# (12)Pac-Man vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 _source: (12)Pac-Man vs (4)Bayonetta 2018 (revid 88245)_ ## Ulti's Analysis This is one of the weirdest matches of the entire contest. It's close by final percentage, but legitimately stayed 52-48 for the entire match. Usually when things are close you get a rally in one way or the other, but that didn't happen here. It was just a steady, easy, 52-48 win for Bayonetta where she was never threatened. Either no one cares enough about Pac-Man to try rallying him, no one cares enough about Bayonetta enough to try rallying her, or no one cares about either of these two period so people just left the match alone. What I don't get is how Pac-Man got 48% on her in the first place. I get Bayonetta being decent. She's all over Smash Bros and her series is on Nintendo consoles now, which is about all it takes to have decent strength on this site anymore. Pac-Man only has Smash, and he's not exactly a character people will rally behind. I have no clue what happened here, and we know Bayonetta would end up looking decent, so my best guess is Pac-Man boosted from being in Smash. Your guess is as good as mine, but something happened here. Clearly. Pac-Man is always good for a weird result, and this was his this year. Because let's be honest, the guy has overlap with everyone and it's impossible to actually hate Pac-Man unless you're this guy. ## Tsunami's Analysis But before Geralt cold get a proper bandwagon going, he'd have to deal with another potential bandwagon, and one with boobs, no less. You could argue that Bayonetta hadn't truly reached new heights despite having gone to Round 3 for the first time, because 2013 cut out two thirds of the remaining field each round rather than half, and if you measure simply by distance from the end of the contest, a Round 2 appearance in 2013 is at best equivalent to winning a division in 2018, possibly even equivalent to winning your first Legends Bracket match. Yes, that's right, Link's 2018 record is the same as Draven's 2013 record. Link did it in 1v1s rather than 3ways so he beat fewer characters (not to mention he beat the same character twice), but even with a free pass to Round 5, he needed to win 5 matches to take home this crown, just like Draven did. Of course, it's kind of impossible to come up with a good equivalence between either of those two years and any other year, because the 2013 field using powers of 3 instead of powers of 2 and the 2018 field having a losers' bracket (You know who else besides Link had 5 wins in 2018? Cloud! Also Pikachu, Bowser, and Tifa all had exactly five wins and Zelda had 7, but they were in the main bracket.) It's much easier with the earlier brackets. 2010 had 7 rounds, Villains had 5, and the other brackets all had 6. You could make an argument for counting 2007 and 2008 as though they had 7 rounds, since they also had 128 characters just like 2010 did. Okay, granted, 2005 also had a Tournament of Champions, similar to this year's Legends Bracket. 2005 was essentially an 8-round contest in which 3 out of the 4 characters in Round 7 had direct byes there. It feels wrong to say that a Round 5 appearance in 2005 is only equivalent to a Round 3 appearance in 2004, though. It would be foolish. So then how, even if you ignore the loser's bracket, do you score this season? In 2005, we narrowed 64 down to 1, and then put that 1 in a 4-character bracket. This year, we only narrowed 128 down to 8, and then put those 8 in a 16-character bracket. ...I think we would have to ignore Losers' Bracket and just treat this as an 8-round bracket. I know a lot of people are treating Losers as the "true" values for X-Stat purposes since those are the ones that actually knocked characters out of the contest. I feel that this is a view largely perpetuated by those who feel that the two rematches that had significant shifts in percentage produced more "legitimate" results than the originals, which is a belief that meshes with their preconceived notions. One of the matches I'm referring to is Mario-Samus, where Samus nearly pulled the upset the second time, and the other is a match with only one Noble Niner in it where said Noble Niner outright *lost* the first time, and *only* the first time. Really, the presence of a Loser's Bracket just muddies the waters, especially when it's set up like this with it being single elimination for four rounds and then double elimination. When listing the Most Surprising Results of All Time, Zelda's upset of Mario is listed as a Round 7 match. *Because that's what it is.* That's the percentage of people who thought that Zelda would win *7* matches. Contrast, say, *the very next match*, which is also on that list. That's the number of people who thought that Crono would either lose his first match and win the next three *or* win his first match, lose his second, and win his next two. And it gets murkier the further you go along. How many people who correctly picked Mario \> Samus II did so because they actually had Mario losing in the Legends Semis (most likely to Snake), and how many did so because they mistakenly thought Sephiroth would continue his previous dominance of Mario and would still be alive in the Legends' Finals? So I think you have to just treat the Legends matches as the only ones that matter for how deep a tournament run you've made. By that metric, making Round 3 in this tournament is essentially equivalent to making the field at all pre-2007. It's not exactly the same since there are only 40 characters alive at the end of Round 2, not 64 like there were then, but it's still six wins away from a title. It's either that or you just ignore the 8 legends and pretend that these first four rounds were just the first four rounds of a seven-round tournament, and then...what? Honestly, that whole "128 down to 8, then those 8 are part of the Sweet Sixteen" bit is throwing me. I guess 2005 and 2006 were no better, what with the fact that *technically* Mario and Samus won titles in those years, but Link is still the ultimate champion (no, Jay Solano doesn't count) and Samus in particular was eliminated from *three days before* the runner-up from the main bracket, who was also included because CJayC loved getting cutesy and the favorites on the Male and Female sides were *Crono* and Samus, and even though that would make the Battle Royale 3 parts Nintendo and 3 parts Square, it wouldn't be tough to imagine Link's presence allowing Crono to steal another win over Mario. We've never quite seen if that would be the case. We've seen Crono steal a win over Samus and Mario in a fourway with Link, and we've seen Crono miserably in last place with Cloud, Link, and Snake, but we never saw Link and another Nintendo character and Cloud and Crono. All of this is irrelevant, though, because Bayonetta's Round 2 appearance in 2013 came at the expense of *N and Wander*. So clearly this *is* her best run. Also, you are just now realizing that Bayonetta has never lost in Round 1 (though she *has* failed to advance out of a vote-in poll. She's not the only character whose record is positively affected by *losing* in those polls; I mentioned Wario's .500 record but he's also among those who lost out in the vote-ins in 2010. Pac-Man is also among those who failed to advance out of vote-ins in 2010.) ## Safer777's Analysis Before the contest nobody believed in Pac-Man. But after the 1st match people thought that maybe he had a change? And look at this. Sure he lost but scoring almost 48% on Bayonetta? She is a Nintendo character now. Not only she is in Smash but Bayonetta 2 and 3 are only on Nintendo consoles. Also guess what. Pac-Man was winning in USA with around 51% but he lost! 2nd time in a row where a character wins in USA but loses. Also both of these are in Smash so there is that. Still a win is a win. Wish though that an icon such as Pac-Man would have reached round 3. Next match will be a good one! But why Pac Man got such a boost? I don't get it. He is in Smash and everyone knows him  yeah, but does anybody cares? Don't think so. Still nice match. Of course the prediction percentage was low for Bayonetta.