Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)

What a brawl in this category. We had to go to a double tie-breaker but in the end Rockstar's sequel edged out the incredible Splinter Cell for XBox by 1 vote. Tough choices all around as Beach Spikers Volleyball and Eternal Darkness, both for GameCube, tied for 3rd place.

Handheld Game of the Year: Metroid Fusion (Game Boy Advance)

Metroid Fusion was the clear winner here. We loved the update to the Metroid series on the Game Boy Advance AND the GameCube, both games offering a different style but the same classic Metroid "feel". 2nd place was Pinball of the Dead. just a few votes behind.

Sleeper Hit of the Year: Pirates - The Legend of Black Kat (Xbox, PS2)

One of our favorite categories, so we decided to add an award to recognize our favorite title for 2002. Turned out to be a tough category that had to go to a tie-breaker. When the smoke cleared, Pirates had stolen the booty from Pinball of the Dead for GBA by 1 vote. We just had way too much fun with this game. Party Boat! Whoooo!

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
(Rockstar Games)

Metroid Prime
Metroid Fusion
(Nintendo)

Pirates
(Westwood Studios)

CGE Services

Bejeweled
(Daniel Bienvenu)

Classic Game Publisher of the Year: CGE Services

A runaway victory for the CGE guys, their second consecutive year winning this category. Activision was a distant second. The CGE guys set the standard for game releases in 2002 by releasing FOUR previously unknown titles, all complete with boxes, manuals, etc. The clincher was hiring former game artist Scott Ross (Miner 2049'er) to design the artwork for Pick-Up and Save the Whales.

Homebrew of the Year: Bejeweled (ColecoVision)

A surprise win for this sleeper hit. Bejeweled squeaked in just ahead of a pack of superb homebrew offerings. A tough category indeed with numerous great titles. Tied for second place were Castle Blast and Koffi: Yellow Kopter for the Atari 5200, and Vix/Tsunami for the Vectrex. This is also designer Daniel Bienvenu's second time winning this award!

Classic Game of the Year: Pick-Up (Atari 2600)

Yet another close battle here! Pick-Up, the unreleased game by former Fox and Imagic programmer Mark Klein narrowly edged out Save the Whales by Beck-Tech and Cube Quest by Paul Newell. All are great titles but Pick-Up had the slight edge in playability and repeat value areas.

Best "Modernized" Classic of the Year: Metroid Prime (GameCube)

Metroid Prime scored top honors while Activision Anthology for PS2 nearly pulled off an upset. There were more "new" classics in 2002 than we had originally thought, and the voting was spread out among a slew of great titles including Maximo, Metroid Fusion, and Rygar.

Classic Gaming Publication or Website of the Year: Digital Press

Awesome! This is the first year DP took this award! You'd expect some level of bias here, but we had to work really hard to convince THESE judges. It was tough to dispute though: the ongoing paper publication got new "legs" and got back on schedule; the 7th Edition Collector's Guide was released; a music CD of classic video game remixes rocked out courtesy of Tony Fox; and the website took on a new identity with all-new regular columnists.