LogFAQs > #939101096

No franchise had more than two games in the bracket and this is clearly a rule that have been said. Mario did have three games in the bracket if you count Mario Kart, but it would perhaps be a bit too extreme to include all spin-off games from Mario. I do still think this is a bit too extreme. I understand that Allen wanted the most representative bracket as possible for a contest titled Game of the Decade and I believe the lack of a second Pokemon game is due to Allen thinking they arent different enough. It did however not make for a better contest in my opinion. We had a lot of fodder in this contest. That was always gonna happen when we excluded everything before 2010, but it was more than necessary imo. The bracket became a bit too chalky as a result and round 1 would have a lot of expected blowouts. I think the run Mario Kart 8 ended up doing is exactly what Allen wanted to avoid too much of.

Nintendo is by far the most unfortunate when it comes to the bracket. The rule itself prevented stuff like Skyward Sword and a Mario Maker from making it in and I think its a real shame. I dont think a franchise should be punished for being too good. Imagine if a 90s GotY contest only had two of 3, World and 64, everyone would riot! The cap only need to be a little higher than two and wed have more interesting matches in round 1. It also results in the 3DS, which was a good contender for best console early in the bracket, have almost no games in the bracket, because we slightly prefer console games. Bracket placement was also rough on Nintendo. Allen wanted to avoid Nintendo domination, but I think he went overboard. Ultimate/Odyssey and BotW/the winner of that means that we would get no real read on the other big Switch games and have mostly boring matches. At this point of the contest, everyone was certain Ultimate was winning the former too and while doubt came as we went, and it ended up being true. It doesnt even stop there though! Big 2015 snub A Link Between Worlds was fed directly to Smash. Xenoblade 2 couldve been fun elsewhere and if you count them, both Bayonetta games were given completely unwinnable first round matches. After a contest where everything represented in Smash was stronger than expected, only HGSS, Mario Kart 8, Awakening and the winner of Xenoblade/Three Houses had a chance to do that. The biggest shame is definitely not getting a real feel for Odyssey and Ultimate.

When that is all said, Allen did succeed at making a very diverse bracket. Not just by the variation in types of games but also in release years. I have forgotten who, but someone made this nice chart showing that there isnt too much of a difference between how well each year was being represented:

https://imgur.com/a/8GSjaYU

Of course, some are a bit more than others and rightfully so, wed learn, but no year was snubbed.

Breath of the Wild was perhaps the most expected winner we have ever had, and for sure for a new entrant unless we count Link/Ganondorf and 1998 as new entrants. All contenders for second were thrown in the opposite half of the bracket. Look at the games seeded 1. I dont doubt its on purpose that the Nintendo game and the two weakest were put into the same half as Breath of the Wild. Except for this however, we knew almost nothing of the field and some of the entries we had seen before like Witcher 3 and Dark Souls were expected to be much stronger due to respect and the contest title. A vast majority of the games were not in the 2015 contest either due to being too weak or just not released. Part of what made Game of the Decade I such a great contest was that most of the big games were left out and its the same thing here, only this time we had not had a games contest a small year before so we had much less to base our predictions on, so it was very exciting to get going.

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.