Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Round | Division 1972-1988 Final |
|---|---|
| Match # | 49 |
| Match Date | Monday, May 25th, 2009 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Super Mario Bros. - 36.88% The Legend of Zelda - 30.38% Tetris - 20.00% Mega Man 2 - 12.49% |
| GameFAQs Expectations |
Mario 1 first place (8pts) - 30.50% Mario 1 second place (4pts) - 29.40% Zelda 1 second place (8pts) - 29.44% Zelda 1 first place (4pts) - 23.75% |
| Advancing Prediction |
Super Mario Bros. - 59.90% (22,939) The Legend of Zelda - 53.19% (20,370) |
This was the point in the contest where things got really really fun. We had some good matches to this point, yes, but most of the matches in the last three rounds ranged from good to forever memorable.
The first divisional final ranked somewhere in the middle, mostly from how weird it was. But before getting into the obvious, this match was the ultimate final nail in Mega Man 2's coffin. Both Tetris and Mega Man 2 were in a no-lose SFF situation, and Tetris still won. Hopefully this lays to rest all the insane Mega Man > Tetris stuff, in the event we ever get a 1v1 games contest.
As for Mario vs Zelda, this was an extremely odd result, and it would only get even more strange in the next round. In round 2, Mario 1 defeated Zelda 1 by 9000 votes with Ninja Gaiden and Metroid present. You wouldn't think removing these two games and adding in Mega Man 2/Tetris would hurt Mario 1 a lot, but it did.
This isn't to say Mario had a ton of trouble with Zelda 1 in this poll, because it had none -- Mario was never threatened here. It jumped out to the early lead much like the previous round, and dominated for awhile. But rather than go on to win by 9000 votes, Mario was vastly slowed down come the morning vote. Mario's lead was 2000 votes come school time. It took another 7 hours for the lead to peak at 2400 votes, and then Zelda spent the rest of the match shaving things down to 2000. The lead was never threatened per se, but this set up one of the best matches of any contest and proved Mario and his games split much worse in the face of Nintendo than Link and his games. You can argue Ninja Gaiden and Metroid can't do much of anything to Nintendo games, but Tetris and Mega Man 2 are a different story. And there's no doubt which game among Mario 1 and Zelda 1 these two hurt more.
The funny thing here is had the match been 48 hours long, Zelda 1 would have won -- one round after losing by 9000 votes. Crazy. Even crazier is what would happen a week following this.
Match Trends[]
Ngamer's Same Day Analysis[]
Match Prediction[]
For tonight I went with what I always realized was a pretty wacky upset, Zelda > Tetris, and my reasoning was as follows: Zelda always tops Mario but it could be a close split and both will certainly hold each other back, MM and Mario always overlap which should weaken the game even more, Tetris will stand out as the only non-NES exclusive option, plus if there's any game that could gain L-Block like momentum and pick up anti-establishment votes it would probably be Tetris. Frankly I realized it was silly going in and probably only took it in the hopes of spicing up this incredibly vanilla division (MIX THE ERAS SB), and it looks even worse now that Tetris had such a hard time putting away MM2 last round. So I give up! On to the real question of this poll:
Oh wait, Mario versus Zelda isn't a real question either, since it was spoiled last round (DIVIDE UP THE BRACKET BETTER SB). I wanted to agree with tranny about Mario relying so much on its importance and iconic status that Tetris will hurt it on the one side while NES platformer LFF might take it down a notch on the other side, allowing Zelda to make a better match of this. But then I saw the match pic- ugh! I have no problem with these artsy/cutesy/high concept images that often start springing up in later rounds, but I really think they should only be used in tandem with a whole group of pics, to help balance the pic factor out. "Generic Enemy #1" is a fine theme, but goombas are SO much more iconic and recognizable than these other options that Mario should see a pretty strong boost. Kind of like that bonus poll back in '07, where the "?" block was so iconic that it easily smashed our reigning Contest Champ.
With Mario getting that thoroughly unnecessary help, I'm going to predict something along the lines of
- Super Mario Bros. - 37.66%
- The Legend of Zelda - 31.40%
- Tetris - 19.32%
- Mega Man 2 - 11.62%
Okay, good, now don't completely collapse on me, Tetris!
Next Day Review[]
Wow, really nice showing from Zelda today. We must have been right about the Tetris "icon overlap" and MM platformer LFF, as this is a heck of a turnaround from R1- Zelda's actually come back to the point now where this might have been a real shootout given a more balanced match pic. Props to MM2 for holding up better than I expected, but some major anti-props are in order for Tetris. Gah, I was already fully aware of how dumb I was to put faith in you in my bracket, no need to rub salt in the wound and ruin my Oracle as well!