Gears of War, Wii Sports, Okami Top GDC Awards

Games and developers were honored last night during the Game Developers Choice Awards in San Francisco, hosted by Double Fine Productions founder Tim Schafer, designer of Psychonauts (PS2, Xbox, PC) and past Game Developers Choice Award recipient. Epic Games' Gears of War (X360) walked away with the top prize as well as awards for Best Technology and Best Visual Art. Clover Studio's Okami (PS2) and Nintendo's Wii Sports (Wii) each took two awards, with the former earning an Innovation Award and Best Character Design and the latter picking up an Innovation Award as well as Best Game Design. Nintendo's Best Writing award for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GCN, Wii) tied the publisher with Microsoft at three awards for the most awarded publisher of the night. The most emotional moments of the night came with the presentation of the First Penguin award to Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and the Lifetime Achievement Award to legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Both men inspired raucous standing ovations before speaking a word. "Thank you very, very much," said Pajitnov humbly, before also collectively thanking all of the publishers who have released versions of Tetris over the years. "I think it's great that I've been able to do this so long, and I've done a lot of embarrassing things over the years," said Miyamoto after seeing a photo montage of himself on the hall's large screens. "I personally feel very young, and I expect to keep doing this for a very long time." The gaming icon also had a surprising cameo in a video produced by sketch group Mega64, featuring Miyamoto giving a sternly skeptical look to some Mario and Luigi impersonators. Continue on for the full list of developer nominees and recipients, including additional acceptance speech quotes from developers such as CliffyB, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Greg Costikyan, as well as numerous quips from Tim Schafer.