Meeting Logs

Meeting One (April 5th)

Meeting Two (April 11th)

Meeting Three (April 19th)

April 5, 2025 (meeting one - logs)

Hi everyone! I'm Sparks, the Meeting Summarizer for the 2024-2025 Awards Committee! After every meeting we have, I will post a summary of that meeting. This is the one for April 5, 2025!

In this meeting, we went over some of the basics, came up with plans, uncovered potential issues, assigned some roles and even began discussing some of the Mario Awards! And good news to Mario & Luigi: Brothership fans: Connie and Technikki are included!

Without further ado, enjoy the summary!

ROLES

• Meeting summarizer: Sparks
• Particular interest: Someone to fix image links in old Awards Boards, could be Waluigi Time

AWARDS NUMBERS:

We currently have 45 awards

• 20 Mario Awards
• 10 Fail Awards
• 15 Community Awards

45 is a good number! Everything remains the same.

MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS

• Shorter and "less energy required" events seem to do better than longer ones that require high availability
• One-off games seem interesting
• Gaming nights (Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, Mario Party) are brought up, as well as Gartic Phone. It's a drawing telephone game.

BONUS STARS

• "Most unexpected result" is an idea, it's for the winner of an award that nobody expected (like a write-in vote). More time is needed however.

(VISUAL) IDENTITY

• Little things to promote the event
• Roserade (if time permits) will "circusify" everyone.
• Hooded Pitohui may try his hand at a small piece of art! Also might create an image for bluesky
• Little things to uphold momentum and excitement until the awards ceremony itself.

The Nintendo Switch 2 releases after all the meetings and 9 days before the polls open, so the committee agrees to do a possible emergency meeting due to the release of the console and Mario Kart World.

• Will decide on what to do when we get closer.
• Maybe the tenth meeting gets pushed back a week?

OPEN FLOOR (ADDITIONAL THINGS)

• We may swap nominees within awards
• No Donkey Kong Bananza Awards, they're past the polls.
• Emergency meeting likely, timing to be determined, Kart Direct in under two weeks
• August 22 is when the ceremony takes place!

START WITH MARIO AWARDS (We had 50 minutes to spare, so got a head start on discussing the awards themselves!)

MARIO AWARDS XVIII

Key:

• Red = Remove
• Green = Keep
• Blue = So-so (will revisit the award in the future, may get removed/changed)

• M1. Favorite Major Character: Green! Pauline and Nabbit were considered to join the list, but were both rejected. We may revisit Pauline's nomination once more Donkey Kong Bananza information is released.
• M2. Favorite Supporting Character: Green!
  
  • Penny and Talking Flower are added!
  • Grape and Stella got removed.
• M3. Favorite Mario RPG Character: Green!
  
  • Connie, Technikki, Yoshi Kid and Starlow join the list!
  • Popple, Lord Crump, Booster and King Olly are removed.
• M4. Favorite Power-up: Green! Everything is left as-is for now. There may be some reworking to it later.
• M5. Favorite Enemy: Blue! We might convert this one to "Favorite species", mostly due to the upcoming Mario Kart World.
• M6. Favorite In-game Track: Green! We ran out of time after voting to keep this. We'll look further into this first thing next meeting!

April 11, 2025 (meeting two - logs)

During this meeting, we briefly went over past points made during the last meeting before spending the majority of it discussing Mario Awards! We removed two of them (Favorite Wonder Effect and Favorite Princess Peach: Showtime! Transformation) and will discuss some of these in the near future, especially the ones relating to Mario Kart thanks to the upcoming Mario Kart World.

We didn't get through all of the awards thoroughly. The final three awards were just introduced and will be discussed further in the next meeting.

Have fun reading everyone!

POINTS FROM LAST WEEK and CONTINUE WITH MARIO AWARDS

Points from last week - Discuss last week's decision points if needed

• Zange will happily do an audio or video thing if anyone needs them to do one.

Key:

• Red = Remove
• Green = Keep
• Blue = So-so (will revisit the award in the future, may get removed/changed)

CONTINUE WITH MARIO AWARDS

• M6. Favorite Musical Track: Keep! This award was changed from "Favorite In-game Track" to its current name to include musical tracks from any Mario media, including licensed or lyrical tracks.
  • Add: Toad's Factory (Mario Kart Wii), Boss Theme (Mario & Luigi: Brothership) and Peaches (The Super Mario Bros. Movie)
  • Remove: Piranha Plants on Parade (Super Mario Bros. Wonder), X-Naut Fortress (Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door) and Battling a Weapon Boss (Super Mario RPG)
  • "Ignorance is Bliss" was suggested, but it did not get added.

• M7. Favorite Soundtrack: Keep! No changes at the moment, but once Mario Kart World releases we will revisit this award.

• M8. Favorite Game Mechanic: Keep!
  • Add: Battle Plugs (Mario & Luigi: Brothership)
  • Remove: Gooigi (Luigi's Mansion 3)
  • Luigi Logic from Mario & Luigi: Brothership was suggested, but it didn't make it.

• M9. Favorite 2D Platformer: Keep! There was a suggestion to merge this with "Favorite 3D Platformer", but no merge occurred.
  • Add: Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA)
  • Remove: New Super Mario Bros. 2

• M10. Favorite 3D Platformer: So-so! This award is considered stale over the past few years due to Super Mario Odyssey's dominance, but also considered a staple award. We will look back at this later.

• M11. Favorite Super Mario Bros. Wonder Level: So-so! High-placing write-in is considered tempting and interest was expressed in keeping it if "Favorite Wonder Effect" was removed, but due to the game being less prominent today as it was last year, this award is also considered a possible release year one-and-done. We will come back to this later.

