Having advanced a massive 22 award-years in a single earth-year, the 75th Annual We’re Right Awards are under way over at Penny Arcade. If you’re at all interested in more esoteric gaming and an alternative to the usual mass-market rubbish that clogs up the end-of-year reviews on the more mainstream sites then it’s worth paying attention to – last years awards featured the likes of Dynasty Tactics, Sega Soccer Slam and Rez (if you’ve got a PS2 or Dreamcast, you have, like, no excuse whatsoever for not owning this game; I’m not mucking about here – go and buy it). Anyway, if they’ve got WarioWare all the way down at #11, it should be worth seeing what they reckon beats it this year. Personally, my vote for game of the year goes to either Call of Duty on the PC, for simply being absolutely the best WW2 FPS money can buy, or Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance on the GBA, for wasting more of my time than it strictly warranted, and for being an RPG that actually held my attention for more than an hour.
The game I’ve spent the most time playing this year is Do Don Pachi, but it actually came out in 1996, so it’s not really eligible for “Game of the Year” or anything. But if you’ve got MAME lying around, give it a bash. Yes, it’s a vertically scrolling shoot-’em-up, but it’s, er, not exactly Space Invaders.