FEATURES - NGEB Award Show 2004 :: Introduction For Nintendo, not a lot happened that made 2004 fantastic. It was sort of the "1999" of the new millenium, if you will. A whole lot of remakes and sequels, and not much in the way of ground-breaking new gameplay. Kind of a sharp contrast from the major dose of rad we received in '03 and '02. The GameCube still has a strong line-up but it's clearly entered old age, while the Game Boy Advance is SO advanced it could soon need life support! Although the DS shows promise, it too stands on shaky ground as any competing new system does. Let's put another year of Nintendo in the history books and start looking to the future... GRAPHICS - GCN Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - Echoes not only improves on the visuals from Prime, it goes an extra mile in creating a fully immersive virtual world. The light world/dark world dynamic adds a lot of diversity to the game, and really shows what talented graphic designers can do when limits are imposed upon them (in this case having to make two areas of the same dimensions look vastly different from one another). The game is also chock full of wonderful particle effects and beautiful dynamic lighting and character models, which further serve to pull you into the mysterious world of Aether. Good times. Runner-Up: Baten Kaitos - GBA Super Mario Pinball - It's sometimes hard to admit when a crappy game has admirable traits. Super Mario Pinball's fantastic pre-rendered graphics are an example of that. The game looks good enough in screens, but in motion, these sprites prove to be just as fluid and believable as lower-end graphics on a console game. Perhaps it's a style that could be put to better use in a more interesting, less ridiculously obvious overuse of a good franchise. Runner-Up: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories STORY - GCN Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - Mario games used to not be known for great plotlines and surprisingly well-written text, but then Paper Mario came along. The Thousand-Year Door 1-ups even its predecessor by throwing in plot twists galore and seven new partner characters speaking for the party. It also helps that this is probably one of the most text-heavy RPGs of all time - there's a lot to chew on here, and we at NGEB can't wait for another sequel. Runner-Up: Pikmin 2 - GBA Final Fantasy II - Japan's Final Fantasy II first moved the series from Dragon Warrior-esque characters and scenarios toward the ground-breaking epics that continue to sell millions each world-wide. If you think Cloud, Tifa, and Barret are old school, you obviously haven't met Firion, Maria, and Gus. Join them on their quest to stop an evil empire from taking over their country, or else you're not as cool as that one Asian kid at school who owns like, 50 Final Fantasy games. Come on, you know who I'm talking about! Everyone has an "Asian kid"... right? Runner-Up: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories INNOVATION - GCN Wario Ware, Inc. Mega Party Game$ - Okay yeah, it wasn't much more than a GCN port of 2003's GBA NGEB Game of the Year, but what little it added was yet another breath of fresh air from the masterminds behind the steadily growing Wario Ware series. I mean, serioulsy, who came up with making players yell things, tell jokes, and use their toes to control while they play the most frantic mini-games ever, and who was his friend who suggested it be four-player? Cause I'd like to personally offer them my body for pleasure. I kind of owe it to them for inventing such an awesome game. (So many people just closed this browser window...) Runner-Up: Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures - GBA Mario vs. Donkey Kong - It's really a reinvention more than an innovation, but whatever gets the job done. 1994's Game Boy Donkey Kong was a fantastic update to the classic every real Nintendo fan has beaten 90-some times. This year's Mario vs. Donkey Kong sort of plays the same role for Donkey Kong '94. Whoever said classic gaming's out of style hasn't played 100 new levels of Donkey Kong with backflips. BACKFLIPS. Runner-Up: Kirby and the Amazing Mirror PARTY GAME - GCN Donkey Konga - I don't care what anyone out there says, Donkey Konga is an assload of fun. Granted, the pricetag is a bit high with each Konga controller at 30 dollars, and the game's music library is a bit limited for such an investment. But if this franchise keeps up the way it has in Japan, we'll have quite the time with Donkey Kongas 1, 2, and 3 next year, right? Another added plus to this game's already obviously party-oriented gameplay is its appeal to gamers of any age, experience, or console loyalty. It's hard for people NOT to be drawn into this game. Runner-Up: Wario Ware, Inc. Mega Party Game$ - GBA Pokémon Fire Red/Leaf Green - Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire won this award last year, and it's no surprise its remake/prequel/cousin has followed in its path. It's Pokémon, which already means endless trading and multiplayer battles, and now it comes with a wireless adapter. What more is there to say? Don't be surprised if next year's Pokémon Diamond/Pearl shows up on here as well... Runner-Up: F-Zero GP Legend BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT - GCN Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Oddly enough, the game that