By Jack Riley
Nominations for the annual Golden Joystick awards have been announced, with online voting now open for the UK games industry's most prestigious awards ceremony of the year, especially so since BAFTA gave up on theirs.
The Golden Joysticks have always had an air of tacky glam to them; the inauguaral host was none other than Radio 1's 'beardy cornflake' Dave Lee Travis, with Jools Holland, Chris Tarrant, and Danny Baker all having taken the reins at some point over the 26 years since the awards were first established. More recently, Jonathan Ross and Matt Lucas have handed out the gongs, with Peep Show's David Mitchell in charge last year. Time for a female to take charge of proceedings?
As far as the nominations go, there are few surprises. No one would bet against the boys from Rockstar scooping up the "Ultimate Game of the Year" accolade for GTA IV, although they'll be up against stiff competition from blockbusters MGS 4, Super Mario Galaxy and Halo 3. And, as well all know, success in online awards nowadays has less to do with quality than it has with whichever entry has the best organised block voting movement.
Other categories include "Best Family Game", predictably dominated by the Lego franchises, and the "One to Watch" award for the most anticipated game of next year, for which there are a raft of nominees; although for my money, it should to go to the unnominated Ghostbusters game, whatever the snobs on the judging panel say. But will Slimer be friend or foe?
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Posted by: fan | Sunday, 22 June 2008 at 12:11 AM
Thank you all of you that have contributed in developing products that use the joy stick .When we developed it we never thought that it would be used in so many things.The original reason for it's development was to control remote spot light , security cameras, and the wheel chair .WOW i love that you all have made it work in your games too. Being the father of the joy stick i am very proud and happy for all of you once again. PLEASE now send me my royalties that i never got . Ya that's right i only got $20,000.00 in 1972 from Spartan Electronics. I took them over Texas Instrument because we never herd of T I .This is a true statement . Please look use at the US Patent office under the title This is the name it had before I hope you make more then i . Thank you
Posted by: John T. Vannest | Wednesday, 16 July 2008 at 10:48 PM