# (7)Shovel Knight vs (10)Captain Toad 2018 _source: (7)Shovel Knight vs (10)Captain Toad 2018 (revid 83707)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Okay what in the world happened with Shovel Knight between 2015 and now to where the character is getting a 7 seed and is on the ass end of the lowest prediction percentage in round one? Huh? ...HUH? I thought for sure it would be Tails. Is Shovel Knight really that good? Anyway, to the point. This was a reasonably debated match, with 35% of gurus picking Shovel Knight to win. The logic for Toa-- errrrr, Captain Toad supporters was easy. "When in doubt, pick Nintendo." But most people reading this know that already. What most people don't know is Nick can steal the whole f'n show Rob Van Dam style whenever he wants. Captain Toad wasn't only going to win this match, oh no. Link vs Cloud? Captain Toad. Picsmith controversy? Captain Toad. 2018 midterms? Captain Toad. A fix for climate change? Captain Toad. An answer to how the police treat black men or how we can get California to stop lightning on fire every autumn? Yep, Captain Toad. Stormy Daniels telling us what Donald Trump looks like naked? Captain Toad rSFF, baby. By the time Nick was done hyping up the Cap, I was afraid to put mushrooms on my chicken because I felt like the cure for cancer was in there and I should be donating all my food to the local kitchen for the homeless or something. Nick was right, too, and it always feels good to say that because I love the guy. Shovel Knight clearly got bracket votes early even in the face of the pro-Toad board votes, and this match was in doubt for about an hour. But once that hour was up, Toad took off and easily put things away. I legitimately want to know this: what is Shovel Knight and is it any good? All this public backing has me intrigued. I ignore most indie type games, but this one seems to having staying power for whatever reason. ## Safer777's Analysis Another debatable match and as you can see it was close. Also this match had the lower prediction percentage so far. Around 30%! Don't know why. Toad is from Mario  Galaxy! Do you know this game has 97 on Metacritic and it is one of the highest rated games there? As for Toad. Everyone knows him. But I think this is another Toad or something like that? Sorry don't really understand. Still Shovel Knight did good. I just wish he could win. But he is from an indie game so he can't be strong. Still nice match. All close matches as I said above are always good to see. Also for Shovel Knight. Seems to be the mascot for indie games I guess. Not only the game is popular BUT he got into Smash too! What? Yeah he is Smash as an assist! Also he has appeared in other crossover games too! Guess his appearance is memorable and such? Nice to see at least a character from an indie game taking part in so many games. And maybe next contest will have some power or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was the first of two matches with a controversy over how a character was credited, and frankly, it was a stupid one. Yes, Captain Toad is not the same as a generic Toad, but it probably doesn't make a huge difference and definitely not with a bracket placement this obvious. A character from a major Nintendo franchise, even a D-lister like (Captain) Toad, isn't losing to an indie character from the current decade like Shovel Knight, and at the same time, there's no way he'd be able to challenge a medium-high midcarder like Aerith, nor could he win an SFF match against Waluigi (debatable at natural strength, but for Waluigi to get there he'd have to have the theorized rally strength.) So this was a nontroversy. Oh, did I say "obvious path"? The casuals obviously thought otherwise. At 30.55%, this was the largest bracketbuster of the first round. The Gurus didn't exactly *kill* it, splitting 103-57 in favor of the Captain, but really, that still means that a greater percentage of casuals got this wrong than Gurus got this right. Usually that only happens when the Gurus' prediction percentage is really low. Of course, maybe this really *wasn't* super obvious. The Guru Consensus came out fairly close to the actual result, but the individual picks ranged from Captain Toad 63.85% to Shovel Knight 64%. And I was among those that fairly heavily overrated Captain Toad. This was the match I was referring to in the Dante-Cuphead analysis, and I'll admit, part of why I wasn't sold on Shovel Knight is precisely *because* I took a flier on the game in 2015. I figured that betting against GTA and WoW is never a bad idea and Chrono Cross is often hated for being a poor excuse for a sequel to Chrono Trigger. I was right to think that GTA:SA and WoW would embarrass themselves, but the former still managed to get past Shovel Knight. I had sole possession of the lead in Guru prior to SA \> SK, too, after being I think the only Guru to perfectly call Division 6. It wouldn't have lasted because I had some weird late-round upsets, but it still stands out in my memory. Also, Shovel Knight the game lost to a GTA game in 2015. Why would Shovel Knight the character be any stronger?