won our "Looking Ahead" award last year turned out to be just how Japan's Famitsu Magazine warned us it would - unengaging, overdemanding, and tiring to repeat. My quick analysis of it all points directly to the difficulty in playing with a friend's character. I mean, it already hurts enough having to ask every player to bring a GBA, but now they also have to level up to match your skill, or the levels you have to play will be too difficult. It does just the opposite of what Nintendo was hoping this game would - invite GBA players to join in some GameCube fun. If you're looking for a game like that, give Zelda: Four Swords Adventures a try. Runner-Up: Donkey Konga's lacking music library - GBA Discontinuing the e-Reader - Wow. What the heck? Sure it seemed a little gimmicky at first, but the e-Reader was one of Nintendo's craziest, most ultra-Japanese toys to hit American shores, and we at NGEB loved it. Super Mario Bros. 3 for GBA showed us just how awesome the peripheral could be just months before the last cards were released. I mean, entire levels were written on cards. They could've continued making SMB3 levels forever! Is that not a vision of gaming nirvana? For another thing, Nintendo could've released the NES Classic Series on e-Reader cards at a MUCH cheaper price, but that's an entirely separate disappointment... Runner-Up: Classic NES Series for $20 each?! LOOKING AHEAD - GCN New Legend of Zelda - First shown as a short trailer at E3 this year, the new GameCube Legend of Zelda promises to kick a whole lot of ass in 2005. Perhaps Nintendo has given in to the pressure, but I'd like to think this change of visuals reflects a change in story. Being a direct sequel to 2003's fan-fucking-tastic Wind Waker, it's hard to imagine a similarly cheery game told in such a dark style. The new Link has grown up and is ready to save New Hyrule from darkness in a chaotic post-Ganon world of tomorrow. Raise your hand if you can't freaking wait. Runner-Up: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat - GBA Wario Ware Twisted! - Last year's GBA Wario Ware and this year's multiplayer port for the GameCube were nothing but strokes of genius. Believe it or not, two more Wario Wares, one for GBA and one for the DS, have already made their way to Japan and are both soon coming to US players as Wario Ware Twisted! and Wario Ware Touched!, respectively. Even more surprising is the fact that Twisted!, for the GBA, seems more inventive and wacky than its DS counterpart. It plays primarily using a twist sensor of sorts. Not to be confused with Kirby Tilt 'n Tumble's tilt sensor, this game instead senses the angle of yaw at which you're holding your Game Boy Advance. It promises to be another mind-bending, heart-pounding packet of gaming TNT, and we at NGEB are pretty sure it'll be GBA game of the year in 2005. You just watch. Runner-Up: Mother 3 (10 years delayed and counting...) GAME OF THE YEAR - GCN Pikmin 2 - Sequels alive! Prime 2 and Paper Mario 2 were two extra-fantastic sequels, but Pikmin 2 takes the cake this year, in our opinion. It's easy to forget after 4 or 5 months just how well-made this little gem was, after the "holiday season" and all. Great graphics, two exciting multiplayer modes, intense action-strategy gameplay, and the finest collection system in any game ever all add up to a sequel that all but blows Pikmin 1 out of the water. We're so glad it came out this year. Runner-Up: Paper Mario 2 - GBA Pokémon Fire Red/Leaf Green - Boy, what a year for remakes. For these to be Nintendo's only real big Game Boy games in a year is kinda' sad. Fire Red and Leaf Green are probably the most well-rounded Pokémon RPGs yet, though, and it's good to see the series come full circle by updating the originals. New features like instant replay before you load your saved game, wireless multiplayer, and of course, awesome graphics make them a winning package. Runner-Up: Mario vs. Donkey Kong - DS Super Mario 64 DS - It didn't seem fair to give a remake of Mario 64 all the awards in the Award Show, since it basically has no real competition. But as the DS' flagship title and probably the best remake we've ever played, Super Mario 64 DS wins an honorable mention as "Game of the Year" for the new portable system. Don't get us wrong, the game has definitely been fun to play. All those awesome DS mini-games and the fun of playing one of the best N64 games with four different characters makes it a pleasant romp. We just wish Nintendo had given us American DS owners the same kind of selection at launch. Wario Ware Touched!, Pokémon Dash, and the DS Band Brothers would've been more than just welcome competition in this category... Runner-Up: PictoChat (yes, it counts) Closing Not since the waning days of the N64 has Nintendo seen such a slow year. It almost hurts to begin talking about the GameCube and Game Boy Advance as if their time is up, because like a fine wine, these systems are truly aging with beauty. While the games are relatively few, they've been fantastic for the most part, and the newborn Nintendo DS brings promise of even brighter times in which Nintendo games continue to push the limits of imagination and ingenuity. Besides another year of high-class gaming, we have Nintendo's long-awaited unveiling of their next generation console to look forward to in 2005. The Revolution will be televised. Stay tuned, space fans.