Vice City sweeps the boards at BAFTA Games Awards
Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has added yet more gongs to its trophy cabinet, winning five BAFTA awards at last night's inaugural BAFTA Games Awards ceremony in London, as well as the Sunday Times Readers Award.
Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has added yet more gongs to its trophy cabinet, winning five BAFTA awards at last night's inaugural BAFTA Games Awards ceremony in London, as well as the Sunday Times Readers Award.
It was certainly a big night for Grand Theft Auto, as ceremony host Bill Bailey stated, with the Scottish developer walking off with BAFTAs for design, sound, action title, PS2 title and PC title.
Two games received two awards apiece - with Sony's Eye Toy: Play taking home BAFTAs for children's game and technical achievement, while Nintendo's Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising won the Game Boy Advance and strategy game BAFTAs.
Nintendo took home four awards, while Electronic Arts took three - with Nintendo taking the Gamecube game award for Metroid Prime and the adventure game award for Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker as well as the two awards for Advance Wars 2, while Electronic Arts picked up the multiplayer game award (Battlefield 1942), the sports game award (FIFA 2004) and the music award (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets).
The Game on Any Platform BAFTA (an awkward way of saying Game of the Year, but there you go) went to the superb WWII first person shooter Call of Duty, which was bizarrely also nominated in the strategy game category despite being one of the purest examples of an action FPS game we've ever seen.
The other gongs handed out went to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox game award), Soul Calibur II (animation / intro award) and Project Gotham Racing 2 (racing game award).
Finally, a special award was presented to Chris Deering, former president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and now president of Sony Europe, for his work on the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles over the past decade.
The awards ceremony, the first games-only awards to be run by BAFTA, took place in London's Raddison SAS Portman Hotel, and was attended by around 350 industry guests, with an after-award party being sponsored by graphics chipset maker NVIDIA.