LogFAQs > #913853743

XIII_rocks posted...

Was that really so crazy given what Pokemon would go on to do 2 years later?

Well, we lacked the benefit of hindsight in 2011. At the time, Red's last contest result had been barely beating Ocelot, then not remotely threatening Mega Man X. Blue didn't even make the 2010 field. Meanwhile, Cloud and Seph still looked like high-level Noble Niners in 2010.

There's a couple other things I wanted to touch on, another 15 minutes in from my last post. One minor thing is that Pokmon haven't won the registered vote in all their matches - I know Bowser fared something like 1.3% better with GameFAQs users than anons against Charizard.

My final point is a pretty radical proposal I have about Bowser > Kirby: there was no meaningful hierarchy whatsoever in that result, and 46% is what Kirby can be expected to put up against a neutral character of Bowser's strength. To start with, I do agree with Yo that the differing pictures in their match compared to the 2005 version caused a significant swing, but I don't think the correct way to look at it is saying that Kirby underperformed due to a neutral picture compared to Bowser. Instead, I would argue that Kirby's 2005 picture fostered an underdog effect, causing a significant overperformance compared to what he should have gotten on 2005 Bowser (and I know that I said before that their match reflected both their 2005 strengths, but I was wrong). Just looking at that picture, you see both Kirby (with Popo's parka) and the Dream Land background seemingly straight from Melee, while Bowser has a totally different art style, looking like a big boss for the little underdog Kirby to beat. Meanwhile, Kirby's seen breathing ice out at Bowser's fire, which plays into the underdog perception by way of the stereotype of fire having the upper hand over ice. Combined with how a mostly-teenaged GameFAQs arguably perceived Kirby as an inherently funny, practically joke character, the stage was set for a huge overperformance.

As for why that 2005 result isn't what Kirby 'should' have gotten, his notable result beforehand was 58% on Tidus. That was good at the time, but for comparison's sake, the super-strong Bowser of 2005 got a legitimately Noble Nine-level 59% on Ryu (back when Ryu was an actual near-elite), which translates to about 65% on Rikku given Ryu's previous match against her. As Rikku has since proven with such results as 42% on Kirby himself in 2010, she's nearly on par with Tidus, but not if you take 2005 at face value. Similarly, Ryu being just 1% ahead of Tidus doesn't pass the eye test given later contests. Furthermore, since Kirby was just a generic midcarder in 2004, you're asking for him to get an even bigger Nintendo boost (in proportionate terms) than the likes of Mario. If Kirby had really boosted so much as to legitimately get 48% on turbo-Bowser, he would have likely beaten Luigi just a year later, but he instead fell short with only 47%.

In my opinion, Kirby falling off this contest is perfectly reasonable, too. Quite simply, if Fox and Captain Falcon, other characters whose appeal comes disproportionately from Smash and character design, didn't look good, why should Kirby have defied that trend? It's also worth noting that Kirby has always been somewhat of a multi-way leech - in 2010, he scored 45% on an off-looking Sonic (incidentally, about what he'd be currently expected to get on a similarly off-looking Sonic if you take his Bowser match at face value) and in 2013, he required a huge sore thumb / LFF advantage and a vigorous 4chan rally just to beat Big Boss with Sephiroth in the match. Plus, King Dedede beat expectations, but still looked weaker than Meta Knight circa 2007-2010. Because of all that, I'm now convinced that the only wonkiness in Kirby's path was SFF against Phoenix Wright.