Results[]
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 6 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 47 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, April 07, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 64.93% 54 for - 4 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 69.08% |
| User Votes |
Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 5930 Street Fighter V - 2783 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 4438 Street Fighter V - 2643 |
True story -- I originally picked Street Fighter 5 and fully planned on sticking with it, even knowing the game is a trash can and knowing it had no chance. Before Smash Brothers came along, Street Fighter was my jam. I was never any good at it, but so what? My friends and I have been playing those games together for almost 30 years now, and it's very hard to look past that bias. I was one of the idiots whining about STREET FIGHTER 2 LOST??? back when Mario RPG beat it. I was trying to rally it past Persona 4 for a meaningless third place finish. I lost my shit when 4 clutched up and beat Sonic Adventure 2 ten years ago. One of my favorite achievements in my entire gaming career is pulling this off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsbEkQBYZPQ
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
https://psnprofiles.com/guide/6596-super-street-fighter-iv-trophy-guide#37-from-c-to-shining-c
I did it fully legit. No boosting, no cheating, nothing. All by myself, all against randoms online. It was some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game, and for the most part I went 50-50. Some characters, it was a breeze. T Hawk, Seth, Cammy, Adon, Gen, the shotos, El Fuerte, Blanka, Bison, and so on. For three characters, it was hell on earth. I think Viper, Makoto, and Guy took me something like 80 games each. Wouldn't change a thing, and it's among my most proud gaming accomplishments ever. I don't know how that web site calculates these things, but when I boot up my Playstation it shows only 3 players per 1000 has earned that trophy. Even if it's actually 1 per 100, that's still one hell of an accomplishment.
I bring all this up because even I cannot defend Street Fighter 5 in any universe. That game is garbage. The V trigger system is a terrible copy of a terrible mechanic in its own right (X factor from Marvel vs Capcom 3, which can go burn in hell), the roster is trash, and the game released without a single player mode. Piss off, Capcom. I would have been willing to lose a point on purpose just on general principle of loving the Street Fighter legacy, but no.
The game is bad enough to make me pick Animal Crossing, of all things. I can't stand those dumb farming simulators. Yes, I know it was the right pick and yes I know Animal Crossing was never going to lose this match, especially with New Horizons coming out two weeks before this match. Not the point. I wanted Street Fighter 5 to be good so much, and instead it might have tanked the entire series.
By the way, this beating was so huge and the Animal Crossing hype so intense that regardless of RDR2's score in round 1, a lot of people were hyping up the upset train. And who could blame them? New Horizons has almost 15 million sales as of this writing, with 40% or so being complete non-gamers, so it was bound to help boost New Leaf in contest polls. Red Dead Redemption 2 was no lock next round.
Ctes's Analysis[]
This match is such a good example of how much a franchise can have changed in the eyes of its fans. Animal Crossing started out rather niche and took its time to become one of Nintendo’s greatest. New Leaf was huge, however, and this contest came right after New Horizons came out broke almost as many sales records as it possible could. If there’s one bad thing about this being a Game of the Decade contest and not a regular one, it’s that we could’ve seen New Horizons on the field right in the middle of when the whole internet is in love with it. The pandemic certainly helped to some extent, but it was always going to be huge. It’s coming out on a console that everyone really loves, which hasn’t really been possible for it before. You could argue the Wii, but Animal Crossing hadn’t quite reached the heights it is at now when the Wii was liked. It’s weird, it’s not the type of game we usually care hugely for but perhaps with Nintendo written on the box, that doesn’t matter as much. It would’ve been so much fun to see New Horizons in a contest this spring.
New Leaf might have gotten some of that boost, however. It was expected to be stronger than it was back in 2015, though it’s hard to make much of that run when it was fed to Super Mario World in round one. In any case, when literally everyone is currently playing New Horizons, it’ll probably draw some votes to the Animal Crossing game.
On the other hand, we have Street Fighter, which used to be a big series but has fallen off a cliff. Ryu has always been a character here, but it’s probably less than it used to be, and he can likely thank Smash that it’s not worse than it would’ve been if he hasn’t gotten into that. Street Fighter missed the previous contest and it’s only in now because the bracket is the most diverse thing we’ve ever had. It’s sad to see.
