SEGA Junkie
In the wake of some other ceremony to celebrate the success of Awesome Games Done Quick, I think its high time we held one of our own! Much like last year, I'm basically going off what I remember and mixing serious awards with a few humourous ones 
Without further adieu, some of the more light hearted awards on offer:
The "DC Shuttle" award: This is a tie between Stanski and Denton, but Stanski gets additional credit for doing airport runs. To multiple airports. I have enough trouble with that here and we only have one!
The "Serious Time" award:Mega Man X
The "Showboat" award: Tri-hex did everything he could to hang on to this award, but a below-standards showing in Crash Bandicoot allowed newcomer Jiano to take this out. Even besides the obvious Mario 64, his performance on Ocarina of Time was full of unnecessary showboating too.
The "Best singing voice" award: Essentia held off established challenger Mike Uyama and new contender Nitrodon to comfortably take this award for the second year running. Three in three next year? Overwhelmingly likely!
The "NPC" award: While the obvious contender is Rane's NPC in FF4, the real meaning of this award is to honour the marathon attendee who didn't play, but was just as committed to the success of the marathon as those with a more active role. In this regard the winner is undoubtedly puwexil for his work on commentary and, more pertinently, the stream chat (a job I practically forfeited on the first night), but special mention to dballin who decided to become a marathon attendee about 48 hours in!
And a few more serious awards:
Best donation: Sorry, Poxnor, but sheer weight of numbers alone can't carry you through this one. Nor Christopher Cox, with his duct-tape epic. Instead this goes to Stanski for the sheer spontaneity value of the Donatello donation.
Most informative commentary: I don't think there's any contention here, SMK's Pokemon Yellow by a landslide. Even though I knew most of what was going on, having it explained live as it was being done was a great addition to the run itself. Special mention, though, to Josh the Funkdoc for his really good commentary on the more obscure NES titles such as Snake Rattle n Roll.
Most entertaining commentary: While the aforementioned commentary turned very entertaining once the cornerstone of the strategy turned out to be flawed, I'm going to hand this award to PJ's Color a Dinosaur run, which is all the more impressive since it wasn't even in the starting lineup! As for actual commentators, I think J wins for all the wrong reasons.
Highest quality speedrun: Unsurprisingly, lots of contenders here. Josh's CV runs rate a mention, the SotN race, the RKA race, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario 64... but my vote goes to Breakdown's Earthworm Jim, if only because I remember being wowed by it last year and this year's was even cleaner. Hard act to follow, for the second year running!
Most entertaining speedrun: Three runs that are super hard to split for me, so they all get a share: Tri-hex's Yoshi's Island, Jiano's Super Mario 64, and Flicky's Bayonetta. All of them should be self-explanatory if you've watched them, and if you haven't, well, why not?!
Worst luck in a run: As much as I want to say the power going out during Chrono Trigger, the fact that the UPS saved it probably makes it the -best- luck in a run. Accordingly I present this award to SMK's Pokemon Yellow for the three minute segment spent purely on trying to poison Mew the second time around. How Smog hits that many times and doesn't poison once is absolutely beyond me, it almost always poisoned me whenever I played the game. Special mention to Cody Miller's Portal for the death loop, too - but that is saved by having a conveniently placed save so that the run could continue.
Best luck in a run: Fitting that it should occur right at the end... RaneofSOTN's Final Fantasy 4 and the clutch kill to end all clutch kills.
The Marc J. Dzsomethingski Award for Overcoming Adversity: I coined this award last year in honour of Emptyeye's amazing TMNT display, and while nothing quite as drastic occurred this time around (except perhaps aforementioned power failure) probably the best example of overcoming an extreme challenge came during kareshi's Super Ghouls n Ghosts, on the second last stage. To take out the final bosses with a weakened weapon and in a one-hit kill scenario was truly impressive.
And finally, the MVP: I want to give this award to both 4-H and Prevent Cancer Foundation who were both totally awesome in supporting what SDA did on those fateful five days, but in terms of gaming skill and consistency I'm going to have to give it to Mike Uyama. Mike did, or took part in, no less than ten speedruns for this event, a figure equalled only by Andrew Gardikis... whose lineup consisted primarily of games shorter than 15 minutes. On the other hand, Mike's ten games, in order of appearance: Mega Man X4, Contra III, Rocket Knight Adventures, Altered Beast, Streets of Rage 2, TMNT 4, Castle Crashers, Final Fight, Metal Slug 3, and Kirby Super Star. While a bunch of these were basically just for laughs, there were really good performances on six of these games, one of which he picked up with just two weeks to go! No player matched his sustained excellence and consistency across so many different games and genres.
