Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 128 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 48 |
| Match Date | Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 |
| Vote difference | 4,893 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Melee - 54.95% 54 for - 6 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Melee - 22.03% (9,019 brackets) |
Coming into this match, Vice City looked like it could have been the favorite. Its win against KOTOR was seemingly more impressive than SSBM's win against Metal Gear Solid 2. Add in the low prediction percentage for SSBM to even get out of the first round, and you had quite the trap set up to get Division 128's 2 seed out of this contest early. After all, Vice City has sold over 7 million copies and Grand Theft Auto continues to be one of the biggest franchises in the world.
But whether or not this would all translate into a win remained to be seen. Neither game was overly strong in the first round, and SSBM's match against Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of the lowest-scoring matches of the contest. So coming into this match, it was more and more up in the air.
For the first four hours of this poll, the two games were virtually dead even the whole way through. SSBM managed to build a lead of 100, but the lead literally stalled at 100 until 7 AM EST. Now it would seem like these two games were duking it out like true favorites to win the division, but this was not the case. Look at the final vote total. 69,000 votes in such a hyped match between two games supposedly ready to take down the entire division is not supposed to happen. So while both games were locked in a dead heat for a few hours, it seemed as if both games were simply doing so badly that neither of them could gain an advantage over the other.
But like SSBM would do throughout this entire contest, the morning and afternoon votes came to the rescue for SSBM. It took both voting blocks and built a 4000 vote lead over Vice City by catching more steam along the way. By the time the later votes started coming in, the match was already decided. SSBM's advance slowed down somewhat, but it still wound up winning by nearly 5000 votes in the end.
First and foremost, tip your hat to Vice City in this matchup. Whether you hate the Grand Theft Auto series or not, it's still one of the single biggest gaming phenoms to ever hit the market, and Rockstar is rolling in a lot of cash because of it. I'm willing to bet that San Andreas sells 5 million copies without any effort whatsoever. As I've said before, Vice City selling over 7 million copies is no joke whether it's liked on our site or not.
Then, look at SSBM. Two rounds have passed, and no games have decided to come forward and say that they're the favorite in Division 128. SSBM once against struggles with a powerhouse title from the Playstation 2, which can be looked upon two ways. One, SSBM could be seen as a pretty strong title. After all, it did manage to take down Metal Gear Solid 2 and Vice City. But on the flipside, the vote totals and prediction percentages in both matches were horrendous. What kind of a 2 seed is only expected by 22% of brackets to even get into the sweet sixteen, anyway?
Our Final Four in Division 128 was Starcraft, The Wind Waker, Final Fantasy X, and Super Smash Brothers Melee. Among them are two crowning Gamecube titles, the Final Fantasy for our generation, and a 7 year old PC title. If you care anything about vote totals, the favorite to win Division 128 at this was actually Starcraft. Completely absurd to think about at this point of the contest, but Starcraft had a way of defying any and all forms of logic in this thing.
Match Trends[]
