MUMBAI: The verdict is out! Nintendo's series of Legend of Zelda video games have been voted the best ever.
The action adventure series Zelda came out on top in list of the best 100 video games ever that was compiled by some writers of publication Entertainment Weekly and cable games channel G4. Nintendo created huge waves a decade ago by releasing what many consider the game boy classic, The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening. The graphics at that time were considered to be way above the competition.
Not content to sit and bask in its laurels, Nintendo has come out with fresh innovations for its new game The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker . The new graphical style employed in this new offering is said to increase the detail in each adventure section or "worlds", the consumer discovers. A major innovation is the changing of text sizes for different emotions. For instance, when characters yell, the text size grows bigger.
As far as the rest of the list is concerned, the cult Doom, from id Software came in second . The extremely violent game came under fire not too long ago. The boys responsible for the Columbine High School shootings in 1999 were huge fans of Doom and supposedly learnt a lot about shooting and killing from the video games they played.
A Reuters report indicates that the classic puzzle game Tetris the criminal adventure games Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City from Take-Two Interactive Software and Madden NFL 2003 from Electronic Arts were also in the top five.
GTA III also came under scrutiny a couple of years ago. At that time head of the National Institute on Media and the Family in the US David Walsh had accused the game of glamourising anti-social and criminal activity. " Game violence is different from movie violence because with a game, the player is in the role of perpetrator, not observer. That is a different kind of psychological role," Walsh had been quoted as saying.
The list appears in the latest edition of Entertainment Weekly. It will be broken down in a series of nightly specials this week on G4, encompasses all genres of games and all systems, from classic arcade machines to today's game consoles.
Coming back to Nintendo in the UK, the Japanese company triumphed on ITV1's inaugural Game Stars awards ceremony. The awards were voted for by the public, and represent one of the biggest ever polls of video gaming opinion.
The company's latest Zelda release won the Game Retail: Most Wanted Award. It saw off competition from Halo 2, Doom III and Enter The Matrix . Nintendo also won Publisher of the Year.