Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The Entertainment Software Association has announced that they will award Shigeru Miyamoto with the 2009 ESA Champion Award -- because if Miyamoto needs anything, it's some more awards for his lifetime of achievements. The award will be conferred at the organization's "Nite to Unite for Kids" event on October 22, a fundraising gala for various children's charities. In the press release announcing the award, Michael Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, said that Miyamoto "truly has defined video games as we know them today."

The ESA Champion award has been given in previous years to various well-known rich people, including Sega's Isao Okawa, GameStop's Dan DeMatteo, and George Lucas.

Yesterday, along with companies including Sega, Square Enix, Capcom, and Game Freak, Nintendo earned awards at the CESA Development Conference in game design (for the Super Mario series) and sound (for the the Zelda series). Shigeru Miyamoto was awarded his own CEDEC Special Prize. Miyamoto was in attendance to give a keynote anyway, and so he happened to be on hand to give an impromptu acceptance speech.

"Well... Tomorrow I'm going to talk for about an hour," Miyamoto said, "so today I didn't think I'd have a speech." In his brief speech, Miyamoto described his hope for the game industry to continue to grow so that "the number of the children who want to enter the industry multiplies." Presumably children with well-trained brains.

[Story and translation via Kotaku]

Nintendo's Italian plumber Mario caught the eye of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences at this year's Interactive Achievement Awards, nabbing an award for Adventure Game of the Year. If there was one game that could be classified as an "adventure" back in 2007, we would definitely have to say Super Mario Galaxy.

Also, Nintendo ended up walking away with another award. The winner of Handheld Game of the Year was none other than The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. As for the other awards, none were for Nintendo or games on Nintendo platforms. So, you could probably care less.

Gallery: Super Mario Galaxy

We expect The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to get nominated for awards. It's a beautiful entry in a long-running series known for racking up the awards. What is surprising today is that while Twilight Princess received its due attention, it wasn't Nintendo's star when the Game Developers Choice Award nominees were announced -- Wii Sports was.

Just a few months ago, people were calling it a "trumped-up demo" and decrying the fact that this "minigame" was going to be marketed as a full game. Then, as a pack-in, some wanted to take a pass on it in favor of a cheaper price. Who'd have thought that months later, Wii Sports would emerge as a powerhouse and continue to dominate the spotlight? Now that everyone's had some time to be sporty in the living room -- and realize the depth of Wii Sports -- we wonder if that attitude's changed. Certainly someone thinks it's worthy of attention.

Twilight Princess is nominated in the Best Game and Writing categories; Wii Sports is up for three awards: Best Game, Technology, and Game Design.

Once again, Wii Sports is the media darling of the mainstream press. Time is as big as they come. But Game of the Year? Many of us may disagree. As hardened, totally awesome gamers, we've come to expect grand adventures, interesting characters, nail-biting action sequences, and wonderfully infuriating logic puzzles. (And if you were wondering, dear readers, our own game of the year award goes to Twilight Princess, naturally.) But totally awesome gamers do not run Time, and thus, we don't think they really care about such nonsense.

Still, stepping off our pedestal for a moment, Wii Sports has brought more new and lapsed gamers to the screen than any game since Super Mario Bros. Having fun with friends and family; is this not the point of gaming in general? It's an interesting question, and one akin to comparing Old School with American Beauty. One may have been an inspiring, cinematic masterpiece, but which did you have more fun watching? Which do you guys think deserves the award?

[via Joystiq]