The annual Nintendo Power awards are a long-endured sham, but I still toss my votes in there to mess up the 100% response of the Zelda voting bloc. It's particularly asinine to even bother with the pretense of "reader voting" in a year that saw a Legend of Zelda release; Twilight Princess will win every award in which it is nominated.
To make it extra stupid, the contest associated with the voting offers the prize of the Games of the Year for Wii, Cube, GBA and DS. So, seeing as you're reading Nintendo Power, odds are that you already own Twilight Princess. So whomever wins this contest will end up with three copies. The one he or she already owns, plus the Wii and GameCube versions that will inevitably win GOTY in their respective console categories. Terrible.
Even winning a Wii in this contest is kind of a wash, since I'll wager a healthy proportion of Nintendo Power's readership already has one. It's like a TV station giving out a free TV set. Guh-whuh?
NP does seem to have some awareness that the Zelda sweep is going to once again grenade any attempts at an interesting awards article, not to mention cementing that obnoxious fanboy mystink. This year, they've added a Top Three category, which I presume they will use to add some additional copy to the inevitable Zelda Wins Again! paragraph(s). Of course, they included Twilight Princess in that list (no class!), so we could conceivably be accolading Link's latest as the Top Wii Game, Top GameCube Game, and Top Top Three Game.
So here's my votes.
Wii Game of the Year: Twilight Princess, Madden 07, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Super Monkey Ball, Trauma Center, Wii Sports.
We all know Twilight Princess is going to win. The competition is pretty crappy, but the Wii only had a month and a half to generate games that are applicable for voting.
I went for Wii Sports. TP is, after all, a sideways GameCube port and the neatest thing about the Wii upgrade is the slick aiming reticule and the ridiculous fishing controls. As far as Wii games go, Wii Sports does more to prove out the concept of motion sensing and accelerometers and ease of play. The integration with the Wii's built-in Channels shows early promise of how future games will live beyond the confines of their disk.
(And I'd love to see NP have to scramble to send out a copy of Wii Sports to the winner, manufacturing the instant collectible of the only boxed Wii Sports in North America.)
GameCube Game of the Year: Baten Kaitos, Chibi-Robo, Harvest Moon, Twilight Princess, Madden 07, Tomb Raider: Legend
Guess what's going to win this one. It was a lousy year for Cube games, and it shows. What, no Odama?
For the upset of the century: Chibi-Robo. "Game of the Year" does not necessarily mean the biggest game of the year, deepest game of the year, nor even best game of the year. Twilight Princess would handily snag at least two of those. But I'm 4/5s of the way through it and I don't find it particularly memorable. Maybe it's because this is largely the same adventure that we always get in these games. Maybe it's the continued lack of voice-acting, or the Hollywoodified generic look of the entire game. Looking back, I'm going to remember the new weaponry and the wolf junk more than the game itself. With Chibi-Robo, I've got instant access to a gleeful ensemble of j-randomness: the aliens lying ill in their beds, the girl who thinks she's a frog, the wooden pirate and his crew of hard-boiled eggs. It's just nuts. For introducing an entirely new IP while tackling the oft-boned GTA gameplay model, I say Chibi-Robo is the GameCube Game of the Year.
DS Game of the Year: Castlevania, Elite Beat Agents, FFIII, Metroid Prime Hunters, New Super Mario Bros., Starfox Command
I'll guess that the winner will be either New SMB (75% shot at winning) or Metroid Prime Hunters (60%). But it should be Elite Beat Agents.
GBA Game of the Year: Drill Dozer, FFV, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red, Summon Night 2, Tales of Phantasia
FFV will win. I give it to Drill Dozer.
Drill Dozer takes the basics of platforming and adds this intense complexity to it. It's a difficult game in a genre that everybody has given up on, on a platform that everybody has given up on. That earns some recognition in my opinion.
Best Graphics (Consoles): Baten Kaitos, Excite Truck, Twilight Princess, Rayman, Red Steel, Sonic Riders
Weird list. Four Wii games flanked by two Cube games. Twilight Princess will win, but Excite Truck would not be a bad bet.
First of all, you have to subtract the Cube games, because if they look better than three launch day Wii games, there's huge problems. Then take out Twilight Princess because it's a GameCube game in disguise. I voted for Excite Truck, based on all those sharp screenshots. I've never seen the game in action. But I hate that limbless Rayman freak and Red Steel should not win anything ever.
Best Graphics (DS): Castlevania, Children of Mana, EBA, FFIII, Metroid Prime Hunters, Resident Evil
Tough one. Talking about graphics on a handheld becomes a very tenuous discussion. Metroid will probably take this one.
And it may even deserve it, thanks to the uncanny mimicry of the GameCube Prime games. Nevertheless, I voted for EBA... because on a handheld, style can do so much more than pure polygons.
Best Music: Castlevania, EBA, FFV, Legend of Spyro, Twilight Princess, Rub Rabbits
This one is either going to go to Twilight Princess (pure fanboy vote; it does not deserve it) or Elite Beat Agents.
And I'm going to go on the record and say that games that feature 90% licensed musical content should not ever win a Best Music-type category. Jesus, give it to Tony Hawk or NHL 07, why don'tcha. Putting together what amounts to a mix tape should not win anybody anything. Other than Best Mix Tape.
Rub Rabbits all the way. Have you heard that game? The only thing holding it back is that a lot of the music comes directly from the first game in the series, Feel the Magic XY/XX. But what's the competition, Spyro?!
Best Sound/Voice Acting: Call of Duty 3, FIFA 07, Spyro, Rayman, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider
God, what is this, the decaying franchise category? I'll bet this is included largely to fluff up the list of third-party games that get mentioned. ("See, Capcom? You DO have a shot at winning something!") Because you certainly don't have to worry about Zelda winning this one, hyuk hyuk.
I voted for Rayman and I don't even know why.
Best RPG/Strategy Game: Age of Empires, Baten Kaitos, FFIII, FFV, Harvest Moon, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (both!)
Final Fantasy III will win. I voted for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Eh. Not like Pokemon needs any awards; it will grab a million of them in next year's contest after Pearl/Diamond comes out.
Best Adventure: Castlevania, Chibi-Robo, Rocket Slime, Twilight Princess, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider
Huh? What? Why is this even here? Zelda is going to stomp all over this category. Why did we need to invent another award for the same team to win?
I voted for Zelda, natch. It really does have it locked this time.
I have to pause here to point out that the layout for the article absolutely sucks. If you don't follow the letters closely, you can easily mix up your votes on the included comment card.
And also because this is getting really long. More later.
