KoopaTV's GOTY 2022 Awards!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Game of THAT Year 2022...and other categories.

After some debate among the staffers (or me trying to do a mixture of compromising or forcing my way, depending on how strongly I feel about a given category when we get three-way or four-way ties...which was often. It's not a fair process, but I'm hoping no one complains), KoopaTV is proud to present you the winners of our Game of THAT Year 2022 award! ...But not just GOTY, but many other categories as well. Check out the full list of 2022 (year) nominees and categories in this article. Both for videogames, as well as for KoopaTV's own published content. ...And most of the categories are for KoopaTV's content. I likely spent more time writing about games this year than actually playing them, and that ought to be recognised, since both games and KoopaTV articles are ART. (Remember, it takes far more time to write an article than to read one.)

With all of that said, let's get to the winners. Note that for the games, there... COULD be spoilers, depending on how you look at it. And the articles will be spoiled if you haven't read them yet:

Videogame-related Awards for 2022

Best New Character

In... an unusual turn of events, the winner of KoopaTV's Best New Character of 2022 award doesn't go to a character with a name. The winner is an unnamed cat. Well, THE unnamed cat. From Stray. This little cat had a very inspiring journey in Stray through a cyberpunk city through its unique, feline point of view (aided by robot companions) that feels a bit different than human-dominated adventure games. It certainly helps that Stray has a third-person perspective, which helps you get more attached to your playable purrer (who has a meow button). The Stray cat also has some great voice-acting, which is a rare instance where I'll admit voice-acting is quite central to feeling attached to a character! (Despite it not being in a... language.) And quite frankly, the cat is the only reason anyone cares about Stray. And unlike some other high-profile games featuring cats in 2022, the cat is on four legs.

KoopaTV hopes to have Stray-related content coming in early 2023.

Best Hair

It might be helpful to first depict all of the nominees for Best Hair of 2022 before giving the award, especially since this is a very visual category.

You'd think we'd nominate brunettes, but no. Does Mr. Grizz count as a brunette?

The winner of Best Hair of 2022 goes to Frederica Aesfrost of Triangle Strategy. In winning this award, she represents not only herself, but all of her pink-haired people, the Roselle. Triangle Strategy actually has standard Earth human hair colours... and then there are the Roselle, who all have pink hair colour and are the only ones with such hair. The Roselle also happen to be very oppressed and looked down on, which is something that Frederica would like to change. There are answers as to why people with such delightful hair would be treated like that by people in power, but you'll have to play Triangle Strategy to learn the details. (I said there COULD be spoilers... I'm not going to go out of my way to GUARANTEE that!)

Best OST

KoopaTV's Best OST of 2022 goes to a standard winner for these Best OST awards: Kirby and the Forgotten Land. That franchise is overpowered in terms of excellent game music, excelling in both level themes as well as action themes. There's a reason that the Kirby 30th Anniversary Music Fest article has a much higher page count than the normal KoopaTV article—many people actively seek out such good music, even if Nintendo made it disappear. (And yet there are...unofficial methods of listening to the music, including one linked to in that article.)

Let's listen to some examples of the excellent music. These are brand-new and not even remixes of previous songs in the series, which is something Kirby games love to do. I just want to show that Kirby and the Forgotten Land doesn't have to rely on past hits for excellence:

...But, you know, when appropriate, there are remixes. Very, very good remixes.

Game of THAT Year 2022

To my own surprise, this award winner actually won a plurality of the votes! That's right, Game of THAT Year 2022 goes to... Splatoon 3!

Splatoon 3 improves over the first two games in a lot of interesting and dynamic ways, ranging from new gameplay mechanics and movement options to the customisability of your character and being able to express yourself more in the game's world. That means even people who aren't really into action games (which...KoopaTV staffers generally are not) can get into and greatly appreciate Splatoon 3, and that's a really powerful thing.

It's also really difficult for a game to be able to have an intense competitive community like Splatoon 3 already does (and Nintendo is cultivating that from the start, including with an event this weekend) while also having that same game have a lot to offer for casual players. You can try to think of other games that succeed in doing that, and it's a short list.

