The Super Mario Wiki was created on August 12, 2005 at 13:47 PM (EDT) by Steve Shinn. In August 2006, this wiki was off to a good start, but still there was only a small number of active users. In August of 2007, with a userbase finally forming, we marked our wiki's anniversary with an awards ceremony celebrating 30 of our favorite Mario topics, including favorite games, music, items, series, moments, enemies, and more.
In 2008, we expanded this event by including much of our userbase with Userpedia Awards I, and it turned out to be an even bigger success. 2009 saw our first Fail Awards and 2010 included the first 'Shroom Awards. 2011 brought along game tournaments, a Mafia game and prizes for participation and success in said events. 2013 had our first director election, allowing it and 2014 to proceed much more smoothly. In 2015 there was a very noticeable boost in the number of tournaments and participation, with presentation quality very steadily on the rise. 2016 continued the upward trend in presentation quality, and successfully funded a $1,000 donation drive for the Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station to honor our late bureaucrat Walkazo. 2017 saw the formation of the Community Awards, created from the merging of ‘Shroom and User Awards, opening up a wider venue for recognition of the skills and efforts of our wiki editors. 2018 took on the challenge of Super Mario Odyssey and further streamlining the workload while still providing a variety of events. With the wiki over 21,000 articles and still growing, we hope that 2019 will be another successful year!
Voting
This year we have included definitions for each award to help prevent confusion as to what we intended. If there are any questions or comments regarding them, please let us know!
(Please do not enter joke votes, "none", "all", or votes that don’t fit the award in the Other box; those votes will be thrown out and not counted!!)
Please refer to this document to vote on the Community awards.
You can vote once a week on each poll. Voting ends July 16th at roughly 12 PM Eastern.
Mario Awards (30)
M1. Best Sound Design
M2. Favorite Kart Game
M3. Favorite Mario Platformer
M4. Favorite Mario Kart Course
M5. Favorite Donkey Kong Character
The game that overall sounds the best. A significant deciding factor is the game's soundtrack, but it also includes skillful and appropriate use of sound effects, ambience, and (if present) quality of voice acting.
The best game of the Mario Kart series.
The best game featuring the core 2D or 3D Mario gameplay without too many significant deviations. The selection encompasses games which focus on the use of skillful jumping to traverse obstacle courses and/or sandboxes to reach the objective, often while collecting coins and helpful powerups along the way.
The best race course featured in one or more Mario Kart games. This does not include battle courses.
The best character of the Donkey Kong spin-off series.
M6. Favorite Wario Character
M7. Favorite Yoshi Character
M8. Favorite Art Style
M9. Favorite Add-on Content
M10. Favorite Lyrical Song
The best character of the Wario spin-off series.
The best character of the Yoshi spin-off series.
The best visual style used in Mario media. This features prominently used, distinct, and recognizable art styles, but does not include one-off styles. A focus is placed on overall aesthetics over deviations due to hardware limitations (for example: SM64 looks different from SMG, but this seems to be a product of hardware limitations rather than artistic choice. Promotional renderings of the game show Mario in the familiar main series style. Therefore, we do not recognize SM64 as its own art style).
The best Mario-relevant software package that adds new content to a game. To qualify, the content must be non-essential for the core game and add one or more distinct, recognizable elements to it. This does not include minor patches, code updates, or bug fixes.
The best music track from a Mario or Mario spin-off game featuring intelligible lyrics.
M11. Favorite Major Character
M12. Favorite Supporting Character
M13. Favorite Level Theme
M14. Favorite Species
M15. Favorite Instrumental Track
The best recurring Mario series character prominently featured in a main role.
The best Mario series or Mario spin-off series character who is part of the supporting cast. This includes recurring minor characters, as well as major characters that only appeared in one game, or exclusively appear in spin-offs.
The best overall environmental theme of a level.
The best species that characters in the Mario series can belong to. To qualify, there must be more than one representative of said species present throughout the series.
The best music track from a Mario or Mario spin-off game featuring solely instrumentals and sounds.
