4 CommentsExpectation of StarFox 64's - Lylat Wars in the UK - appearance on Virtual Console has been ramped up courtesy of ESRB.org.

The website for the Entertainment Rating Software Board has a listing for the game for Wii.

StarFox 64 has been heavily rumoured for Virtual Console, and the listing on ESRB gives strong indication that those rumours are true. We've contacted Nintendo for comment and are awaiting a response.

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Epic's Gears of War was won three categories including Best Game in the seventh annual Game Developers Choice Awards, closely followed by Wii Sports and Okami, which have won two awards each.

Winners of the Choice Awards, the awards program where honours are bestowed on developers by developers, have just been announced at GDC in San Francisco.

As well as scooping Best Game, Gears of War won in the Technology and Visual Arts categories. Wii Sports won in Game Design and Innovation, while Okami also won in Innovation in addition to the Character Design category.

The full list of categories and winners in each is below. The list of nominees in each category can be found on the Game Developers Choice Awards website.

Best Game

Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios)
- Cliff Bleszinski, Michael Capps, Rod Fergusson

Audio

Guitar Hero II (Harmonix Music Systems / RedOctane)
- Jeff Allen, Eric Brosius, Izzy Maxwell

Character Design

Ōkami (Clover Studio / Capcom Entertainment)
- Mari Shimazaki, Sawaki Takeyasu, Kenichirou Yoshimura

Game Design

Wii Sports (Nintendo)
- Keizo Ohta, Takayuki Shimamura, Yoshiaki Yamashita

Technology

Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios)
- Michael Capps, Ray Davis, Tim Sweeney, Daniel Vogel

Visual Arts

Gears of War (Epic Games / Microsoft Game Studios)
- Jerry O'Flaherty, Chris Perna

Writing

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo EAD / Nintendo)
- Kyogoku Aya, Nate Bihldorff, Mitsuhiro Takano

New Studio

Iron Lore Entertainment (Titan Quest)
- Paul Chieffo, Jeff Goodsill, Brian Sullivan

Innovation

Line Rider
- Botjan Cade

Ōkami (Clover Studio / Capcom Entertainment)
- Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya

Wii Sports (Nintendo)
- Keizo Ohta, Takayuki Shimamura, Yoshiaki Yamashita

Recipients for the evening's special awards were:

Lifetime Achievement
Shigeru Miyamoto

First Penguin
Alexey Pajitnov

Maverick
Greg Costikyan

Community Contribution
George "The Fat Man" Sanger ...

Gamers will be able to use the DS as a controller to play Pokémon Battle Revolution when it launches in the west later this year.

Nintendo told CVG: "There will be games that take advantage of a connection between DS and Wii. The first game to do this is Pokemon Battle Revolution."

"In Pokemon Battle Revolution, players can port characters from Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl via the DS and use their Nintendo DS units as controllers," explained Nintendo.

With both the DS and Wii having built-in Wifi capabilities, the two consoles will connect without the need for wires.

Pokémon Battle Revolution is, of course, also the first Wii game to boast online gameplay as we mentioned here last year.

The game will release in the US on June 25. A UK release is yet to be announced.

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Gamers will be able to use the DS as a controller to play Pokémon Battle Revolution when it launches in the west later this year.

Nintendo told CVG: "There will be games that take advantage of a connection between DS and Wii. The first game to do this is Pokemon Battle Revolution."

"In Pokemon Battle Revolution, players can port characters from Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl via the DS and use their Nintendo DS units as controllers," explained Nintendo.

With both the DS and Wii having built-in Wifi capabilities, the two consoles will connect without the need for wires.

Pokémon Battle Revolution is, of course, also the first Wii game to boast online gameplay as we mentioned here last year.

The game will release in the US on June 25. A UK release is yet to be announced.

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PC and Xbox 360 demos of Codemasters' Brian Lara Cricket 2007 have been released.

The 360 demo can be download from Live, obviously, while the PC version is available from Codemasters.

For your download, you get to compete in a warm-up one-day match of three overs between England and Australia, taken from the ICC Champions Trophy 2006 in India.

The full game releases on March 23.

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It's speculated, off the back of a little comment from BioWare, that its hotly anticipated Xbox 360 sci-fi RPG Mass Effect will be out before mid-July.

Speaking to IGN at GDC, the developer's CEO Ray Muzyka indicated that the role-playing game wouldn't be present at this year's E3, which runs from July 11 to July 13 in California.

BioWare is known to be in the final stages of production on Mass Effect - a July release would give it around three months to conduct the last bit of spit and polish on the title. Would that be long enough?

Obviously, the cryptic nature of Muzyka's comment makes it impossible to do anything other than speculate on a release date - but we'll do some digging and see what we can discover.

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Lightsaber-loving Star Wars fan looking forward to the impressive physics-based Star Wars: Force Unleashed will have longer to wait than expected.

Despite being officially confirmed for a November 2007 release, the game's website now deems the game's availability as "TBD", with it now expected to arrive in 2008.

This delay is a huge disappointment, coming so soon after LucasArts showed of an impressive tech demo demonstrating the stunning technology being put into the game. Still, better it be delayed and be as good as we all hope rather than be rushed out unfinished.

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EA and Spielberg formed a partnership last year with the intention of creating dazzlingly amazing story-focused games. Since the deal was announced, EA has been very tight lipped until now...

Speaking to GameDaily, Young was asked about the deal EA and Spielberg struck last year. Nothing's been released officially about the deal or games, but that didn't stop Young dropping a few hints.

He said, "I can't really share any game details, but recall our original announcements was for three projects. Well, two of those are underway right now in the studio.

"The first one, what I can tell you is what you'd expect, sort of, from a Steven Spielberg production. Steven's stories are intimate stories that take place around huge, world-changing events... sort of, big stories shown through the eyes of a small group. Doug Church is producing it...

"The second project is something Lou Castle is producing, one of the great producers in this industry, and that's one of the products we're building for the Wii. Very exciting and interesting..."

Apparently Spielberg's in the LA studio once a week and he's a joy to work with.

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Deus Ex creator Warren Spector believes improvement in design and delivery of game narrative and story is vital to the future of the videogame industry, and necessary to pull in a much-needed new wave of games players.

"I don't know about you, but my budgets are going up. We need to sell a lot more copies or we're not going to be able to make games for much longer. I think stories can be key to reaching nongamers, but we have to start creating more emotionally satisfying and interactive stuff," Spector said during an address at this week's GDC.

He went on to voice concerns that the power of new hardware could be detrimental to development of narrative, character involvement and character interactions in videogames, due to developer's being now able to ramp up visual quality and because "players expect a certain level of graphical quality".

"People who want to tell stories in an interactive manner, I think their job is about to get a lot harder," Spector opined.

Speaking further on the topic and addressing the games development industry at large, he said that games players should be "let off the rails" and that devs should "work with players" to tell their stories, as opposed to leading them around on a leash.

But Spector was also quick to point out that gameplay shouldn't suffer at the hands of a new approach to, and focus on, story and narrative.

"If you think that story has no place in games, you're crazy. If you think story is everything in games, you're just as crazy", he said. "It's all about balance."

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