OFFICIAL MARIO AWARDS XX CEREMONY

a massive image serving as an homage to Poker Night at the Inventory. characters from the top four placers serve as the four players, and various other trinkets relating to the top fifteen are present on the table. everyone and everything is drawn in an art style reminiscent of their source material if applicable (exceptions being first place, guest-drawn by MagicalMikuri, and 15th place, which does not have an art style in the first place.) the image is set in that little Luigi casino from Super Mario 64 DS/New Super Mario Bros.

in order of ranking:

1. Rosalina from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, at the left of the table, looking at Nastasia with a fairly laid-back grin.
2. Nastasia from Super Paper Mario, in the middle-left of the table, looking at Rosalina and striking up a conversation with her.
3. Huey from Paper Mario: Color Splash, panicking to hold the cards between his two handle-hands.
4. Shy Guy from Mario Party 9 in a miniaturized Toad Mobile atop a stool level with the table, pointing his stubby hand forward.
5. Donkey Kong from the Donkey Kong Country cartoon, displayed on a dealt King of Diamonds.
6. a Goomba from the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. Film, displayed on a dealt Jack of Spades.
7. a bagged loaf of Bowser's Sourpuss Bread from Hotel Mario, sat next to Shy Guy. a slice of rotoscoped-and-dubiously-lined toast is next to him, implicitly, he's snacking on this stuff.
8. the mysterious book from Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (not Mr. E!), sitting between Nastasia and Huey.
9. Mama Luigi from the Super Mario World cartoon, serving as a pattern in the center of the table's felt. he's additionally colored and stylized like he's from Super Mario Bros. Special for added flair.
10. three Stickers from Paper Mario: Sticker Star, stuck to the side of the table. a Hopslipper sticker, a Big Eekhammer, and Kersti.
11. a Bowser Dice from Mario Party 10, sitting next to Nastasia's poker chips.
12. an etching of Weegee, visible on the rim of the table, with a bit of felt chipped off and cut up to form the "L" on his cap.
13. a marketable figurine of Mr. Pipe from Yoshi's New Island, sat atop a napkin like he's some kind of shotglass. please don't drink from him, he's not food-safe!
14. in addition to the aforementioned table felt, an etching of a Hachisuke can be seen on the edge of the table itself.
15. a box of Mario's Pizza, from Donkey Kong Goes Home, next to Rosalina and Nastasia.

Booksquirm!

This minigame is basically just giant book pages with holes falling onto you (though somehow the book itself just keeps regenerating pages and never closes. Would be cool if it did, though). Kinda insane (but also funny) if you think about it. Pretty solid minigame that can also pretty easily start to feel intense (mainly when the pages start to fall much faster). Seeing the previous results, you would probably expect this one to have been taking silver last year, but, surprisingly, it also took gold last year! This minigame looks like it's definitely here to stay!

Diddy Kong Racing (25 votes)

Most of the DK series comprises of platformers, but we shouldn't overlook his other outings. In particular, there's been a few racing games featuring characters from the series, such as Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast (17th, 4 votes) and Diddy Kong Racing DS (20th, 1 write-in vote), but the original Diddy Kong Racing is still the best. Rare's attempt at the Mario Kart formula brought with it a bunch of new ideas, such as boats and planes, a new cast of original characters and an entire adventure mode. It's a take that's quite unique compared with any Mario Kart game that released before or after it, and still worth experiencing today. Well, that's what I've heard, anyway, since I haven't actually played it yet. Hurry up and put this on NSO, Nintendo!

Donkey Kong (arcade/NES) (37 votes)

The game that started it all. Donkey Kong, Mario, the platforming genre as a whole, it can all be traced back to here. Despite its age, there's still a lot to love here, even in our modern day. The graphics are simple but memorable, with all 3 characters having a clear and distinct look to them. The platforming gameplay is simple by today's standards, but still pretty fun, with a nice difficulty curve and a good variety of different obstacles, from the iconic barrels and fireballs to the slightly less iconic jacks and cement tubs. While it doesn't have the same "wow" factor today that it did back in the 80s, I still genuinely have a great time coming back to this one, climbing up the tower to rescue Pauline, and it's always fun to come back to such a historically important game and see how far we've come.