• M12. Favorite Wonder Effect: Remove! Wonder Effects aren't as they were last year, and we already have a Super Mario Bros. Wonder Award.

• M13. Favorite Princess Peach: Showtime! Transformation: Remove! The game did not perform well last year and it was a one-and-done Award anyway.

• M14. Favorite Bowser Battle: Keep!
  • Add: Glohm Bowser (Mario & Luigi: Brothership) and Bowser/Kammy Koopa (Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door)
  • Remove: Dry Bowser/Big Dry Bowser (New Super Mario Bros. 2) and Baby Bowser/Mega Baby Bowser. (Yoshi's Wooly World)
  • There was a suggestion to add Bowser Kaboom Squad from Super Mario Party Jamboree to replace "Bowser"/King Boo (Luigi's Mansion) but it didn't happen.

• M15. Favorite Non-Bowser Boss Battle: Keep! This award has been changed from "Favorite Boss Battle" to its current name because there's already an award dedicated to Bowser battles. It's also to hopefully deter people from writing in Bowser.
  • Add: Zokket (Mario & Luigi: Brothership)
  • Remove: Kingfin (Super Mario Galaxy)
  • Sharpcask, Pipegunk and Reclusa were considered but they were not added.

• M16. Favorite Mario Kart Item: Keep! We will deal with this later!

• M17. Favorite Mario Kart Course: Keep! We will also wait until later before dealing with this one.

The following three awards will all be kept. All of them are on the table for being renamed. These awards will be discussed further.

• M18. Favorite Retro Game (N64/GBC and older)

• M19. Favorite Classic Game (GCN/GBA through Wii/DS)

• M20. Favorite Modern Game (Wii U/3DS and newer)

And then we ran out of time! We will pick back up with the last three Mario Awards in the next meeting!

April 19, 2025 (meeting 3 - logs)

In this meeting, we have finished up the Mario Awards and got far into the Fail Awards!

AGENDA

• Points from last week - discuss last week's decision points if needed
• Finish the Mario Awards - Discuss M18 - M20
• Start with Fail Awards - Start with F1

POINTS FROM LAST WEEK

• The description for M6 (Favorite Musical Track) was updated for better clarity.

FINISH THE MARIO AWARDS

Name changes for these three awards!

• M18. Favorite Retro game (N64/GBC and older)
• M19. Favorite Classic game (GCN/GBA through Wii/DS)
• M20. Favorite Modern game (Wii U/3DS and newer)

They are now:

• M18. Favorite game (N64/GBC and older)
• M19. Favorite game (GCN/GBA through Wii/DS)
• M20. Favorite game (Wii U/3DS and newer)

The descriptive adjectives were dropped because they were not distinguishing enough, so we instead went with console generations.

Now into the awards themselves:

Key:

• Red = Remove
• Green = Keep
• Blue = So-so (will revisit the award in the future, may get removed/changed)

• M18. Favorite game (N64/GBC and older): Keep!
  • There was a suggestion to remove Super Mario Kart and Super Mario Land, they would've been replaced with Mario Bros. (G&W) and Super Mario All-Stars, but it didn't go through.

• M19. Favorite game (GCN/GBA through Wii/DS): Keep!
  • There were suggestions to swap out Donkey Kong Country Returns with either Mario Party 9 or Mario Party 6, but no changes were made.

• M20. Favorite game (Wii U/3DS and newer): Keep!
  • Add: Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Mario Kart World, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope and Super Mario Party Jamboree
  • Remove: Paper Mario: Color Splash, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Mario Party Superstars and WarioWare Gold

FAIL AWARDS

• F1. Most Forgettable Game: Keep! This award is going to be retooled entirely. In other words, it will be built from scratch. We will discuss this award later.

• F2. Worst Power-up: Remove! The award was stale, it had a similar top 3 for three years and Super Mario Bros. Wonder did not change it.

• F3. Worst Enemy: So-so! We will discuss this later. The way this award is built may not be achieving its aims, as the voters tend to think the hardest enemies are the "worst".

• F4. Worst Obstacle: Keep!
  • Add: Bottomless Pit
  • Remove: Bolt Lift
  • There was a suggestion to replace either grinder or spinner for weeping lotuses, but no change was made.

• F5. Worst Level Concept: Keep!
  • There was a suggestion to remove Red Coin Missions (Super Mario Sunshine) and replace it with either Refreshing Levels (Super Mario Maker) or Stealth sections (Mario & Luigi: Brothership), but the change did not make it through.

• F6. Worst Game Mechanic: Keep!
  • Add: Jamboree Buddies (Super Mario Party Jamboree) and Battle Plugs not recharging until depleted (Mario & Luigi: Brothership)
  • Remove: Dimensional Flipping (Super Paper Mario) and Patisserie Peach transformation (Princess Peach: Showtime!)
  • Removing the Extra Life system in favor of Luigi Logic (Mario & Luigi: Brothership) or Unavailable strategies (Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition) was an idea, but no changes occurred.

• F7. Worst Boss Battle: Keep! Bowser generator is now known as Mecha Maker.
  • Add: Bowser (Paper Mario: Sticker Star) and Wonder Bowser Jr. from Super Mario Bros. Wonder
  • Remove: King Boo (Luigi's Mansion 3) and Topmaniac from Super Mario Galaxy

We did not vote on this next award due to time constraints, but we have suggestions:

• F8. Worst Mario Kart Course Remake: Keep! We'll come back to this award later.
  • Considering to add: SNES Mario Circuit 3 (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe), 3DS Toad Circuit (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe), GBA Cheese Land (Mario Kart 8) and N64 Rainbow Road (Mario Kart 8)​
  • Considering to remove: DK Pass​

Also, congratulations to @janMisali for joining the Awards Committee!