I'll let you guys know I was listening to the show as I typed this post.
Here's something weird: in both of our recent "character" contests, Pokemon seemed to be unexpectedly on steroids, yet during GOTD, the Pokemon series was disappointing all-around (with RSE's performance against Mario Galaxy being the sole exception). Worth noting is that last time we saw Metroid against Pokemon, the Metroid entity vastly exceeded expectations.
What's this about both DMCs disappointing in GOTD? They finished in the stats more or less where I expected. Either way though, I think Sora's team wins just due to natural character strength (heck, I even considered a KH > FFVIII upset in this bracket and chickened out at the last minute because no one was considering it).
Okay, all three of Sora, Dante, and Riku tanked last contest, but I kinda want to view losses to 4-seeded Nintendo characters in a different light than a loss to Ryu.
Yeah remember when Dante broke 80% in the first round and then was held under 60% by Tails? Oh my.
MMX guys > Mortal Kombat guys has been a mortal lock (pun intended?) since the contest began. All of those guys are very similar in where they draw most of their contest strength from (iconic appeal and character design), and then MMX the game would slaughter any Mortal Kombat (forget that MK2 won a match in BGE2009 while MMX didn't...).
I know that K. Rool is the main villain of all the Rare-developed DK platformers, but how prominent is he in those games? Too lazy to look it up on Super Mario Wiki.
Samus's performance against the FFVI guys was supposed to be disappointing? Quite frankly I was expecting worse. Also I thought we agreed in the stats topics that Samus was the easy favorite in R3 since most of us would take the FFVI guys over the RE guys, and that even otherwise, Samus still had plenty of breathing room. That said, I do agree with considering the FFVI guys to be the star, and it'll only be helped if Samus murdered the Bosses!
Also just to defend the Samus/Ridley rivalry, technically Ridley is meant to be Samus's rival - it's hinged in the series' overarching plot, and Ridley usually confronts Samus twice in every Metroid game he appears in. The fact that Ridley is considered to be the main villain of the series even though he's never the final boss (though he's usually the penultimate boss) does not help matters. The only caveat is that people don't play Metroid games for plot (at least, I hope no one does!).
My gut pick was actually to pick the Bosses to escape their division, but then I remembered three key things:
1) Not only is Samus easily the strongest of those four characters, but The Boss is easily the weakest of those four (I guess the counterpoint to this is that Samus and Ridley both draw most of their strength from Smash Bros., but meh).
2) Samus's rivalry spans 24 years and at least 7 games, while the Bosses' rivalry is in one seven-year old game (don't care if it just got a rerelease).
3) I picked Half-Life 2 > Metroid Prime last year, so I don't want to be snakebitten by the Metroid series again. To be fair, every Metroid entity has exceeded expectations in our last two contests, although then again, perhaps Other M hype played a huge role (that game was more hyped than any other Wii game that wasn't Zelda or Smash, after all).
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Currently Playing - StarCraft: Brood War