Donkey Kong (Game Boy) (44 votes)

In the wake of the success of the original Donkey Kong, it received several sequels, such as Donkey Kong Jr (16th, 5 votes) and it's more popular educational spin-off Donkey Kong Jr. Math (11th, 24 votes), as well as Donkey Kong 3 (20th, 1 write-in vote) and it's more popular... whatever Donkey Kong 3: Dai Gyakushū is (18th, 3 write-in votes). But for my money, the best sequel to the original is the deceptively named Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. Starting out the game, you just play through all four levels of the original arcade game again, with some updated sprites and a couple of new moves that make playing through it completely trivial. But finish those first four levels, and the game finally shows it's hand: a brand new puzzle-platformer, featuring 97 brand new levels across 9 worlds. It's a massive game for the little Game Boy, and features some incredible level design that still holds up 30 years later. Worlds have you go through levels in sets of four, with the first three having you pick up a key and bring it to the exit, and the fourth being a face-off of some sort with Donkey Kong. Each set of levels has a small cutscene at the start of it, showing off a new game mechanic that will be relevant in the levels to come (my favourite mechanic is the ropes, which function basically the same as the vines in DK Jr, helping bridge the gap between this game and the arcade entries even more). When you consider the level count, this means that there are heaps of unique and fun mechanics that you get to learn and play around with. Pair this with Mario's most detailed move set to this point (introducing moves like the Backflip two years before Super Mario 64 came out), and you get a really nice combination of cleverly made puzzles that offer some flexibility in their solutions if you start putting some of your new moves to use. While I love the mainline 2D Mario games dearly, this game with its smaller, more carefully designed levels offers a very different, puzzle-box style approach that I would love to see revisited in a brand new game.

Also, you may have noticed that I've been shouting out the lower scoring entries and write-ins. It probably would have made the most sense to bring up Donkey Kong Jr. (Game & Watch) (20th, 1 write-in vote) earlier than the other version of DK Jr, but it felt like it messed with the flow of the line and the mention of DK3, so I'm putting it here instead. Don't worry, write-in voter, your vote was not in vain.

Mario vs Donkey Kong (72 votes)

Rounding out an unofficial trilogy we have Mario vs Donkey Kong, a sequel to DK GB which retains many of the same gameplay ideas and mechanics, with a few new twists. The main one is splitting stages into two halves. The first half sees you grabbing the key to open the door, as before, while the second has you making a beeline towards a stranded Mini-Mario toy. These play into one of the bigger additions of this game, the Mini-Mario themed levels where you have to safely lead a group of six of them to the end of the level. It's a nice variation on the base puzzle-platforming gameplay, and in general the rest of the game still lives up to the same level of gameplay as its predecessor. It's more of the same kind of game, with lots of fun puzzles to jump through, although there's not as many levels as the previous one. Of course, this is all talking about the GBA original, with its pre-rendered character models and slideshow cutscenes. But the thing that's probably pushed this game past its predecessor in votes is its Nintendo Switch remake. After a long hiatus making Mini-Mario focused sequels, such as Mini-Land Mayhem (20th, 1 write-in vote), Minis on the Move (20th, 1 write-in vote), and Minis March Again (20th, 1 write-in vote), which all focus on more of a Lemmings-style (or Mario and Wario-style, if you're cultured) indirect-guidance mechanic, the developers of the series brought back this beloved gameplay style with a remake of this game, featuring actual 3D graphics, two new worlds, and even co-operative multiplayer. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I'm sure it's the definitive version of the game, and it's a welcome return to form that I hope leads to something new (I'd even take a remake of DK GB)!