Hopefully with that, I'll be able to put the marathon aside for a very long time, and start thinking about it again maybe during the planning phase for next year, whenever that may be. Hope to see you all there!
Without further adieu, some of the more light hearted awards on offer:
The "DC Shuttle" award: This is a tie between Stanski and Denton, but Stanski gets additional credit for doing airport runs. To multiple airports. I have enough trouble with that here and we only have one!
The "Serious Time" award:
The "Showboat" award: Tri-hex did everything he could to hang on to this award, but a below-standards showing in Crash Bandicoot allowed newcomer Jiano to take this out. Even besides the obvious Mario 64, his performance on Ocarina of Time was full of unnecessary showboating too.
The "Best singing voice" award: Essentia held off established challenger Mike Uyama and new contender Nitrodon to comfortably take this award for the second year running. Three in three next year? Overwhelmingly likely!
The "NPC" award: While the obvious contender is Rane's NPC in FF4, the real meaning of this award is to honour the marathon attendee who didn't play, but was just as committed to the success of the marathon as those with a more active role. In this regard the winner is undoubtedly puwexil for his work on commentary and, more pertinently, the stream chat (a job I practically forfeited on the first night), but special mention to dballin who decided to become a marathon attendee about 48 hours in!
And a few more serious awards:
Best donation: Sorry, Poxnor, but sheer weight of numbers alone can't carry you through this one. Nor Christopher Cox, with his duct-tape epic. Instead this goes to Stanski for the sheer spontaneity value of the Donatello donation.
Most informative commentary: I don't think there's any contention here, SMK's Pokemon Yellow by a landslide. Even though I knew most of what was going on, having it explained live as it was being done was a great addition to the run itself. Special mention, though, to Josh the Funkdoc for his really good commentary on the more obscure NES titles such as Snake Rattle n Roll.
Most entertaining commentary: While the aforementioned commentary turned very entertaining once the cornerstone of the strategy turned out to be flawed, I'm going to hand this award to PJ's Color a Dinosaur run, which is all the more impressive since it wasn't even in the starting lineup! As for actual commentators, I think J wins for all the wrong reasons.
Highest quality speedrun: Unsurprisingly, lots of contenders here. Josh's CV runs rate a mention, the SotN race, the RKA race, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario 64... but my vote goes to Breakdown's Earthworm Jim, if only because I remember being wowed by it last year and this year's was even cleaner. Hard act to follow, for the second year running!
Most entertaining speedrun: Three runs that are super hard to split for me, so they all get a share: Tri-hex's Yoshi's Island, Jiano's Super Mario 64, and Flicky's Bayonetta. All of them should be self-explanatory if you've watched them, and if you haven't, well, why not?!
Worst luck in a run: As much as I want to say the power going out during Chrono Trigger, the fact that the UPS saved it probably makes it the -best- luck in a run. Accordingly I present this award to SMK's Pokemon Yellow for the three minute segment spent purely on trying to poison Mew the second time around. How Smog hits that many times and doesn't poison once is absolutely beyond me, it almost always poisoned me whenever I played the game. Special mention to Cody Miller's Portal for the death loop, too - but that is saved by having a conveniently placed save so that the run could continue.
Best luck in a run: Fitting that it should occur right at the end... RaneofSOTN's Final Fantasy 4 and the clutch kill to end all clutch kills.
The Marc J. Dzsomethingski Award for Overcoming Adversity: I coined this award last year in honour of Emptyeye's amazing TMNT display, and while nothing quite as drastic occurred this time around (except perhaps aforementioned power failure) probably the best example of overcoming an extreme challenge came during kareshi's Super Ghouls n Ghosts, on the second last stage. To take out the final bosses with a weakened weapon and in a one-hit kill scenario was truly impressive.
And finally, the MVP: I want to give this award to both 4-H and Prevent Cancer Foundation who were both totally awesome in supporting what SDA did on those fateful five days, but in terms of gaming skill and consistency I'm going to have to give it to Mike Uyama. Mike did, or took part in, no less than ten speedruns for this event, a figure equalled only by Andrew Gardikis... whose lineup consisted primarily of games shorter than 15 minutes. On the other hand, Mike's ten games, in order of appearance: Mega Man X4, Contra III, Rocket Knight Adventures, Altered Beast, Streets of Rage 2, TMNT 4, Castle Crashers, Final Fight, Metal Slug 3, and Kirby Super Star. While a bunch of these were basically just for laughs, there were really good performances on six of these games, one of which he picked up with just two weeks to go! No player matched his sustained excellence and consistency across so many different games and genres.
Hopefully with that, I'll be able to put the marathon aside for a very long time, and start thinking about it again maybe during the planning phase for next year, whenever that may be. Hope to see you all there!
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