember. It's lame to have no explanation for these trends in a PCA, but I really have no idea what happened. It's probably better that way, because every close match being decided by trends would get really boring. It's part of why we went so long without a nailbiter; we just kind of look at trends from the past and pick out exactly how everything will finish before it happens. Taking things in at face value is kind of lost on us, so a match like this once in awhile is good.

It was also a good example of 12 hour matches being better, but I'd rather early round nailbiters be cut in half than deal with Snake/Isaac/Keen for 24 hours.

I haven't forgotten Rydia by the way, but the big writeup about FF4 continuing to s*** the bed will come during Cecil's match.