M16. Favorite Item
M17. Favorite Mario RPG
M18. Favorite Mario Party Game
M19. Favorite Villain
M20. Favorite Sports Game
The most interesting, useful, or otherwise superior item or power-up available in the Mario series.
The best Mario role-playing-game.
The best game of the Mario Party series.
The best Mario series or Mario spin-off series villain or nefarious group, major or minor. This award takes into account their role in the story, their actions, boss battles, and overall characterization.
The best sports-themed Mario spin-off game. Mario Kart titles have been excluded from this award because they already possess a dedicated award to themselves.
M21. Favorite Puzzle Game
M22. Favorite Battle Course
M23. Favorite Capture
M24. Favorite Costume
M25. Favorite 2D Mario Level
The best Mario spin-off game which primarily focuses on on the completion of puzzles and places emphasis on the use of logic over pure dexterity. This includes puzzle-platformers.
The best dedicated battle course featured in one or more Mario Kart games.
The best controllable creature that can be captured with Cappy in Super Mario Odyssey. Deciding factors include their moveset, breadth of options, how well the game used them, as well as how enjoyable they are to control overall.
The best complete outfit set in Super Mario Odyssey that Mario can wear, as purchased from Crazy Cap or otherwise.
The best level found in a Mario sidescroller. This only includes nominees from the main Mario games. Levels from the Donkey Kong, Wario, and Yoshi spin-off series have been excluded.
M26. Favorite 3D Mario Level
M27. Favorite Boss Battle
M28. Favorite Game Setting
M29. Favorite Classic Game (GCN/GBA and older)
M30. Favorite Modern Game (Wii/DS and newer)
The best level found in a 3D Mario game. This only includes nominees from the main Mario games. Levels from the Donkey Kong, Wario, and Yoshi spin-off series have been excluded.
The best boss battle found in a Mario or Mario spin-off game.
The game with the best setting overall. Focus is placed on the entirety of the setting as a whole, rather than just individual areas.
The best game among every Mario title released for the Nintendo Gamecube and older (for console games), and the Gameboy Advance and older (for handheld games).
The best game among every Mario title released for the Nintendo Wii and newer (for console games), and the Nintendo DS and newer (for handheld games).
Fail Awards (15)
F1. Worst Character
F2. Worst 2D Level
F3. Worst 3D Level
F4. Worst RPG Area
F5. Worst Level Concept
The least favorite Mario series or Mario spin-off series character. This includes both major and minor characters regardless of number of appearances.
The worst level found in a sidescroller. This includes nominees from the main Mario games, as well as the Donkey Kong, Wario, and Yoshi spin-off series
The worst level found in a 3D game. This includes nominees from the main Mario games, as well as the Donkey Kong, Wario, and Yoshi spin-off series.
The worst map or level found in a role-playing game. This includes nominees from the Mario series, as well as any other relevant spin-off.
The least favorite type of overarching stage or level theme.
F6. Worst Spin-off
F7. Worst Enemy
F8. Worst Mario Kart Course
F9. Worst Direction of Series
F10. Worst Game Mechanic
The least favorite game not part of the main Mario series. This includes sports, party games, and alternative storylines, to name a few options.
The least favorite non-boss villain, baddie, or grunt.
The least favorite track in a Mario Kart game.
This award focuses on the downward turn of a game franchise or spin-off, with lower quality coming with further installments.
The worst feature of a game's functions.
F11. Biggest Missed Opportunity
F12. Worst Game Objective
F13. Worst Remake
F14. Worst Setting
F15. Most Disappointing Game
Recognition of the most lost potential or missed chance, aimed at any level of the Mario series, from treatment of characters and stories, up to company management and business decisions that, if handled better, would have a more welcome outcome.
The worst goal, challenge, objective, or quest in a game.
The worst new version or remake of a game.
The worst overall location and backdrop of a game.
May not necessarily be the worst game Mario has to offer, but is the game that was most poorly received and squandered its greater potential.