New Leaf came just short of the doubling, but still looks great enough today. It’s a handheld game that’s pretty far from what we tend to like here, and the Street Fighter name alone might’ve kept it away from being complete fodder. Winning the next match wasn’t out the question, although Red Dead Redemption 2 looks pretty fine as well.
Safer777's Analysis[]
AC series is a series that I just can't get into it why people like. You don't have a clear goal. You just play, do some stuff, relax and have fun. Maybe that is the point. Not everything has to be super serious right? As for SF 5...Okay SF series made the Fighthing games popular ESPECIALLY SF2. The game was so famous that we had like 10 upgraded versions on it which I do believe is some kind of record. I mean we even had an updated version of SF2 that came on Switch and it had new stuff too! Damn! SF series is always popular but Capcom messed with SF 5 big time. When SF 5 came out it didn't even had an Arcade mode. Yeah a fighthing game without an Arcade mode! And no story videos too. Exciting! Basically it had nothing. They kept adding stuff via DLC. You know stuff that should be in the game from the START? Oh and they added 24 DLC characters. That you have to pay for. What I want from games! To not having anything when I buy them! Oh and they also added in game advertising. You heard me. Basically on loading screens and on the costumes of the characters they had logos of companies and such! Because when people play SF they want to see Ryu advertising Mc Donald's. I mean it makes sense right? So damn.
So for the match. A strange thing happened. A new AC game out recently and it is DAMN popular. So the AC series is now the strongest it has ever been! What is going on? At least I can say that since this series is geared towards younger players it teaches them than when they grow up they will be constantly in debt, so it prepares them for real life! So yeah ACNL won pretty easy. I mean a doubling against one of the main game of the top 3 figthing game series is amazing.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Animal Crossing has been nothing short of terrible in past polls. Or has it? Tom Nook did manage to get not-last place finishes in R1 matches in multiways, both in 2007 and 2013, with the latter being against someone who actually has...a not-last-place finish in 2008. But that was against someone with genuine contest wins, and in bizarre rSFF fashion, no less! Nook and his rival Crazy Redd also nearly avoided a doubling against Amaterasu and Orochi in Rivalry Rumble. The original Animal Crossing (or at least, the first one to be released outside of Japan) also managed to put up 41.45% on World of Warcraft in the first GotD, one of the few times that an entrant selected to win by over 90% of brackets failed to double its opponent and the only one to fail to even break 60%. But its most interesting poll was this very game appearing in the 2015 contest, where it proceeded to look especially like trash in a Nintendo SFF battle with Super Mario World. SMW got the lead to 1000 in only 15 minutes, to 2000 in another 20, and over 3000 by the end of the first hour, an 85-15 type of beatdown. And remember, 2015 didn't have great votals either, so those numbers are a lot bigger than they would be in our prime. So what made the poll so interesting? Well, like this contest, there were four matches per day. Which means that all of your potential opponents for the next two rounds are also active whenever you are.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6152-
"Oh. That's only a Round 3 match, so..."
Yeah. SMW had already been slowly bleeding percentage throughout the match; it's only natural when you've got such a big lead and the vote totals are so low, because even a few votes for your opponent can cut your percentage (in fact, hour 14 ended with SMW winning an update 14-4, which is a percentage cut). But once Undertale started rallying, the percentage bleed sped up considerably, and New Leaf even started occasionally winning updates outright. In the end, an entrant that was under 14% near the end of the first hour and at 15.86% when Mass Effect 3's lead over Undertale peaked over two-thirds of the way through the match wound up at 26.73% when it was all said and done. It was a clear sign that if anything was stopping Undertale, it certainly wouldn't be Super Mario World.
Flash forward to 2020. We've all grown a bit older, and many of us have kids. I fully suspect that's as much a reason why Nintendo always does so well here; we've moved past the "M-Rated video games so cool!" phase and want E-rated stuff we can share with our families. And then the pandemic struck, and we're all stuck in our homes, and what should release but a new Animal Crossing game for the Switch! And the thing about Animal Crossing games is, they're not terribly different from one another. If you love one, you probably love them all. The weakening of fighting games made this round a mere formality, not to mention Street Fighter V was hated even by Street Fighter fans. (I wish I'd known that; I figured this was a no-brainer based on Animal Crossing's past results.) The following round, however, would be far more interesting.