Board 8 > Best Game of 2021 **FINAL RESULTS**

(+) Yeah! (+)

The Championship bout started close, but halfway through there would be zero doubt that Samus had it in the bag. Resident Evil Village is a great game, but Metroid Dread delivered a convincing performance to win 30-17 and become Board 8's 2021 Game of the Year! Let's take a look at the champion wall!

(from 1996 to 2021)
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Pokemon RBY
Spyro 2
Pokemon GSC
Super Smash Bros Melee
Metroid Prime
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Metal Gear Solid 3
Resident Evil 4
Okami
Super Mario Galaxy
Persona 4
Uncharted 2
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Portal 2
Xenoblade Chronicles
Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Super Smash Bros for Wii U
Rocket League
Dark Souls III
Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Disco Elysium
Hades
Metroid Dread

2021 Ultimate Loser: Dread > Village > Ratchet > Omori > Ace Attorney > Warioware > Monster Hunter Rise

Annnnd that's a wrap! Thank you everyone for taking part!

Final Bracket
https://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?1&tid=475476

Metroid Dread joins the following overall #1 seeds in winning their tournament

Pokemon GSC
Metroid Prime
Metal Gear Solid 3
Resident Evil 4
Super Mario Galaxy
Uncharted 2
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Link Between Worlds
Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Booooooooooo

Nah, fantastic contest. Between this and the character contest, 2021 truly had a compelling year in new media, these contests have been so much fun to follow.

Great contest once again. I can't wait till we have 6 more winners then we can have a tournament of champions with the 32 yearly tournament winners!

Well done, B8.

The two best games of 2021 deservedly makes the final. Also identical percentage results to the GotY poll between the two.

And while I'm too lazy to do X-Stats...

Metroid Dread - 50%
Resident Evil Village - 36.2%
Psychonauts 2 - 35.8%
Ys IX - 35.8%

Well done Ys

I'm not doing the calculations, but just glancing at the bracket, shouldn't Bowser's Fury and Rift Apart be 3 and 4?

As for the most popular games and whether or not I need to play them...

Metroid Dread - don't own a Switch
Bowser's Fury - don't own a Switch
Rift Apart - don't own a PS5.

Psychonauts 2 was already on my radar, but maybe I'll grab Ys on sale as well.

ya go my dread

cool

I stopped voting because I didn't play any of the games in the quarterfinals

Big Bob posted...

I'm not doing the calculations, but just glancing at the bracket, shouldn't Bowser's Fury and Rift Apart be 3 and 4?

Rift Apart would've had 33.41% against Dread based on XStats

Bowser's Fury would've had 35.62%

ZeroSignal620 posted...

And while I'm too lazy to do X-Stats...

Metroid Dread - 50%
Resident Evil Village - 36.2%
Psychonauts 2 - 35.8%
Ys IX - 35.8%

Well done Ys

After Dread, Ys IX was my favorite game from 2021. Shame it didn't land in a different division. I could see it beating anything other than RE8 and R&C.

Thanks for running this! I barely voted as I haven't played many 2021 games yet, but it was fun to follow. An unsurprising winner but some games got more love than I expected, Omori beating Ace Attorney and Returnal for example or It Takes Two doing pretty well.

I look forward to playing these games eventually and then making judgments about how this tourney went!

UltimaterializerX posted...

Correct final and winner. Good stuff.

Agreed and thanks! Most final twos are legit correct in my eyes. Looking at all 26, in my opinion...

Correct Final
96 - Mario 64 vs Mario RPG
97 - FF7 vs Symphony of the Night
98 - FFT vs Pokmon RBY
2000 - Pokmon GSC vs FF9
2001 - FFX vs Melee
2002 - Metroid Prime vs Kingdom Hearts
2004 - Metal Gear Solid 3 vs Half-Life 2
2005 - RE4 vs DMC3
2007 - Mario Galaxy vs Bioshock
2009 - Uncharted 2 vs Arkham Asylum
2010 - Mario Galaxy 2 vs Mass Effect 2
2011 - Uncharted 3 vs Portal 2
2012 - Borderlands 2 vs Xenoblade Chronicles
2014 - Smash Wii U vs Stick of Truth
2018 - Smash Ultimate vs God of War
2020 - FF7 Remake vs Hades
2021 - Metroid Dread vs RE Village