Community Awards
Along with having awards for the general Marioverse, we like to celebrate achievements within our own community with the addition of the Community Awards. These cover aspects of this vast community that serves as the lifeblood of the MarioWiki and its sub-pages. The nominees of these awards include members from the wiki, forum, and chat sub-communities with their various accomplishments. They also cover projects members have worked or are working on to maintain/improve the site or to promote community solidarity through fiction, comics, artwork, or music. The 'Shroom remains fully represented, and is the Super Mario Wiki's community-written newsletter, delivering various informative or entertaining articles about the Mario series, video games in general, and a number of other subjects the third Saturday of every month. Founded in 2006, this community project has come a long way from its modest beginnings and has become an integral part of the website. This is where hard-working members of our staff teams, as well as the work of our creative users, have some time to shine and receive recognition.
To vote for Community Awards please go here to find the dossier and polls.
Presentations
Sign-ups for Award Presentations will open July 1st. Users will be allowed to present a maximum of four awards.
What are these presentations, you ask? Well, you get to reveal the results of the award you choose in some sort of digital medium, whether it is a written story (usually a narrative or an interview with a user or Mario series character), the tried and true summary, something creative and goofy, the verypopularcomic style, a picture or series of images, image edits, split into multipleparts, collaboration between people, or even a playable game, a video, a song, or a combinationof multipleforms. As you can see, there’s plenty of variety; do whatever you want! These can be serious or silly (though most people prefer the silly ones), so long as they’re relevant to the award at hand. Polls close on July 16th, so users should receive their results in their inbox on the forums some time between then and the 19th. Presentations will be due August 9th. There are no exceptions. Do not sign up for a presentation if you are unsure if you can complete it. Doing so may result in a ban from creating presentations in future award shows. If something unexpected does come up, tell us as quickly as possible and we will be able to cover for you. Be sure to check out the best and favorites from the 2018 Awards Ceremony in the Community Awards dossier!
Who can sign up to present:
-Basically anyone that can complete their presentation within the roughly 4-week window!
--It is encouraged to have accounts on both the wiki and the forum, but it is not a hard requirement.
Who cannot sign up to present:
-Basically no one! But what can reduce chances and trust are:
--Users who are banned in any community venue (Wiki, Forum, Chat).
--Users that have been banned from participating in Awards-related activities.
Certain awards (bolded within the sign-up sheet) are reserved until further notice (we are PMing certain users and asking them if they would like to present any of them. This helps us with quality control for several important awards). These awards may or may not be opened to the public, depending on responses from the people PMed.Please note: You will be held to a higher standard of quality if you sign up for Reserved awards, and are expected to deliver quality work quickly if you sign up for a Backup slot.
P.S. It's not all rules and bureaucracy; have fun with it!
The Awards Committee’s main focus is the creation of the polls in June, but they will be responsible for decisions related to the entire anniversary event, including but not limited to tournaments, prizes, presentations, and overall AC policies and structure. Announcements regarding projects will be posted on this page or the public forum board, so if you are interested, keep an eye on at least one of them.
Thank you, and we'll see you around a bunch more in the upcoming months!!
Mario Awards III featured the first awards-sanctioned tournament, Mario Kart, and ever since then interest has steadily grown to make it a key feature of the anniversary events alongside the poll ceremony. In 2015, we hosted the most tournaments in the history of the awards ceremony with 15 separate tournaments held, over double the previous year. These tournaments have included games like Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Pokémon, Mafia, Mario Golf, Team Fortress 2, Minecraft, and also art contests, Guess The Results, and pretty much anything anyone suggests and is able to host. It does not need to be a Nintendo game – DS/3DS, Wii/Wii U/Switch, PC, Steam, forum-/chat-based and online are all valid media for tournaments as long as they have a multiplayer mode or can function as competition.
It’s not required to be a member of the Awards Committee to host and organize a tournament, but we do ask that you coordinate it with us so we can help things run smoothly and help facilitate prizes should they be offered. Anyone who would like to donate prizes to be given out is more than welcome to do so. Please contact Hypnotoad (talk) or Turboo (talk) if you would like to supply prizes. Recommended items include Humble Bundle games, Nintendo points, iTunes cards or gift cards to any other online site or store, or even just cash donations. Any donation is highly appreciated, but please be aware that gifting Steam games is no longer easily possible due to a change in policy by Valve.
