Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Round | Division 1 Final |
|---|---|
| Match # | 49 |
| Match Date | Sunday, October 21st, 2007 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Samus - 32.80% Mega Man - 29.87% Yoshi - 20.12% Scorpion - 17.27% |
| GameFAQs Expectations |
Samus first place (8pts) - 26.00% Samus second place (4pts) - 48.12% Mega Man second place (8pts) - 17.17% Mega Man first place (4pts) - 35.44% |
| Advancing Prediction |
Samus - 74.12% (27,220) Mega Man - 52.61% (19,320) |
Ahh, round 3. Where near elites and elites smack away midcarders, you occasionally get a total shocker and above all you get sprites. I love round 3.
Also looking at the old writeups here, apparently Samus vs Mega Man was a debated match. That would make sense after 2002 or 2003, but now? Samus has clearly been stronger for awhile, but people kept pointing to past Metroid/Samus matches as proof Samus collapses against Nintendo, and they'd be right. But Mega Man is a pretty Nintendo-type character too, as his SFF killing of Yoshi back in 2004 showed us. Mega Man and Samus have always been relatively close in the stats, so this came down to which character Yoshi would hurt more.
Also I'm cheating here a little, but Samus clearly gets hurt more by Nintendo than Mega Man does.
For 5 hours, Yoshi was screwing Samus over. Badly. Samus didn't even build a lead early, and the two were tied for first place for a bit before Mega Man took first place before even the freeze. Mega Man started building a lead overnight, albeit veeeeeeeery slowly. It peaked at 170 overnight, but once the dead zone started (also known as the one time in an entire poll where Nintendo doesn't matter) Samus started coming back pretty easily. Then the morning vote came and erased all doubt about who would take first. Pretty anticlimactic ending, but at least we had a good debate for a few hours. Samus vs Mega Man is one of those inter-Noble Nine matches we really need to see.
Actually while on that point, here's all the inter-Noble Nine matches we are in dire need of:
Samus vs Mega Man
Samus vs Sephiroth
Cloud vs Mario
Solid Snake vs Mario
Sephiroth vs Mario
FREAKING MARIO VS SONIC! HOW THE HELL HAS THIS NOT HAPPENED YET?!
Pretty much all these matches could go either way, and I may have missed a couple. Also, I cannot believe we haven't seen Mario vs Sonic in 9 years. CJayC and SBAllen both missed the boat hard by not setting that up back during the prime of contests. We need a 24 hour match between those two in the worst way. They've never met, not even in a fourway. WTF
Stats and Analysis[]
we'd been waiting for this match since the very second Mario took that 60% lead over Samus in 2005. Samus, more than any other Noble Niner, is a leech. she's not actually as popular as she seems, but she draws strength from all sorts of fanbases. the "mature" Metroid fanbase, which splits into two different crowds, 2d and 3d. the Smash fanbase. people who vote Samus because she's got a cool design, but will abandon her quickly if a real opponent shows up. Samus is so weird like that - she could theoretically be stronger than Mario and no one would really be all that surprised. but head to head, she folds.
enter Mega Man. Mega Man is a unique case, a character that resonates heavily with the oldschool crowd and gets a whole ton of his support from the Nintendo fanbase. Mega Man is a lot like Samus, only without the Smash influence. Mega Man is probably a more popular series than Metroid, too. would the Nintendo fanbase abandon Samus for Mega Man? we've seen Mega Man crush Yoshi in the past - Samus probably couldn't do as well and she's far more "Nintendo" than he is. Mega Man / Samus was an endless argument that was finally going to get an answer. not only that, but Samus was handicapped by Yoshi here. not many people went with the Mega Man upset, but most gave it a chance of happening.
the opening hour of this match was one for the ages. Samus and Mega Man came out dead-even for the first five minutes. Mega Man took a 16 vote lead into the freeze and extended it to 31 and then 67 votes. it looked like Samus was collapsing to the Mega Man/Yoshi double team here. Samus stalled for an update and then Mega Man pushed the lead to 82 votes.
the next update was one of the craziest of the contest. Samus absolutely obliterated Mega Man, ripping 73 votes off his lead. the next update put them into a dead tie, a rare sight and an even rarer sight for two characters of such strength. Samus slowly built a 33 vote lead from there, only to have the second craziest update of the match happen - Mega Man by 56 votes, taking the lead back with some authority. he won another update by 47 votes and looked like he was going build a big lead over Samus, but Samus stopped every big update win with one of her own. Mega Man pushed the lead up to 169 votes, but anyone that had been following Mega Man knew that he was a champion of the early hours but would fall off after that. Samus took the lead back at 5am and the day vote was not kind to Mega Man - Samus ended up smashing him to the tune of a 4000 vote win. Samus had proven that, even with Yoshi in the poll, she was clearly the stronger character, and doesn't just fold to anything Nintendo - just Mario and Link. she even did great against Link a couple weeks later. Samus had a pretty damn good contest, all things considered.
in their rematch the next round, Ryu stole Bowser's spot and ruined Mega Man's shot at revenge. without Nintendo flooding the poll, Samus smashed Mega Man and ended that debate for good.
Match Trends[]
