GameFAQsContests.com

A heavily hyped first Square-versus-Nintendo matchup turned into an easy Cloud win. The writeup remembers the match less for suspense than for igniting the long-running Square-Nintendo rivalry and intensifying anticipation for Mario versus Cloud.

Fox routed Pikachu in a debated matchup that the writeup retrospectively considers an obvious SFF situation. The victory also ended Fox's poor first-contest seeding story by finally giving him a match win.

SFF: The writeup explicitly describes Fox's decisive win over fellow Nintendo entrant Pikachu as an SFF result and argues that anti-Pokémon voting made Pikachu's position even worse.

Link opened the second round by overwhelming Fox and reinforcing his status as the contest favorite. The writeup acknowledges heavy Nintendo SFF but says the performance still looked dominant enough to keep repeat-title expectations intact.

SFF: The writeup explicitly treats Link's rout of fellow Nintendo entrant Fox as an SFF result, while arguing that the size of the win remained impressive despite the overlap.

Fox dominated an all-Nintendo field far more thoroughly than expected, while Wario eventually secured the second advancing position over Captain Falcon. The writeup treats Fox's performance as one of the contest's strongest examples of SFF.

SFF: The writeup explicitly characterizes Fox's dominant performance as Nintendo SFF and says Fox suppressed Captain Falcon more heavily than Wario.

Sephiroth and Fox advanced exactly as expected in a match the writeup considers almost completely predetermined. Sephiroth nevertheless looked especially strong against a field otherwise composed entirely of Nintendo characters.

Sephiroth beat Mario comfortably in a result that had become predictable by match day. The more notable secondary story was Fox collapsing in Mario's presence after looking strong against Nintendo opposition earlier.

SFF: The writeup says Mario heavily suppressed fellow Nintendo entrant Fox, leaving Fox far weaker than his prior-round performance suggested.

Sora and Fox produced the expected advancing pair in a match without meaningful swings. Chris Redfield did better than his prior contest reputation suggested, but never threatened the leaders.

Squall and Sora advanced together yet again, while Yoshi collapsed far more badly than expected. The result reinforced the strange independence of the Squall-Sora pairing and exposed Yoshi's vulnerability in the field.

LFF: The writeup says Fox's presence hurt fellow Nintendo entrant Yoshi, while Sora remained largely independent of Squall and benefited from the contrast.

Fox ended a long 1v1 win drought with an easy victory over Lloyd Irving. The writeup uses the match mainly to argue that Tales characters are chronically over-nominated relative to their contest strength.

Snake again started poorly with the board vote before recovering into a solid win. The writeup finds Fox a difficult measuring stick because so many of his prior losses involved Nintendo overlap.

Pokémon Trainer Blue beat Fox even though Wolf created what many expected to be a highly favorable Nintendo-overlap setup. The writeup's larger point is that Blue's strength remained hard to read because the bracket handed him such unusual conditions.

Fox narrowly beat Jill in a match the writeup considers much closer than a Smash-boosted Nintendo character should have allowed. Jill's respectable loss and Fox's weak showing left both characters difficult to evaluate.

The writeup is mostly an enormous political and Blizzard retrospective; the actual match is summarized as Fox crushing a weak D.Va after the feared rally never appeared.

Aerith beat Fox in a nearly static match and extended the deepest run ever by a 15-seed. The writeup emphasizes the historic seeding achievement more than the competitiveness of the poll.