Donkey Kong Country (88 votes)

We've taken a good look at DK's more antagonistic outings, but now it's time to examine the other side of the coin. Back in the 90s, Rareware was tasked with creating a new Donkey Kong game, making use of the 3D animation techniques they had been experimenting with. Releasing in 1994, the same year as Donkey Kong (Game Boy), Donkey Kong Country was a brand new direction for the series, complete with an opening which basically says "This ain't your cranky grandpa's Donkey Kong". The pre-rendered 3D graphics were a bold new look, pushing the technology of the SNES into something that, for the time, looked incredible. The gameplay has some great innovations as well, particularly the tag-team system, a clever way to give you an "extra hit" without needing a health bar that also doubles as a better version of the player-swapping "multiplayer" functionality of past games like Super Mario World. And, of course, this game was the first to really create a world that belongs to Donkey Kong, rather than him just being part of what was now the Mario series. Within the setting of Donkey Kong Island, there are new locations, new friends, and new enemies, all of which have become iconic mainstays. Gameplay features like saving, map travel and in-game tips are all represented by new Kong characters, and level-based power-ups take the form of Animal Buddies like Rambi and Expresso, letting you use new abilities for a level to help break up the pace. The game was popular enough to spawn a couple of sequels, and even a trilogy of Game Boy ports, comprising of Donkey Kong Land (18th, 3 votes), Donkey Kong Land 2 (20th, 1 write-in vote) and Donkey Kong Land III (20th, 1 write-in vote), but the legacy of this game remains until this day. Just as the original Donkey Kong defined the series initially, the character designs and other elements introduced in this game continued to be the standard for the series for 30 years. And just like the original Donkey Kong, it's still great fun to play even today.

Donkey Kong Country Returns (101 votes)

We'll get back to Rare's efforts shortly, but the voting dictates that we jump ahead for a moment, to the beginning of another new era for Donkey Kong. After bouncing between a few developers, Donkey Kong ended up in the hands of Retro Studios, the developers of the Metroid Prime series. While assigning a developer of first-person exploration games with sci-fi and shooter elements to make a new DKC may seem a bit odd, there's no arguing with the end result, which is another excellent platformer. Donkey Kong Country Returns rebooted the series, bringing it forward onto more modern hardware that was actually capable of rendering the kind of 3D graphics that the SNES originals tried to imitate, and it certainly looked a lot nicer than the more sprite-based New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Although it plays slightly differently than the original trilogy, the level designs and controls are still brilliant, featuring the same kind of high difficulty and momentum-based movement that made the originals so good, but now tweaked and enhanced for the modern era. This even extends to the multiplayer, which now allows for both DK and Diddy to be controlled at the same time. It also added in a few features new to the series, such as a Time Attack mode, a more difficult Mirror Mode, and some collectable puzzle pieces hidden throughout the levels that allow you to unlock concept art for the game, something that's always a welcome feature. Of course, it's not perfect, with some of the new gameplay additions like blowing dandelions and the general need for "waggle" controls bringing it down a bit. It's world variety is a bit safe for my liking as well, featuring some of the standard themes like Beach, Forest, and Volcano that were heavily featured in Mario games from the time, but there's some nice picks like Ruins and Factory that help make it unique, as well as the absolutely gorgeous silhouette levels too. The flaws it had would be easy to remedy in a sequel, and it was still good enough that they've since re-released it on a new platform... twice! It's a great first step forward in Retro's tenure with the series, and you can still see its influence places like the theme parks today, showing that even this game, while probably not quite as revolutionary as the original DKC, was still the beginning of its own little era in the DK franchise.

Donkey Kong Country 2 Diddy's Kong Quest (118 votes)

