LogFAQs > #914989646

Match 41: Geralt vs. Rosalina

Geralt 16779
Rosalina 13170

Okay, okay, I've learned my lesson already. I needed to be talked out of taking Binding of Isaac: Rebirth to upset Witcher 3 in Round 1 of 2015, and I underestimated it again here. It's an understandable mental block, though: Recent game, WRPG, this shouldn't be strong, right? Even though in both cases, the opponent wasn't exactly old either.

Geralt may not have entered the mainstream until The Witcher 3 in 2015, nor made his video game debut at all until 2004, but he actually made his overall debut just a few months after Link. Much was made of the fact that other characters that debuted in non-video game media were not allowed into the bracket, but Geralt was a 1-seed. Was this a trial run, or did Allen just rationalize it that a lot of gamers might not even realize that Geralt originated in a short story and then a series of novels, while everyone knows that Spider-Man originated in a comic book?

And make no mistake, I fully expected Rosalina to be weak. I get the feeling that a lot of people feel that she's been forced into too many of the spinoffs and was better as a single-game character. But she's still a Mario character, and with this division, that could have been enough for multiple wins.

Match 42: Ryu Hayabusa vs. Simon Belmont

Ryu 14743
Simon 15210

Oh hey a close match! This was the match where people really started talking about the Smash boost, even though Ryu Hayabusa had no real reason to hold on to any of his past strength.

Still, it's no surprise that this tripped up a number of people. Ryu Hayabusa is remembered for the two-day clash with Jill in 2004 and the upset of Master Chief in 2010. He had a reputation for being clutch. Simon Belmont... first managed to finish ahead of someone in a contest match when he came in second place in 2013, behind Gordon Freeman and ahead of Hades. In 2007, he finished comfortably in 4th place behind Sam Fisher, a character whose only win was against GFNW-era Gordon. But that doesn't even do justice to how awful Simon was in 2007, because the second-place character in that match was Raiden. Yes, pre-MGS4 Raiden isn't exactly strong, but how is Sam Fisher not horribly weak in the same poll as the protagonist of a Metal Gear Solid game? I first arrived to the board in 2009, so my first Character Battle was 2010, and I picked Simon to beat a newcomer because old characters > new characters. That was the match that Ezio won in order to get to that 2010 Round 2 match with Zelda.

Unlike then, I was in good company here, at least on the board. Nearly three quarters of Gurus got this wrong. The casuals got this right, though only at a 57.94% rate, so it's pretty clear that our knowledge of the past was what ruined us here.

And this was a close match. Most Oracles called it to be close, but not this close, so I got a pretty good position in Oracle despite having the wrong winner because I was one of only two Ryu H pickers to go under 51%. Oracle actually had a worse prediction percentage than Guru, 13 for and 61 against. Except...it wasn't ever really in doubt. Simon got off to a triple-digit lead in 10 minutes, 200+ an hour later, 300+ by the end of the second hour, and 500 less than an hour after crossing 300. To be specific, Simon's lead at 10:25 PM--just 2 hours 25 minutes in--was identical to his final margin of victory of 467, and a grand total of one update in between those saw Ryu Hayabusa get even a few votes closer than that.

Maybe Hayabusa would've been better off with another 48-hour match.

Oh, right, and this was another one where the registered and unregistered voters favored different characters, but the result remained the same. The registered voters were the ones that favored Simon.
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Also known as Cyberchao X.