(6)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (11)Super Mario Maker 2015

Ulti's Analysis
Ah yes, the match that cemented Super Mario Maker as Turd of the Contest.

For some background here, one has to realize a few things. One, this entire eightpack was ripe for the taking. The case could be made for Xenoblade, Donkey Kong Country 2, Fire Emblem Awakening, Super Mario Maker, Banjo-Kazooe or Symphony of the Night all winning three matches. It was a nice jumbled mess of midcarders, any of which could have gone on a run and caught a bandwagon. I doubt any of them could have beaten Ocarina for the division title even with a bandwagon, but who really knows? We've seen Link lose in round 3 before.

For Mario Maker's fourpack specifically, the entire reason people thought Mario Maker would do well is our new paradigm of rallies in contests. People are wise to these things now, and they knew Mario Maker would be a potential target. Mario Maker had everything in its favor: "IT'S FREAKING MARIO", a huge presence in social media, a huge internet buzz ever since it was released, a massive concentration of memes, an unbelievably easy contest path where it could potentially SFF two things and get a bandwagon rolling, and so on and so forth.

Then it went out there and just completely shit the bed. It was everything just to not get doubled, and when you pair the game's potential with how it performed, you have to give it Turd of the Contest. Furthermore, a lot of us thought this game would boost the Mario series as a whole, when it might have done the opposite. 3 got rolled, 1 didn't even make the bracket, and we can't really guarantee World and 64 wouldn't have also gotten rolled by Pokemon had the Undertale rally not happened. They did give a very good showing against Undertale, for what it's worth, but you also have to look at the other side and realize Mario World was losing updates to Animal Crossing. I can't give a reason for this beyond a few educated guesses, but the best one is probably GameFAQs playing no game released after 2001 or so. Another good reason is Mario Maker is purely a social game, and let's not kid ourselves about the type of person that frequents this site or frequents the gaming hobby as a whole -- anti-social to the extreme. People complained all contest long about rallies and outsiders. Would socialites really complain about having a lot of new people around and new things doing well in our contests? No.

This is nothing against Awakening, for the record. I love the game and I love the Fire Emblem series. Awakening did some very neat new things, made good use of the 3D, and Chrom was alright. The cast wasn't all that memorable when compared to 7 or 9, but I can't complain too much. My only real problem with the game is how unbelievably easy it was. You get a support going, and then everything is just setting up a choke point and going 2v1 in any fight. I'm sure the hard modes are berserk, but some of us enjoy the "normal" difficulty having a challenge as well. Dark Souls didn't get popular by giving people shortcuts.