If the original Donkey Kong Country was the game that redefined the Donkey Kong franchise, then Donkey Kong Country 2 was the game that perfected it. A more refined game, with a load of brand new levels, game features and even a new playable character, letting Diddy Kong take the starring spot and giving the sidekick position to his girlfriend Dixie Kong. With her signature Helicopter Spin, Dixie helps differentiate the two playable characters more clearly, with each one having their own distinct strengths and weaknesses. There's new Animal Buddies too, adding a few more ways that levels can be changed up. The new level themes are great, taking you through a swamp, an amusement park, a haunted forest, and more. There's also some more secrets to find, with bonus and DK coins up for grabs, with the former even helping unlock some secret, very difficult levels, another new feature added in this game. In general, this game really is just Donkey Kong Country, but now with more. More levels, more Kongs, more abilities, more buddies, more fun. It was followed up with the final of the original trilogy, Donkey Kong Country 3 (12th, 21 votes), developed by a new team within Rare, but I think that DKC2 is still the best of the three. It's got just the right balance of platforming and exploration, with a great duo of protagonists to play as. This is totally subjective, but I also think the soundtrack is my favourite of the three as well. Just like basically all the games on this list, it's still just as good today as it was 30 years ago, and I'd highly recommend giving it a go if you haven't already. After all, there's a good reason it got this many votes.

Donkey Kong 64 (121 votes)

Donkey Kong 64 seems like a bit of an anomaly. The next step in the Donkey Kong franchise from Rare, who now had a successful trilogy of DK side-scrollers under their belt, this game finally brought him into 3D. And yet, despite being praised on release, it took over two decades for there to be another 3D DK game, and in recent years common perception, at least among online discussions I've been apart of, has turned quite sour on it. So, it begs the question: what's the deal with Donkey Kong 64, anyway?

DK64 is a big game. Like, really, really big. Take the first level, Jungle Japes, for example. It's probably 2-3 times the size of a location like Bob-omb Battlefield, and also has a few extra sub-areas and caves you can find as well. There's around 20 Golden Bananas to be collected here, along with 5 blueprints, 75 banana coins, 2 banana fairies, one Battle Crown, one Diddy Kong, and 500 bananas. Other stages are just as big, if not bigger, and have a similarly large amount of items to get. In order to be able to do so, you unlock a total of five playable characters, along with a bevy of abilities and upgrades for each of them. The result is a game that is vast and enormous, no doubt an impressive feat for its time, a game that is so big it literally needs an Expansion Pak to be able to run. For a kid who got the Nintendo 64 for Christmas, this game had enough to keep you busy all year.

But, as an adult in the modern age, the value proposition is perhaps a little different. These enormous can feel like a slog to traverse, particularly thanks to the annoying decision to make coloured pick-ups like bananas only able to be picked up by one character, which then necessitates you constantly travelling back and forth to the nearest Tag Barrel to change characters. Similarly, many areas in the levels are blocked by gates that can only be opened by a particular ability, like Diddy's Peanut Popgun or Donkey Kong's famous Coconut Gun, creating more backtracking. A lot of Golden Bananas require you to complete different bonus minigames, many of which can be very frustrating and difficult to complete. When you're an adult with a life to live, and more games than you have time to play, committing to playing such a big game only to have it waste so much of your time can leave a bad taste in your mouth. To be honest, I feel like I lean more toward this mindset, finding it very difficult to get invested in the game, and much preferring the more streamlined nature of Banjo-Kazooie, which still holds up as a game I played for the first time as an adult.

But with all of that being said, it still got voted into third place. Even in past years this category has been in the Awards, it's always placed in the top three. Although there are many who have turned their back on it, there are clearly a lot of people who still like it. And despite my personal feelings about the game, I do think there are some redeeming factors. If you're willing to bear with it, accepting its flaws and moving forward with playing it, you'll be getting one of the biggest DK games ever made, with some interesting level ideas like Angry Aztec or Fungi Forest, lots of quirky characters and enemies, and, of course, plenty to keep of stuff to keep you busy. If you've got the time and the patience for it, you may still find it a rewarding experience, whether you get all 200 Golden Bananas or not.

And one final thing: while I've generally not really mentioned much about fan involvement with these games, I think it would be remiss of me not to give a mention to the DK64 Randomizer community. Video game randomizers are becoming more and more popular, and DK64 has one of the most mature, well-supported ones out there, which is especially impressive given how notorious it is to work with Nintendo 64 games outside their original hardware. Putting this game into the randomizer format, where you unlock abilities, levels and items in a different order than normal, recontextualises some of the negative parts of the experience like gating areas of levels behind abilities into more of a positive, helping make each run feel more dynamic. It also has a few quality of life features to make things less painful, such as the ability to switch your Kong whenever you like, drastically reducing the misery inflicted by coloured bananas. It's not the kind of experience for everyone, but for people who love DK 64, it's probably one of the best ways to experience it in a fresh and exciting new way.

