Who is Master Hand?[]
Believe it or not, there's actually a story behind why the SSB/M characters are beating each other's brains in. Some kid in his room has a bunch of Nintendo action figures, and one day decides to play fight them. Super Smash Brothers is born.
I don't know if this is how the actual concept came about in real life, but this is what you see when you first turn on the original Super Smash Brothers. And at the end of both SSB and SSBM's standard modes, Master Hand is the final boss.
That's pretty much it story-wise, though MH is a fun fight when you don't know his patterns in battle. And in SSBM if you take off half of Master Hand's HP within 30 seconds, you fight both Master and Crazy Hand at the same time. Good stuff.
MH is considerably harder in SSBM than in SSB, and hopefully Nintendo continues the Master Hand tradition by having an even harder form at the end of Super Smash Brothers Revolution.
"The Master Hand awaits anyone who survives the long and difficult road to the Final Destination. This symbolic link between the real world and the imaginary battlefields of Super Smash Brothers Melee is quite a handful in battle, and just because it wears a white glove doesn't mean it fights clean. Get ready to be flicked, swatted, punched, and poked like crazy!" - Master Hand's trophy description in SSBM
Master Hand's Contest History[]
Win-Loss Record: 2-2
Spring 2005 Contest - Triforce Division - 7 Seed
- Triforce Round 1 --- Defeated (2) Kuja, 39535 [53.76%] - 34009 [46.24%]
- Triforce Semifinal --- Lost to (3) Dr. Robotnik, 31300 [40.50%] - 45975 [59.50%]
- Extrapolated Strength --- 26th Place [15.83%]
Master Hand was supposed to be mere fodder for Kuja en route to the Robotnik/Kuja round two showdown. Master Hand must have missed the memo, because after Kuja started off the match with Master Hand by going up by 400 votes, Master Hand began to crawl his way back into the match.
After a few long hours, Master Hand caught Kuja and slowly built a lead of 200 votes. The afternoon vote then came in and allowed Master Hand to bury Kuja, which helped turn a dead-even match into a complete blowout amidst cries of "It's a GOD. DAMN. GLOVE!"
Master Hand then followed this up with a very impressive loss to Robotnik. Master Hand was being doubled at the beginning of that match, but he was able to recover and tear into Robotnik's percentage once the morning and day votes kicked in. Master Hand went from being doubled to breaking 40% on Robotnik, and at the time MH looked like a very capable character despite... well, having no character at all. He's just the thing you fight at the end of SSBM, after all. He even managed to win a few updates here and there against Robotnik, most of which coming during the section of the afternoon vote in which Master Hand was able to blast Kuja to bits.
The X-Stats for this contest show that Master Hand is about as fodderific as can be, but Master Hand goes down as one of the best underdogs in the history of these contests regardless of actual strength. The man, er... thing defeated a Final Fantasy character and broke 40% on the Sonic series' main villain when most thought that he was a wasted slot in the Spring 2005 Contest. Can't do much better than that as a supposed fodder character. It would be nice to see MH back in a contest to see how strong he really is, but no one can ever take his Spring 2005 run away from him.
Fall 2018 Contest - Division 2 - 12 Seed
- Division 2 Round 1 --- Defeated (5) Noctis, 16817 [57.55% ] - 12406 [42.45%]
- Division 2 Round 2 --- Lost to (13) Wario, 11686 [39.03%] - 18257 [60.97%]
With Smash Bros hype at its fullest, the f***ing glove was back in the bracket! And again Master Hand shocked by defeating Final Fantasy, showing that even when it's popular enough to earn a high seed, FFXV does not have the appeal as the classic era. Round 2 had him against Nintendo, and even if Smash Bros is beloved, an actual character is still preferrable, and a predictable SFF beating followed for Master Hand, though he scored nearly as much as against Robotnik 13 years prior.