Goty Banner Reader Bigger

2013 is drawing to a close, so you know what that means — annual awards. As is becoming our norm we'll have staff awards, votes of which will be counted shortly, while also giving you the chance to contribute to the Reader Awards. There can be no injustice in the ultimate online democracy, we hope...

In past years we've asked you to submit votes by email, but Santa brought us an updated poll system to allow you to vote with a simple click of a button. You can vote in the polls below — results will be hidden until later this week — and have your say in the comfort and knowledge that a clever computer is gathering the data. There are a number of categories, and the great thing is that if your game of choice isn't in its respective list — though we've tried to cover the bases — you can simply click "Other" and type in your choice; we will then manually add up any 'Other' submissions and add them to the overall results.

Voting closes at 5pm UK / 6pm CET / noon Eastern / 7am Pacific on 29th December, so get your votes in before then. You have all of the same categories as the staff votes, so to clarify a few rules:

  • With retail titles we have tried to determine some first from third-party games in tricky circumstances; if Nintendo is the primary publisher and/or funding party it's in that list — such as the LEGO titles, for example. Another notable case is Wii Fit U, which we are attributing as a retail release in spite of the temporary free (and early release) eShop trial.
  • A couple of titles that were originally released on the eShop and then given limited run retail releases are in the eShop category.
  • We have best Virtual Console game awards (separate from the eShop categories), but VC games are not eligible for the platform-specific or overall Game of the Year awards; download-only eShop games are eligible in these GOTY categories.
  • Some nominated games are not available in all regions, which is an unfortunate reality of multi-region awards. There are also a couple of cases where a game arrived in 2012 in some regions, but are included due to hitting at least one major territory in 2013.
  • We have restricted this year to Wii U and 3DS; it's time to move on from the Wii and DS.

The voting has now closed, thank you for your contributions!