LogFAQs > #940467913

Round 4 Division 3 Day 34
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 55.94%
Super Mario Odyssey 44.06%

Prediction Percentage 40.52%

This was perhaps the most hyped match of the ones that were in the second chance part. Before the contest began, almost everyone picked Super Smash Bros. Ultimate because Smash has been bigger than Mario on every single Nintendo console since the Nintendo 64. The original Super Smash Bros was a good idea not yet truly experienced with, while Super Mario 64 is one of biggest games of all time and by far the strongest 3D Mario. On the Camecube, Melee easily beats Sunshine, the latter being a disappointment to many. On the Wii, the controversial Brawl easily beats Galaxy, and the fourth game is easily better than both 3D Land and 3D World as they never even appeared in a contest. Ultimate is the best selling Smash game, so the Nintendo hierarchy should do its work.

Super Mario Odyssey had a few supporters before the contest, but no one really listened until Odyssey looked better than Ultimate every single round leading up to this match. Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat 11 are similar enough except Mortal Kombat has always been the bigger deal of the two franchises here. Ultimate couldnt SFF A Link Between Worlds and strugged with Marvels Spider-Man while Odyssey killed Devil May Cry 5 and Shovel Knight. Suddenly it was time to listen to the Odyssey supporters. A lot of people picked Super Mario Odyssey in their second chance brackets, because it didnt look impossible at all.

A lot of arguments in favor of Super Mario Odyssey were actually cases against Ultimate. Brawl is perhaps the most hyped game of all time and would have won the first game of the decade if not for some late round backlash. Since then, the games have been iterative. They add more things but doesnt get a lot better. Ultimate has polls where its voted the best Smash game, but when the series is as iterative as it is, maybe it wouldnt matter much. In 2015, Smash 4 was thought of threatening FFVII because its historically big and added Cloud, Ryu, Mega Man and Bayonetta amongst others, but it didnt get close at all. It was being said that people buy Smash games because of the spectacle and the celebration of tons of various franchises rather than the gameplay. Sakurai himself have said that Ultimate is not simply a fighting game, but a celebration of gaming.

When Ultimate came out the Everyone is here! was a huge selling point. Snake and Cloud returned contrary to what everyone believed, and every single other character returned to the field with them. Obvious new additions such as Isabella and Inkling came along with big fan demands such as Ridley and King K. Rool and third-party characters continued to come with Castlevania, Persona 5, Dragon Quest, Fata Fury and even Banjo & Kazooie now being in. There are great new single player modes, but that doesnt seem to be the main draw any longer.

Smash is a multiplayer game at heart, and were no longer a site that plays multiplayer with our friends, partly because were older. Weve seen various multiplayer games declining in strength. People argued Smash was less and less about gameplay and more relevant because of how endearing a franchise it is and all the cool videos they make, which makes it universally loved but also means it wont complete with the top like it did a decade ago.

Finally, there are its poll results, not just in this contest, people liked to point at the match against God of War for the title of Game of the Decade 2018. Ultimate looked vulnerable in those and there is only so good it could get without also boosting God of War up a lot, which judging by the contest so far didnt seem right. The poll in talk happened right after Ultimate released and the hype was still crazy:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7473-best-of-2018-game-of-the-year-final-final-vote

That was a lot of cases against Ultimate, but it still got to this point with ease. Lets go over why Odyssey was thought to make the difference. It has polls that back it up as the strongest 3D since Super Mario 64. Unlike Smash, Mario is not an iterative franchise, so it mattered here. The Galaxies are loved but they have the Wii to drag them down while Odyssey on a console that everyone loves right now. Galaxy 2 looking so good until now just meant Odyssey should be even better. Odyssey was a huge deal and its exactly what we love on this site. It was very hyped and lived up to every last bit of it. It helped get Nintendo in a positive light again that it hasnt been for 20 years.

Super Mario Odyssey has no Game of the Year polls to back it up, but that hardly mattered when it shared its only one with Breath of the Wild. Ocarina of Time killed Super Mario 64 in 2004, but then the latter came back in 2009 and beat Chrono Trigger when it shared the poll with Yoshis Island. Those parallels were drawn. BotW/Odyssey/Ultimate felt like a modern day OoT/Mario 64/Melee. When Zelda and Mario are at their best they will beat even the best Smash game. Brawl could defeat the Mario and Zelda games of that generation (and it did!), but it would have never challenged peak Zelda and Mario. Odyssey felt like peak Mario again. Nintendo aced their first party titles in the latter half of the decade. The hierarchy has shown itself ridiculous in the past, but lots of people all contest were expressing that they didnt think Odyssey would beat Ultimate but that they wish it would. Well, if enough people think so, it might just do that.

A final point in Odysseys favor people brought up was not as big but still worth mentioning. In 2015, Melee rallied past GameFAQs biggest darlings Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. Weve seen Draven and Undertale getting punished when returning to the field again. Most of the site arent loud about it, but still votes against them on principle. Now, Ultimate is not Melee, but perhaps this could transfer to Smash in general and could explain why Smash couldnt reach the poll highs that Odyssey could. If Ultimate began rallies too, there would definitely be a lot of people counter-rallying Odyssey against it.

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.