The Japan Game Awards has announced its 12 Award of Excellence winners, sparking discussion on 5ch’s Hardware & Industry (“Geha”) board. Eligible titles were released domestically between June 1, 2025 and May 31, 2026, and the lineup includes “Death Stranding 2,” “Donkey Kong Bananza,” and “Magical Girl no Majo Saiban” (Magical Girl’s Witch Trial), among others. Nintendo-affiliated titles stood out while Sony-affiliated ones were thin on the ground, fueling speculation over who’ll take the Grand Prize. Some also questioned the selection criteria and which titles got snubbed.
Award of Excellence: DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH
Award of Excellence: Donkey Kong Bananza
Award of Excellence: Magical Girl no Majo Saiban (Magical Girl’s Witch Trial)
Source: famitsu.com / original article here
Sony: 2 titles lmao
And Sony didn't even bother showing up lol
Oh wow, well that settles it then
My money's on Pokopoke (forum nickname for a Pokémon title) or Resident Evil for the Grand Prize
Or does making this list actually rule you out?
The Grand Prize goes to one of these
Why's that?
Did you play every single game?
That "why's that" — why's that about what, exactly?
Lol, passing judgment without even playing it
You'll get it once you play it
I bought a Switch 2 just for this game
Parts of it are fun, but it's really the creativity behind it that stands out
If we're talking buzz though, I feel like Pokoa has it
then content
and then some "artsy wanderer" indie pick gets shoehorned in for good measure
So is it Pokoa, Ghost of Yōtei, or Resident Evil then?
Well, but since this is Japan, probably Pokoa
Death Stranding 2
Resident Evil 9
Pragmata
Silent Hill f
Yeah, Sony's just winning this outright
Re: #83
Don't just casually lump multiplatform/third-party titles in with Sony's tally
Ghost of Yōtei is literally the only real exclusive on that list 🤣
Had no idea
Genre doesn't matter for this award
The trial sections actually have a decent amount of gameplay to them
I always figured these awards weighed gameplay-system innovation heavily, so this is surprising
The Japanese awards are all about sales and popularity
Sakurai (of Smash Bros fame) said an awards show decided purely by voting would be boring, which is why he created the Game Designers Award
That was probably before the whole falling-out with Kojima, so Death Stranding 2 still racked up votes
Death Stranding's quality is genuinely high
Taste varies, but since it's basically an extension of the first game there's nothing especially groundbreaking about the design — still, it's a solid, dependable game
and the story is actually easier to connect with emotionally than the first one
Silent Hill f, meanwhile, has one foot in "bad game" territory — mediocre overall, and the combat is rough
So Meccha Chameleon doesn't get nominated?
The eligibility window covers everything released domestically in Japan between June 1, 2025 and May 31, 2026
Meccha Chameleon releases June 10, 2026, so it's outside the window
but is it really that special compared to all the other visual novels I've played over the years? Not especially…
It's an award for 2025 titles, so the comparison should be against other 2025 games, not every classic visual novel ever made 🙄
Urban Legend Dismantling Center is also wildly popular, but I found it boring and dropped it. What's up with that? I felt a huge gap between my reaction and everyone else's.
Maybe visual novels ride on hype more, and since most people haven't actually played them, the ratings end up going easy on them
Award of Excellence: PRAGMATA
Capcom's probably pretty annoyed
Can't win on sales, so
guess it can't be helped
For games like Palworld where the early access launch and the full release happen on different dates, which one counts as the release date?
For the GOTY, I recall Baldur's Gate 3 won it once it hit full release
Background and Talking Points
The Japan Game Awards are organized by CESA (the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association), with the Grand Prize chosen from among the Award of Excellence winners through a mix of public voting and judging. As commenters noted, the awards lean heavily on public voting, and it was dissatisfaction with that format that led Masahiro Sakurai to launch a separate honor, the “Game Designers Award,” which judges games on different criteria. Because eligibility is determined by the Japanese domestic release date, games with separate early access and full release dates can end up handled inconsistently — the thread raised questions about this, including why “Meccha Chameleon” fell outside the eligibility window and how early access titles should be treated. Opinions on the nominees also split sharply along the lines of who had actually played them, with posters going back and forth over whether critics had really tried the games before judging them.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “Here Are the 12 Award of Excellence Winners for the Japan Game Awards!“.
