Digital Press' First Annual
Classic Gaming Achievement Awards
Ten years covering the classics, it was high time we startedrecognizing the folks who make the classics come to life (or keep thembreathing). Our first annual awards are listed below. The nominations weresubmitted by me to the Digital Press staff and they handled the voting. Therewere at least four entries in each category.
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| There was a significant amount of competition here: ColecoVision fans also got to play Lord of the Dungeon and Power Lords this year; for the Atari 2600 there was Sword Fight and Sea Battle, and a new game even appeared for Vectrex (Tour de France). By a vast majority David Rolfe's Steamroller won the voting. The clever combintion of maze-chase action and outstanding graphics make this a "classic" classic. | The homebrew scene (games made by hobbyists) was a bit slow this year but there were a few standouts. We really liked Thomas Jentzsch's Thrust for the 2600, Daniel Bienvenu's ColecoVision games and the slew of Vectrex games to choose from. But the winner is Christopher Tumber and his adaptation of the arcade game Omega Race for the Vectrex. | We REALLY appreciate the folks in this category. They allow games for non-supported systems to be mass produced for us, the hardcore. With Songbird and Hozer both generating lots of new titles for gamers to choose from, this was a tough category to vote on. Intellivision Productions won us over with the games they unveiled at CGE2K and take the award home. |
 | Join us in honoring this year's winners by visiting their websites and checking out their goods:
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| Imagine this! We're giving awards to our competitors! Let's see the Oscars give out an award to best Awards show. Actually we know most of the folks in this category personally. Just getting to a set of nominees was difficult because there are so many web sites dedicated to classic gaming. Chris Cavanaugh's Classic Gamer Magazine was the clear winner in a large field: 2600 Connection, Good Deal Games, Syzygy, 2600 Nexus, and ClassicGaming.com among them. Chris is a stud though, and his magazine is an entertaining, informative work of art. | We know what you're thinking: Pong was released in 1999, wasn't it? Well, this is our first year doing this so Pong made the nominations as a late '99 entry. It was up against several other Hasbro titles (Q*Bert, Frogger 2, Breakout) as well as Konami Arcade Classics and Namco's Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness. We actually had to re-vote on this because it was so close, but the deserved winner is Hasbro's Pong. Clever level design and furious multi-player games really "took us back" to the day. |