For better or for worse, Donkey Kong 64 will probably continue to be a fairly divisive game, and I don't expect to see it getting any direct sequels anytime soon. But that also means it will remain quite a singular game, one with nothing else quite like it. And while it'll never be everyone's cup of tea, I'm sure the people who do love it will continue to do so for many years to come. And if you're not a fan, hopefully you can at least agree on this: it's one hell of a game!

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (134 votes)

If Donkey Kong Country Returns was the first step forward in creating a bold new vision for the series, then Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze was the game that completed that vision. Building off the foundation of the previous game, Tropical Freeze follows it up with a game that's better in every way, in much the same fashion as Donkey Kong Country 2 did back in the day.

The game features the same basic gameplay style and mechanics, but replaces the annoyances with better mechanics. Motion controls are now simply mapped to buttons, blowing on dandelions has now been replaced by a much better "pull stuff out of the ground" mechanic inspired by SMB2, and the overall flow of gameplay in general feels much tighter and more fluid compared to the constant stop and start of the previous game. It also brings in two new characters, with new abilities that feel like natural improvements to Diddy's jetpack from the first game. Dixie Kong's twirl is a useful double jump that can save you from falling into a pit, but my favourite has always been Cranky Kong, with his cane pogo ability which lets you bounce over spikes while maintaining your momentum, creating a really good feeling of movement that lets you speed through the levels once you get to know them... Great for when you're playing the returning Time Attack mode. There's also a Mirror Mode successor in Hard Mode, which ditches the horizontal level flip and actually lets you play as any character, allowing you to make use of Diddy, Dixie or Cranky's special abilities. Playing through levels with no checkpoints and only one hit can obviously be quite difficult, but it's actually my favourite way to play this game, as it helps me learn each level in detail. By the time I've finally cleared it, I know it inside and out, and feel a tremendous amount of accomplishment.

And speaking of levels, there's some amazing stages in this game. With some of the boring world ideas out of the way thanks to the previous game, this game lets loose with some absolutely banger world ideas. An island of crashed airplanes and shipwrecks that are covered by overgrown plants. A Swiss-inspired windmill village with beautiful mountains that you ascend as you progress through the world. A jungle factory that sees you follow it's process from fruit harvest to juicing to the finished product of tasty popsicles. Not only are the general themes unlike any I've seen from other games in the genre, but so much thought and care has been put into using the levels as storytelling, each level and world full of fun details and clever ideas that make this game's world a joy to explore. Pair that with some excellent music, which will often dynamically change as you progress through the level, and it's a recipe for some of the best overall presentation the extended Mario franchise has ever seen.

This has long been my favourite video game, not just in the DK series, but of all time. It's 2D platforming perfection, and just about every aspect of the game is brilliantly executed. Retro has gone back to the Metroid Prime series now, so who knows which developer will be the next to take on the Country series, or how long it will take. But I do know this: they left us with an incredible game, one that I'll still be coming back to again and again, even long after its eventual sequel has released.

Donkey Kong Bananza (463 votes)

And so, here we are. Donkey Kong has been through a lot. He's been the villain in games starring Mario. He spent some time with Rare making platformers in 2D and 3D. He spent a little time bouncing between developers, like with the Nintendo-developed Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (13th, 19 votes), the Paon-developed DK: Jungle Climber (14th, 8 votes), and even some spin-offs, like Namco's Donkey Konga (15th, 7 votes). He spent a few years with Retro creating another excellent duology of platformers, and then... nothing. The series seemed to be in limbo for a good while. But, a few years ago, things started happening. Donkey Kong was featured in the Super Mario Bros. Movie in a starring role, sporting a redesign that brought him closer to his original arcade look. A new Donkey Kong Country-themed section was introduced to the theme parks. It seemed like Nintendo was slowly positioning things for a big DK return, and in 2025... we got exactly that.

