Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | North Division |
|---|---|
| Match # | 02 |
| Match Date | Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 |
| Vote difference | 36,894 |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Fox McCloud - 57.41% (23,573 brackets) |
We got our first debated match of the contest fairly early, though you have to wonder what the big deal was going into this.
For whatever reason, many people felt that Pikachu (who barely beat PaRappa the Rapper in 2002) stood a good chance to win this despite both characters sharing an opponent in 2002: Cloud Strife.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=947
http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=975
I'm fairly sure that SFF wasn't a largely discussed factor back in the early parts of 2003, so it came down to simple extrapolation to see who had the advantage in this match. There was also the little matter of Pikachu being one of the only characters in which anti-voting actually made a difference, and when factored in with him going up against a character from his own company (which would later be known as the fabled SFF) his odds of winning were next to zero. Another reason that many a Pikachu supporter held (and this would bite many a bracketmaker in the ass multiple times through this contest) was the FAQ list on the homepage. Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire was all the rage during this contest, and people didn't yet know that FAQ hits on the home page meant squat.
The people who were rooting for Pikachu woke up to quite the surprise in this one, eh? Fox was all over him from the start, and little can be said about this match other than the fact that it was an SFF doubling waiting to happen. I almost wonder how it wasn't an even bigger blowout, given how much Pikachu (and Pokemon in general) is hated on this site.
As for Fox, though he was destined to get his ass whipped by Link in the second round, he managed to get past his horrendous (at the time) seeding in Summer 2002 and actually win himself a match. It's funny to think about the fact that Fox's blowout win over Pikachu is the last time Fox has won a match, and the second to last match Fox would ever appear in regardless of his role in gaming. He couldn't even get into Summer 2005 with the help of Star Fox Assault, being the second best character in SSBM and having no company cap in place. Has Star Fox Adventure actually knocked Fox down so far that we'll never again see him winning matches?
On a side note, Fox vs Pikachu in the original Super Smash Brothers would have been a much more entertaining fight than this match.