The Rest, while mostly good, I disagreed with
99 - FF8 vs Spyro 2
2003 - Prince of Persia vs KOTOR
2006 - Kingdom Hearts 2 vs Okami
2008 - Brawl vs Persona 4
2013 - Link Between Worlds vs Last of Us
2015 - Rocket League vs Bloodborne
2016 - Pokmon Sun/Moon vs Dark Souls 3
2017 - Mario Odyssey vs Breath of the Wild
2019 - AI vs Disco Elysium

I was hoping to see Psychonauts vs. Omori personally. Dread and Village are good games but they feel a little less unique or creative compared to those two or something like Inscryption. Still a good final and winner though, thanks for running the contest.

wait is that some odyssey smack i'm seeing above

Yeah, out of all the finals listed there Odyssey vs. BotW is the one that feels super hard to argue with, both of those games were incredible.

ZeroSignal620 posted...

Agreed and thanks! Most final twos are legit correct in my eyes. Looking at all 26, in my opinion...
The Rest, while mostly good, I disagreed with

99 - FF8 vs Spyro 2 - Replace Spyro 2 with Smash 64 and you have a great final
2003 - Prince of Persia vs KOTOR - Wind Waker, Fire Emblem, F-Zero GX, and Skies of Arcadia: Legends are all better options than PoP
2006 - Kingdom Hearts 2 vs Okami - Twilight Princess should be here
2008 - Brawl vs Persona 4 - I don't like Brawl, but it's a reasonable final
2013 - Link Between Worlds vs Last of Us - Great final
2015 - Rocket League vs Bloodborne - Get RL outta here
2016 - Pokmon Sun/Moon vs Dark Souls 3 - Yuck.
2017 - Mario Odyssey vs Breath of the Wild - Persona 5 vs BotW is the final we deserved
2019 - AI vs Disco Elysium - Two great story-driven games in a weak year. I'm cool with it.

Also, OoT and Majora should've made the '98 and '00 finals respectively.

Two objectively great games that I don't care about.

Typically how these end up lol.

UF8 posted...

wait is that some odyssey smack i'm seeing above

Nah, it's some BotW smack. I wanted Odyssey vs Persona 5

plasmabeam posted...

99 - FF8 vs Spyro 2 - Replace Spyro 2 with Smash 64 and you have a great final
2003 - Prince of Persia vs KOTOR - Wind Waker, Fire Emblem, F-Zero GX, and Skies of Arcadia: Legends are all better options than PoP
2006 - Kingdom Hearts 2 vs Okami - Twilight Princess should be here
2008 - Brawl vs Persona 4 - I don't like Brawl, but it's a reasonable final
2013 - Link Between Worlds vs Last of Us - Great final
2015 - Rocket League vs Bloodborne - Get RL outta here
2016 - Pokmon Sun/Moon vs Dark Souls 3 - Yuck.
2017 - Mario Odyssey vs Breath of the Wild - Persona 5 vs BotW is the final we deserved
2019 - AI vs Disco Elysium - Two great story-driven games in a weak year. I'm cool with it.

Also, OoT and Majora should've made the '98 and '00 finals respectively.

Breakdown by year...

99 - Agreed. Smash 64 got stunned by Spyro 2 in the semis
2003 - Wind Waker was top seed and lost to Prince. Fire Emblem lost to Disgaea. F Zero GX lost to Jak 2, and Skies of Arcadia was released first in 2000 (where it reached Elite Eight)
2006 - Guitar Hero 2 took down Twilight Princess in the elite eight.
2008 - Reasonable. I honestly wanted Fallout 3 vs Persona 4
2013 - Also reasonable, but I wanted Link vs Revengeance
2015 - Should've been Witcher 3 vs Bloodborne. Thanks a lot Life is Strange.
2016 - Indeed. Pokmon S/M upset Uncharted 4
2017 - BotW vs Persona 5 was a semifinal match at least
2019 - Should've been Resident Evil 2 vs Three Houses

98 was a weird one, as OoT was upset by 1080 Snowboarding in round two. Majora's Mask lost to Pokmon GSC in the semis so that wasn't too bad

I know that I say this every year, but seeing very much non-B8 games in Prince of Persia: TSoT and Rocket League win it all will never fail to bring a smile to my face. It helps that I love both games, especially the latter.