LogFAQs > #914619433

And then Mario just annihilated Samus. It was probably the single worst day in board 8 history, from someone who wasn't really here in 2003. The stats people got destroyed here, and while a lot of people had jumped ship or admitted that Samus had a really good chance to drop this, not many people expected a killing. The oracle average was 50.37% and Mario outdid that by 9%. And the people who had Mario wouldn't let that one go for months, years, you name it. This was their chance to obliterate the concept of the stats. They got it right: it's freaking Mario.

This match has had consequences for years and years. Every time Samus comes up against Nintendo, you just wait for the fraud alerts to go off. Samus almost broke the Noble Nine against Tifa -- of course, she was a fraud. The 2006 battle royale featured Samus, Mario and Link -- every person in the world picked Samus to go out first. Super Metroid faced Super Mario Kart and you just didn't know how low she could go. Super Mario Galaxy was expected to beat Super Metroid because Metroid is that bad in the face of the SFF king. Samus was a top 5 character but her reputation was much less than that. When Snake started blowing people up in 2006, everyone was ready to put Samus in the garbage because of 2005 (well, and the Tifa match in 2006, but 2005 moreso). This match led to people believing in 'hierarchies' for years, and I still have a hard time shaking them off.

The question for years and years has always been: did Mario just level up and SFF Samus in 2005, or was this a case of Samus being stronger but the fanbase siding with the weaker Mario? Samus's argument for her has always been that she pulls from many different fanbases: 'mature' fans like Metroid, kids like Smash Bros., she's iconic which boosts her power up.. but those same arguments cave in when she meets someone who trumps her like Mario. We've never had a sufficient answer for this. Mario and Samus are always so close to each other that it's hard to get a good read. If we had gotten a chance to see Samus/Zelda or Samus/Cloud this year, it would have been fascinating to answer that for good. Unfortunately, Mario Mario'd Samus at the end of the poll yet again. He's such a goddamn villain.

Mario/Samus is a very insider baseball, board 8 kind of matchup. It didn't break the internet like some bigger matches have. It doesn't have the historical impact of the top 2, or even some of the lower ones like Draven or Undertale or whatever. But in terms of longstanding impact amongst people who follow the contests closely and know them well enough to list off contest rivalries and controversies and whatnot, I'd argue that there isn't a single match in contest history that's had a larger impact than Mario/Samus.
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xyzzy