Splatoon 3 isn't a perfect game, but because of the service model of the game, the developers are promising a long life of updates and new content. Hopefully that means less narrow and linear map design. It should also include an additional story mode DLC, which ought to include more banger music that's already in the current story mode!

KoopaTV-related awards for 2022

Best KoopaTV Guest Article Contributor/Best Guest Commentary or Best Guest Art Article

I'm happy we got a good selection of content from our guest community this year! And even better than, say, 2020, those guests weren't low-quality corporate content mills trying to advertise their existence on other websites. (I mean, we still took those.) But the best of 2022 came from Sukkot-Celebrating Sirfetch'd Secured Four Species by ShinyGirafarig. To be clear, she contributed just the artwork of the Sirfetch'd holding the etrog and lulav, which makes this a Guest Art winner and not a Guest Commentary winner. That means I did the actual writing around the artwork. But that art enabled quite a good discussion with life lessons. You ought to read it.

Best KoopaTV Review

It's somewhat important to note that KoopaTV divides its awards up by category, which means that even though many of the guest commentaries in 2022 were reviews, they're only eligible for the above award and not the Best KoopaTV Review award. But by a unanimous vote, the Best KoopaTV Review of 2022 award goes to Reviewing "Catland: The Soft Power of Cat Culture in Japan". It didn't win such acclaim because it's one of two options, but it's a very good read. The review. Whether the book being reviewed (yes, it's a review of a BOOK) is a good read... you'll have to read the review itself! Features cat photos.

Best KoopaTV Interview

Looking back, I realised that Best KoopaTV Interview has actually never been a category on KoopaTV before. There are often good reasons for that, including a lack of interviews and our definition of interview being rather loose. As in, us sending a message to someone in power and not getting a response counts as an interview on KoopaTV. It's because of that that I must give the winner of the first-ever Best KoopaTV Interview award to About Mario Kart 7 Multiplayer and How “Sweaty” It Is. While it's technically still not a bidirectional conversation, at least there was substance from Larry Koopa, whom I asked to give his thoughts on Mario Kart 7 online multiplayer. You should find it entertaining.

By the way, I learned something...quite shocking as a follow-up to one of the Interview-category articles from 2022. However, GOTY 2022 isn't the venue for that discussion, especially because that article didn't win. Stay tuned to other KoopaTV articles in the near future for this revelation!

Update, January 12, 2023: Here is that shocking follow-up.

Best KoopaTV Reaction Log

One of the advantages of KoopaTV's Reaction Logs, at least for you, the reader, is that you can read our immediate thoughts on presented material without editing and without a filter. I mean, just in case you think our articles present us in a polished and formal way. You can also figure out how smart we are in terms of how quick our brains work. ...Or...how not smart we are. In any case, the Best KoopaTV Reaction Log of 2022 goes to Devolver Direct 2022 | KoopaTV's Reactions, which featuring myself and Kamek (always a good pairing—and reaction logs are more fun with multiple people involved) with Devolver Digital's 2022 presentation. They're a zany bunch every time, and that's good material for Kamek and I to work from. I mean, unless we just don't understand the references they're doing, which happened. But that's... part of the fun itself.

Best KoopaTV Artistic Corner Contribution

The Artistic Corner puts a bigger emphasis on non-text-based forms of art than normal in an article. Text is great, of course, but sometimes things can be expressed better or more creatively with other accompanying media. With that said, Samus Will Smile in the Presence of Round Things wins KoopaTV's Best KoopaTV Artistic Corner Contribution of 2022! And I make use of the visual aids very well, recreating the Samus's Vacation Super Metroid manga (or at least two of the four panels) in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and riffing off of the lessons of that manga to portray Samus Aran as very happy around round things. And that's also topical, given what the article mentions about a Kotaku “journalist” (AKA someone with no integrity) was saying about how Samus Aran needs to smile more. It's a very well-done article and art, so I'm SMILING when I'm writing how it wins this award.

