I spent almost the full 48 hours watching Notch - and I thought his game would do better as well.

The thing that I like most about his effort (which of course has no bearing on the "goodness" of the game) is that he did it completely and entirely from scratch. Most of the other entries were "flash game using game library x with physics library y and random libraries i,j, and k".

He started with a blank project and added everything from his brain (not even consulting Google once!) It was absolutely amazing to watch.