LogFAQs > #983520973

16. Mario vs. Samus Aran II (2018) LB

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Mario 50.03% 14343
Samus Aran 49.97% 14324
TOTAL VOTES 28667
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(7)Mario_vs_(2)Samus_Aran_(Losers_Bracket)_2018
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7383-loser-bracket-round-4-mario-vs-samus

When I was in high school, a friend of mine was in a conversation with someone from another school who was talking about an upcoming sports match against their rival. When it came time for my friend to provide information about our own schools rivalry, they just shrugged and said Everyones our rival. That sentiment was true for Mario as well, at least during the classic years of the Character Battles. While his rivalry with Crono might be his most obvious and iconic, Mario had areputation in the early years of the contests, and just as controversy followed him in those years, so did a string of rivals. You wouldnt believe it if youd only started following contests post 2006 or so, but Mario was the closest that GameFAQS had to a real villain in the early years. While Marios defeat of Samus in 05 wasnt disputed in any way like some of his other matches, the result had still produced a wealth of bad feelings across the board. Feelings that would eventually dissipate over the course of time. Or, so we thought.

As the years turned into a decade (or two), much of the frenzied chaos of the early contests died away. As the Contest Fanbase stabilized and grew older, we all (for the most part) mellowed out, and learned not to put quite so much emotional investment into the results of an online video game character popularity contest. This helped avoid and dial down the recriminations and grudges that had haunted the classic era, but at the same time, the excitement and thrills of that era had proved hard to recapture as well. The first handful of nailbiters we ever saw, the first matches with comebacks, those all loom large in the boards memory, their legacy undeniable, and they all placed highly on this list. But after 15 years of matches, after all weve seen, would the same match have the same effect? Would DK/Vercetti make my Top 50 if it happened today? Probably not. Weve gone over the same ground so many times, that a match needs something special to stand out nowadays. Theres a rawness to the early matches thats hard to get, and which by 2018 we had come to believe was gone for good. The 2018 Contest, however, ended up exceeding our relatively modest expectations, and when all was said and done would end up being a perfect capper on Character Battle history. There werent the same number of all-time matches with high stakes as in some of our other classic contests, but what we got was a contest that was entertaining and surprising in its own right. We got the closure we needed after five years of rallies, and for a brief moment in the final week or two of the Legends/Losers Bracket we got a return to the excitement of the early years. After a decade of rehabilitating his image, Mario would make a heel turn once more and prove that he had some controversy left in him. Mario the Villain was back, for one final time.

As soon as the Legends Bracket was released, it was clear that Mario and Samus would be having at least one run-in. In theory, this was nothing to get excited about. We had had the debate about the Nintendo hierarchy a decade earlier, and we had seen how it had all turned out. Still, there was something in the air in 2018, that made people hope, if not very confidently, that this time might be different. We were older, more refined, did we really still care about hierarchies that much? Mario had a fairly strong victory over Sephiroth in the first round of the Legends Bracket, avenging his own losses from previous years, and going into the first match with Samus, he was the clear favorite. As expected, Mario won the match, but one element would end up being unexpected. It was close. Mario had remained in control of the match for the whole time, but he only won with 51%, and Samus had even started to make a small run on him in the closing hours. This changed everything. Samus had lost, but there was an extremely good chance that the two would meet up again, and shed get a second chance to pull off the upset. We would see Mega Man reverse a loss to Pikachu the following day, and Mario hadnt won by that much, so wasnt a narrow Samus win a possibility in the rematch? Whatever had caused Marios blowout in 2005, call it SFF or rSFF, it had clearly faded with time. You dont always get a second chance to win an argument, but the people on the losing side of one of the biggest debates in contest history were suddenly on the verge of getting a second chance to win theirs. Finally, 13 years later, a match between Mario and Samus would be decided by raw strength. The only question remaining was, which one was stronger?

We would get our answer 6 days later, when the rematch commenced, and over the course of the week leading up to it, the board turned on Mario in a major way. All that anger and resentment that had been directed towards him for the first several years of the contests was back, and Mario was once again someone whose loss was greatly anticipated. It turned out that maybe we hadt quite gotten over our old grudges after all. This energy and excitement carried over into the rematch, which got off to a narrow start, the two Nintendo icons going 50/50 with each other for the first two hours of the poll. Considering that Mario had done better with the Early Vote in their first match, this only boded well for Samuss chances as the match went on. Eventually, as the Night Vote kicked in, Samus gained the momentum and slowly started to build a lead. As the night grew later, her lead began to reach triple digits, and while she was far from out of the woods yet, we were seeing the first sign that the dream might actually be happening, and that the Nintendo hierarchy might finally be dead. Mario would strike back with the Morning Vote however, tearing down Samuss lead and building up a triple digit one of his own.This was the kind of back and forth between contest elites that we had lived for once upon a time, and which had been in short supply over the past decade. People were actually excited and angry and arguing about a match, and not because there was some rally with existential stakes happening. This was all being done over a good, old-fashioned nailbiter. There was something at stake of course, but it was something constructive, not destructive.

Just like she had done in the first match, Samus would come back with the Afternoon Vote, bringing the match 50/50 with just five and a half hours to go. And for those five and a half hours, the match would remain 50/50, swinging back and forth as each character would go on a run, then stop as the other character swooped in, cancelled out the run and went on one of their own. The only question left to answer was who would have the final run.