Best KoopaTV Enlightenment Movement Article

King Dad certainly won't like this, but 2022 had the least amount of Enlightenment Movement articles in five years. The Enlightenment Movement category is specifically focused on demonstrating and proving the evilness of the Mario Brothers, and the goodness, benevolence, and awesomeness of Koopa Kingdom. Those are definitely themes that you can read in standard articles throughout the year, but Enlightenment Movement articles have the punchline and topic as being that. They're specific, important, purposeful, and powerful. So it's a big deal to win this award, and I'm very happy that Joe Biden Lifts Weight Restrictions from Bridges; Mario and Wario in bridge collapse "accident" was published in 2022 (it's from January 2022!) because I'm very fond of that article. You might wonder what President Joseph Robinette Jr. has to do with Mario, Wario, and bridges. There's a lot, really, and the article provides undeniable proof of Mario's weighty misdeeds. And to make the article experience even better is the story in the comments section.

Best KoopaTV Fitness Log

This is almost certainly the last year that the Best KoopaTV Fitness Log award will be awarded out, since I don't anticipate continuing KoopaTV Fitness Fridays in 2023. (But I SHOULD anticipate trying to stay fit in 2023 anyway, be it through Ring Fit Adventure but undocumented, perhaps another videogame, or non-game fitness activities.) Or maybe another KoopaTV staff member will document their fitness in 2023. Either way, the Best KoopaTV Fitness Log of 2022 was voted to be Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 59: A Non-Vegan Cast. It's not especially clear why, but perhaps the staff enjoyed me looking up what a tenderloin is, or me throwing Ring Fit Adventure's Planks and Hip Lifts under the bus.

Best KoopaTV General Article

I'm happy that people got value out of SLEEP 2022: The Most Important Conference This Week!, which won KoopaTV's Best General Article of 2022! It's a competitive category, and the SLEEP 2022 conference provided ten (Koopas need to count that on three claws!) free headlines you didn't need to actually attend the conference to access, so I wrote about all of them! There were some interesting trends as presented by the scientists, especially relating to black people and their lack of quality sleep. I wonder what KoopaTV should do with SLEEP 2023 since y'all enjoyed our coverage of SLEEP 2022 (way better than Summer Game Fest)... it seems like the Associated Professional Sleep Societies are concerned about their event taking place in Indianapolis, and they will inform their members on the laws and regulations about abortion in Indiana as the June 3–7 2023 date comes closer. They're offering full refunds of fees until the day before the event in case someone feels like they need to have sex with other members of the professional society at the event and then needs to abort the outcome of that. I suppose THAT'S the kind of “sleep” these researchers engage in...?

Update June 2023: KoopaTV did write about SLEEP 2023 after all, though abortion wasn't a topic.

Best KoopaTV Gaming Commentary Article

The Gaming Commentary article is the most populated and bread-and-butter KoopaTV category. It's really the default one, and if most articles aren't Gaming Commentary, we're probably...distracted. That makes this award particularly major and important, and I am extremely excited to announce that the winner of the Best KoopaTV Gaming Commentary Article of 2022 is How did the Russian newspaper get on the SS Burya on Jan 9, 189X? This article goes incredibly deep into a minor plothole (or at least, I make the case that it is a plothole and that it should not be possible for the Russian newspaper to get on the SS Burya) in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, which is a very KoopaTV thing to do. Perhaps King Dad would prefer if I put this kind of effort into a takedown of Mario rather than go back 130 years ago and follow Ryunosuke Naruhodo, but my passion for this topic very much comes through! And to this day, I haven't gotten a satisfactory explanation on this. Possibilities and conjecture, but nothing more.

Best KoopaTV Article Series

I must admit that when I came up with the idea with Witch Princess to have a HARVESTELLA demo impression series to begin with, that I knew I'd nominate it for the Best KoopaTV Article Series in the KoopaTV GOTY 2022 Awards. But it'd have to be executed well in order to win the Best KoopaTV Article Series of 2022 award... and I think it was! Let's review the three-article series:

1. HARVESTELLA Demo First Impressions by Lheticus Videre
2. HARVESTELLA: From a Farm Sim Fan's Perspective by Witch Princess
3. Farm Sim Mechanics (and Gender) Degraded HARVESTELLA by Ludwig Von Koopa

Three articles by three separate authors, one of those being a guest commentary, all on the same HARVESTELLA demo. We all came to it with different perspectives and different conclusions, and the writing and discussion points are varied enough that it's not repetitive. That said, all three articles have a similar beginning (which Witch Princess said wasn't intended, but for me it totally was): the author explains an absence they've had from the website or public life that's prevented them from doing things before, but then Ludwig (yes, even my article does this) convinced them to come back and express themselves by playing the HARVESTELLA demo and writing an article about it.

