After thinking about this for a long time I've decided to say "screw the rules, I like ASM". What I mean by this is that the stated goal of this round is to increase the customizibility of the boss, and by that metric Custom wins by a landslide so huge that you can't even see the other two entries behind it. Still, this contest is kinda like playing Smash with items and I feel like it's most fun if everyone just does whatever the fuck they want. SO! I'm just gonna be voting based on what I like the most.
1. Custom
I honestly thought I would rate this one lower but it's just that good. The way it flashes in different colors to signal different attacks is great. I like how detailed the readme is, it's like a "come at me" call, telling people to mess around with your sprite like that. I'm all about it honestly. I think all forms of the boss feel a little samey because you can always beat it by just jumping on Boom Boom right after his spike attack. This is the worst thing about this boss and I wish you had done something to fix it. Still, you don't have to feel bad because you were better than the others
2. Ditto
This probably has beefier ASM work than Custom, but there's no easy way to tell with this format. I was going to rate this as number one, until I played it myself. Reznor feels terrible to control for one and ONLY ONE reason: you can't attack in midair. Because of this, the best strategy is to just stand still and press R. I'm pretty sure you knew this because you set the player HP way high. If it wasn't for this flaw I would have rated this as number 1. It's really cool and creative, and I was actually surprised at Mario being the last Reznor. It's a fantastic throwback to Donkey Kong Jr. with evil Mario throwing shit at an angry animal. I love it. This one is super cool, and despite saying "fuck it" to the customizibility goal of this round I think it did really well. Lots of respect.
3. Overused
I hate it when bosses give you the only thing you can use to defeat them, for absolutely no reason. I don't care that the original version did that too, it still sucks. Most of the time you're just waiting for the boss to give you a weapon. With that out of the way, I think you did a... pretty good(?) job with this one. The spin animation is super weird. The moveset is way better than the original and much less frustrating but it also makes no sense. Why is a Thwomp spitting koopas and koopa shells? The sparkies feel less out of place to me, and I think they're the best addition. The boss moving around more in your space with his bash attack is a good idea but it's so inaccurate that you usually don't even have to move. There's a lot of room for tweaking this boss further and while I do think you did pretty well the others were just better this time.
Thoughts on the contest
This contest was super fun, even though I only had time to participate in one round. I'm gonna compile a little wish list for the next ASM contest.
1. Get judges (I glagly volunteer, btw!). This is the single most important one if you want it to be an actual contest. If you just want it to be a fun event, you can ignore this one. The way I see it, putting public voting on a contest like this is a lot like turning on items in Smash. It's a lot of fun, but you also shouldn't expect it to be super fair. This pissed off some participants, I think. I propose going 50/50 between judges and public votes, because getting to vote is really fun and draws people to care about the event. Judges should be allowed to inspect the code to judge it on a technical level, whereas the public should remain a chaotic element.
2. Push the deadlines back a little bit for each round. 7-10 days might seem like it's pretty long, but for many people on here that equates to a single weekend. If you're busy that weekend, you're not participating and that's that. Please increase the time to at least 14 days to make sure that two weekends are included. This might increase the overall power level of the entries, and it will definitely make people with a lot on their plate more willing to compete.
3. I think anonymity should stay. It's an ASM contest, not a popularity contest, so I think this is a good rule.
4. Make the scoring system public. I've been trying to figure out exactly how MFG calculates the scores and I don't really have any idea. I have a model that is mostly accurate but still a little off. I don't think there's any cheating going on, but something like this can make people suspect that there's a lack of integrity. I suggest being 100% transparent over how entries will be scored ahead of time.
5. Themes! I'll start by saying that I like the use of themes. For an ASM contest like this, the two main ways to formulate the rounds is adherence to a theme and completion of a task. A task would be something like "make a block" or "code a sprite". It's narrow and requires a special kind of creativity. A theme is much more vague and loosely defined and it's very subjective as to what falls under a given theme. I think it could be a good idea to mix these up a bit and have some rounds with themes and some with tasks. As for the themes themselves, rounds 1 and 3 were very good. Round 2's theme was terrible. It was too much like a task but was still treated as a theme.
6. This brings us to this point. Have a group running the contest instead of just one person. It's difficult for one guy to keep track of everything. We saw this in two rounds with entries being excluded from the initial voting, which isn't fair. I also think having a group run the contest could help bounce ideas off each other to come up with more interesting themes. I think MFG did a great job, but I can't help but imagine how much better it could have been if he had someone helping out, you know?
I think that's about it. This event was great and I hope we can have more like it!