Walk of Game winners see stars

San Francisco's Sony Metreon, the electronics behemoth flagship storefront for all things gaming and gizmo, today announced the winners of the first Walk of Game, a tribute to outstanding achievement in the gaming industry done in the style of Tinseltown's Walk of Fame. Nominees were decided by a group of industry experts and winners were selected by gamers through online and write-in voting.

Gamers acknowledged two pillars of gaming for the available Lifetime Achievement stars: one who created the industry and one who effectively revolutionized it. Nolan Bushnell, creator of the groundbreaking Pong and founder of Atari, and Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's creative mastermind, are the first human inductees into the Walk of Game.

Will Wright, founder of Maxis and creator of titles SimCity and The Sims, and Sega's Yu Suzuki, finished third and fourth in voting, respectively.

On the virtual side of things, four spots were up for grabs in the category of favorite game or character. Hot on the heels of the most successful game launch in history, Halo and its cyberorganic protagonist Master Chief took the top two spots for favorite game or character. Three of Miyamoto's creations took spots three through five: multititle star and plumber Mario, and Link and Zelda of The Legend of Zelda. Yuji Naka's Sonic the Hedgehog took the sixth spot.

Because Walk of Game rules stipulate that "if a game and a character from that game both finish in the top four, the publisher will decide which receives a star," Bungie's Master Chief and Nintendo's Zelda will be thrown back in the mix for next year's voting, to take place in September 2005.

This year's winners will be officially inducted into the Walk of Game in early 2005, and each will receive a large steel star planted on the floor of the Metreon.