In the end, only Lheticus liked his demo experience to actually buy the game and play it. He claims the demo didn't do the game justice and the full experience is good. Regardless of whether or not you or we would agree with that, it still was a great series. And, hey, first time Witch Princess published something in years.

Best KoopaTV Article

The previous article winners are all eligible to win this BEST KoopaTV Article award... and, as a biased webmaster, I must give the Best KoopaTV Article award of 2022 to “How did the Russian newspaper get on the SS Burya on Jan 9, 189X?”! I believe that's the article that I was most enthusiastic and passionate to write in all of 2022. Like, the whole first half of 2022 mostly consisted of shower thoughts and rigorous investigations into Naruhodo Ryunosuke's SS Burya investigations to make sure the article would turn out well. And it DID. I admit that you need to play The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles to appreciate the article, but that particular game was GOTY 2021, so you absolutely should play that anyway. (The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is also on sale... all the time...) And then after you do, go experience the best article KoopaTV had to offer in 2022.

Best KoopaTV Comment

“Now when people criticize Peach for refusing to marry Mario in Super Mario Odyssey maybe they will understand why in this article. Peach clearly sees the red flags of Mario being a spousal abuser. As for why Peach seems to also be against your dad, she is suffering from battered girlfriend syndrome. Mario does go through the honeymoon phase of abuse, making Peach think Mario will for sure change his ways and therefore be against your dad in protecting her by seemingly kidnapping her. It is very hard for victims to break out of this cycle of abuse and why battered girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands stay in an abusive relationship.” — ShinyGirafarig

ShinyGirafarig's comment about spousal abuse (not that Princess Peach is married to Mario—and given what she sees, she's not planning to become married to him!) is quite insightful. That's why it won the Best KoopaTV Comment of 2022.

Worst KoopaTV Comment

“Do you squirt or cream?” — Anonymous

This was a very strange and inappropriate comment, especially for an article that's supposed to be about Mii designs (and in a comment thread about how to make a Qbby Mii, which is the Box Boy). That gives Anonymous the Worst KoopaTV Comment of 2022.

Winners Reference List of 2022

Best New Character

Cat from Stray

Best Hair

Frederica Aesfrost from Triangle Strategy

Best OST

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Game of THAT Year

Splatoon 3

Best KoopaTV Guest Article Contributor/Best Guest Commentary or Best Guest Art Article

Sukkot-Celebrating Sirfetch'd Secured Four Species by ShinyGirafarig

Best KoopaTV Review

Reviewing "Catland: The Soft Power of Cat Culture in Japan"

Best KoopaTV Interview

About Mario Kart 7 Multiplayer and How “Sweaty” It Is

Best KoopaTV Reaction Log

Devolver Direct 2022 | KoopaTV's Reactions

Best KoopaTV Artistic Corner Contribution

Samus Will Smile in the Presence of Round Things

Best KoopaTV Enlightenment Movement Article

Joe Biden Lifts Weight Restrictions from Bridges; Mario and Wario in bridge collapse "accident"

Best KoopaTV Fitness Log

Ring Fit Adventure Fitness Log Week 59: A Non-Vegan Cast

Best KoopaTV General Article

SLEEP 2022: The Most Important Conference This Week!

Best KoopaTV Gaming Commentary Article

How did the Russian newspaper get on the SS Burya on Jan 9, 189X?

Best KoopaTV Article Series

HARVESTELLA demo impression series

Best KoopaTV Article

How did the Russian newspaper get on the SS Burya on Jan 9, 189X?

What do you think of KoopaTV's award winners in 2022? Agree? Disagree? You're more likely to disagree to some kind of extent than agree, especially given the general lack of unanimity among KoopaTV's own staff. Respectfully (if you want) make your own remarks in the KoopaTV comments section, but you may wish to avoid trying to win the next Worst Comment of the year award.


Click here for KoopaTV's GOTY 2021 awards