Developed by Nintendo EPD8, the same beloved team responsible for the 3D Mario games, Donkey Kong Bananza brings everyone's favourite ape back into 3D, for the first time since DK64. Instead of taking cues from its distant predecessor, the team instead rebuilt the 3D DK experience from the ground up, asking themselves what kind of game would suit a character like DK compared to Mario. After thinking about the distinctive traits of the character, and in combination with some recent development experiments with voxel technology, the answer the team came to was a simple one: destruction. This game features terrain that can be punched, grabbed, thrown, stacked, jumped off of, and surfed on. The DK series has often pushed the envelope with its technical performance, and this time that push is focused on using the processing power of the Nintendo Switch 2 to create entire worlds that can be absolutely demolished at the will of the player. As you search for Banandium Gems, DK's new moveset makes running, jumping, and punching through levels incredibly fun, and the addition of skills and Bananza power-ups allows for even more creative expression from the player in how they want to approach any given challenge. Whether you jump over the wall, walk around it, or just punch straight through it is all up to you, and the game gives you an exceptional amount of freedom in approaching the game however you want.

Of course, the core premise of destruction wouldn't be as fun if all you were destroying was some boring bricks or dirt piles. As Nintendo discovered during development, destruction is more fun when you're smashing something that's beautiful. And boy, what a beautiful game this is. It has more than 15 unique levels, and many of them are split up into several sub-layers, which each carry their own unique features. As you would expect by now from this series, there's lots of great and unique themes here. A lagoon inhabited by monkeys who scavenge from salvage wrecks. A forest with a giant, egg-shaped hotel run by ostriches. A beach filled with giant square fruits that you can punch and eat freely. A canyon refinery left behind by its previous inhabitants, the giraffes who no longer exist in the Underground World. As you'd expect from the team that made Mario Odyssey, the game is full of wonderful and creative environments, and each one is filled with its own fun inhabitants that you can talk to. And of course, DK himself has had a huge design overhaul, making him incredibly silly and expressive, with plenty of fun animations that make each action feel that little bit more satisfying, especially when paired with Pauline, who is also incredibly endearing. She's got some great songs as well, although as you'd expect, that goes for the whole soundtrack as well.

One thing that's constantly brought up about DK 64 is its abundance of collectables, as I outlined earlier. DK Bananza actually has even more collectables, containing about 5 times as many bananas as DK 64, as well as 30-70 extra collectible fossils per layer. You may think that this overabundance is a mistake, given the frequent misgivings people have about DK 64, but I never found it a problem, and that comes down to the game's excellent level design. Each layer is split up into distinct areas, full of landmarks that make it easy to navigate. Because there are so many items, the map is densely populated, and it's designed in such a way that, once you get the collectable you were after, you'll probably smash the wall behind it, and you'll immediately be able to spot the next one. The levels are designed with this kind of flow in mind, where each discovery leads into the next. Combine this with how fast and nimble DK is, along with his new ability to just climb up walls, and navigating the large sandbox environments is far less daunting than exploring a level in DK 64. And if you're stuck on a puzzle, there's often a good chance you can just, y'know, smash through a wall or something. Again, it's all about giving the player freedom in how to approach things.

Like Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Country before it, Donkey Kong Bananza is the beginning of a new era for DK. It's pushed him in a brand new direction, one that only became possible with the new hardware available in our modern day. And despite how much new things it brings to the table, it doesn't neglect what came before, either. Several DK series mainstays return, including some we haven't seen for a long time. Once you progress further in the game, you find fossils that are references to obscure characters like Banana Birds or Professor Chops. And the game's Emerald Rush DLC has been having monthly events bringing back characters from all eras of DK, including Rare, Retro and even Jungle Beat. It truly is a love letter to the entire DK series, while still setting a new direction for what comes next. If you're a DK fan, the future is looking bright, and if you're not a DK fan, then this game is the perfect place to become one.