Take a look at the Japanese box art for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (via DS Fanboy). The art style and content is very reminiscent of The Wind Waker, which makes us curious: given the passage of time since the GameCube release and the fulfillment of a more "adult" Link with Twilight Princess, how you do you feel about the young Link look? Think about it, and check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
Joystiq hands-on: PlayStation Home
Joystiq interviews BioShock LE cover artist Adam Meyer
Readers pick best webcomic: Wii and my shadow
Today's goal-reaching videos: Mario Strikers Charged

News
Smash Bros. site now up, music detailed
Skid Row, Poison, Extreme in 80s Guitar Hero
New Metroid Prime 3 screenshots
Step right up for Carnival Games: more minigames for the Wii
Riddick remake confirmed for PS3, Xbox 360
Sony's High Velocity Bowling started 'literally right before' Nintendo announced Wii Sports' Bowling
No DirectX 10 update for Supreme Commander
Konami expects Metal Gear Solid 4 by March '08
Tom Clancy's EndWar to be fully voice-controlled
Haze will have four-player co-op campaign
Halo 3 beta adds Banshee on Valhalla
WoW patch 2.1 helps feed the habit

Rumors & Speculation
Unlikely Kane & Lynch director under consideration
New Wii download service (not VC) coming, hints Impossible Mission dev

Culture & Community
The Arsecast reborn in bite-sized bits
Dave Karraker's attempts to restore Sony's PR
Ubisoft CEO Guillemot dismisses E3 as 'only for the US'
Famitsu gives Resident Evil 4 Wii a 9.5 out of 10
Engadget's how-to make an Xbox 360 laptop (part 3)
Shrinky Dinks + 8 bit gaming = BitKits
PC World products of the year: Wii, 360 Elite ... um, no PS3
Leipzig benefits for E3 death, gets 40% larger
Getting deep on Dead Rising
Blizzard grants dying child's wish

If one plans to append adjectives to Nintendo's music composer, Koji Kondo, the word "legendary" makes for an obvious start. The Legend of Zelda, along with Star Fox and Mario, are just some of the properties Kondo has contributed to since joining Nintendo in 1984. Attendees of this year's Video Games Live concert will be pleased to learn that the man himself will be making an appearance and performing "one of his favorite melodies" on stage. Can't say we've heard that one -- could someone hum a few bars?

The event, which brings GDC to a symphonic end, is being held at Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium, San Francisco on March 9 at 8PM. Other highlights in this year's show include Martin Leung with a new piano arrangement, an acoustic medley by original LucasArts composers (Monkey Island!), a Chris Kline Contra presentation and a performance by voice-over artist, Dee Baker.

Get your tickets here, if you please.

[Via Press Release]

The 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards have at long last confirmed a growing, industry-wide suspicion: Gears of War is pretty good. In a ceremony held last night at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences bestowed eight shiny statuettes upon Epic Games' monsters vs. testosterone epic. In addition to winning overall Game of the Year, it picked up gongs for Console Game of the Year, Online Game Play, Animation, Art Design, Visual Engineering, Outstanding Character Performance and Action/Adventure Game of the Year.

Wii Sports waggled three awards out of the academy, including ones for Outstanding Innovation, Gameplay Engineering and Game Design. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Guitar Hero II and Loco Roco all came away with double wins, whereas The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess made off with a single prize for Outstanding Story and Character Development (in your face, Saint's Row!). Inaugural Lifetime Achievement awards went to Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln, for their involvement with the NES and the rebuilding of a shattered games industry during the 1980's.

Check out the full list of winners after the break.

Read -- AIAS press release [PDF]

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has announced the nominations for the 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. Though Gears of War has yet to make an acquaintance with that irrelevant temptress, Emmy, it stands a very good chance of winning a statuette that actually matters -- it's been nominated in ten different categories, including Console Game of the Year, Action / Adventure Game of the Year, and Overall Game of the Year.

The AIAS (probably not pronounced "Ahyeehuss") also fancies The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, each garnering six nominations. These, along with Guitar Hero II and Wii Sports complete the list of classy nominees in the Overall Game of the Year category. The full list of nominees is available on the official Ahyeehuss website.

[Via GameDaily BIZ]

See also: Joystiq's Game of the Year

Gears of War (Xbox 360)

What the hell just happened? Did we honestly pick Gears of War as the best game of 2006? No, that can't be. The plan was to throw juvenile tantrums and to violently thrash against the machine! To blind the world with an elitist badge and proclaim an innate resistance against games that are both popular and heavily marketed! It's a shooter, for Allard's sake. You shoot things. With guns.

The senseless violence is but one reason to look away from the screen in disgust. The other, as you may have concluded already, is the appalling state of the game's graphics. They make Pong look like an M.C. Escher painting being displayed in a room pumped full of hallucinogenic gas. If you can even discern your pixelated soldier from the flat environment, you'll note how you get repeatedly punished for running blindly into a hail of bullets and neglecting to take "cover." Not only is this completely unrealistic and contrary to modern warfare, it's a needless refinement to a bizarre, self-preservation concept in the genre. See, it's not even a very good shooter.

The complete lack of immersion and excitement carries over into the game's terrible online cooperative mode. Some idiot on your friends list can rudely jump into your game at any point and then proceed to get in your way at every available turn. Multiplayer deathmatch isn't any better, forcing you to work with 3 other buffoons (who can't even circle-strafe or jump) if you hope to succeed.

Add a forgettable MIDI soundtrack, poor pacing and a complete failure to emulate an action film to your considerations, and you become perfectly equipped to answer the pertinent question. Game of the year? Obviously not.

The runners-up are presented (in order) after the break.

First4Figures is back again, with another collectible statue based on the ever-so-popular Nintendo franchises of our youth. This time it's not the growth-hormone abusing Fierce Deity Link or the creepy Skull Kid, but the hunky all-AmericanHylian Ocarina of Time Link, adult version. Like the rest of F4F's offerings, this one doesn't come cheap. These aren't action figures you're going to be playing with, but collectible statues you're supposed to display. Think of it more like the collectible statues in Wind Waker, except you don't need to take pictures of people to get them ... and you don't have to find a sculptor's hidden underground lair.

Some people truly enjoy their franchises; Paul Hantschel is one of those people. It would seem Paul wasn't satisfied with cheap plastic knock-off replicas of the Master Sword and decided he would want to own the real deal. Just don't stick it to your Wiimote and lose control. With £1,800 in hand -- or a whopping $3,300 -- he asked a blacksmith by the name of Rob Miller in Scotland to build it. 10 months later, Paul is battling Dodongos with his trusty sword.

The $3,300 is certainly a hefty price but, given the details seen in the sword, well worth it. We're wondering what kind of metal the smith used ... most likely SCA-approved iron. While we're sure Paul already knows this, he should keep the thing oiled to keep it from rusting. In any case, this method of obtaining the Master Sword is much better than fighting your way through a forest or getting thrown into the future.

[Thanks, Justin H.]

Watch The Legend of Zelda: Hero of Time and dazzle at the thrilling spectacle of "a boy from a mysterious forest" in "a legend as infinite as time." There's an evil threatening him and a princess summoning him, so there's only one thing to do: put the tights on, grab the Master Sword, and mess up some Moblins.

Alright, it's a fan film but I'd honestly pay more to see this than oh, I don't know... anything by Uwe Boll. They're saying that principal photography is in the can, with post-production work on animations and CGI left to complete. The Zelda fanboys in the house can read more about the production here.

[Via digg]