The annual Golden Joystick Awards have been presented, with the introduction of the gaming Personality of the Year award.

This year’s Golden Joystick Awards were held in London with the first presentation of the “Hall of Fame Industry Personality of the Year” going to Shigeru Miyamoto.

The company behind this annual UK based awards ceremony is Dennis Publishing, which publishes a number of games and lifestyles magazines and websites. Many of the awards are voted for by the readers of sponsoring websites and magazines.

This is what Mr Miyamoto said in a video acceptance speech:

Play Mario Kart and Kirby online after you gobble up tonight's turkeys.

The fine folks over at the Warp Pipe Project have just released Warp Pipe 0.3 Beta. That means the GameCube tunnelling program is available for all to download and enjoy.

You'll need a pretty mean broadband connection in order to get the most out of the program's LAN-faking capabilities (at least 128kbps upstream). However, Warp Pipe does support region-free play, meaning American, Japanese and PAL versions of the game can all play against each other.

Show up dressed as Mario to compete for a prize.

We told you about the Mario wax figure a while back, but now Nintendo is beginning to promote the upcoming debut. On December 9th, Mario will become the first video game character to be immortalized in wax at the famous Hollywood Wax Museum on Hollywood Boulevard.

We'd expect some of our more rabid readers to attend such an event anyway, but Nintendo is adding encouragement with a Mario look-alike contest, to be held on-site at the wax figure's public unveiling. The first place winner will receive:

Beta release looms and Mario Kart plays it smooth.

The guys behind the Warp Pipe Project have updated their website with some news on the beta release in development. The program is currently running Mario Kart: Double Dash very smoothly across a distance of 250 miles, and optimization is continuing. You can download a movie of the current performance from their site at the link above.

In other news, the need for a router has been axed, so you can now use Warp Pipe with pretty much any broadband network/connection method. The beta will be released in the very near future, which will allow everyone to start playing Mario Kart (and Kirby Air Ride) online. The beta will continue to be updated on a regular basis, including upcoming support for 1080: Avalanche. Then version 1.0 will be released in spring 2004, which will include a front-end user interface and other additional features.

Talk about a face lift.

Nintendo of America's official homepage has gotten a major upgrade over the weekend. You can take a gander at it by heading over to the usual web address, but here's a quick rundown of the new stuff.

The most obvious difference is the new white backdrop, which makes the site look really slick. Also, the official game list has become more searchable. The big addition, however, is that after literally years of "maintenence," the Nintendo.com forums are officially up and running.

Students at the University of Wisconsin can take a mini-course in game development from Nintendo-affiliated DigiPen Institute of Technology.

DigiPen is the stuff of dreams for many Nintendo fans. Located just down the street from Nintendo of America in Redmond, Washington, Digipen Institute of Technology was the first and is still the best school for game development. A large percentage of its graduates are hired directly into the nearby studios of Nintendo Software Technology, where Wave Race: Blue Storm and 1080: Avalanche were developed.

Of course, we can't all go to DigiPen, but now students in Wisconsin will have a chance to taste the experience for themselves. DigiPen is holding a special two-week course over the winter break at University of Wisconsin - Parkside. It's open to all students of the university, but space is limited. See the attached flyer for more information. The University of Wisconsin Parkside is located south of Milwaukee and north of Chicago, so readers in those areas are encouraged to look into the viability of attending this program.

A lot of people all over the world are taking in the sights and sounds of Ivalice.

Square Enix recently released their Q1/Q2 fiscal year 2003 figures, and unsurprisingly, the company is picking up some serious cash with the release of titles like Final Fantasy XI Online and Tactics Advance.

Being a Nintendo site, we're only concerned with the Game Boy Advance title (though PS2 owners can expect to be playing with 400,000 PC players online by the time they see the console version), and FFTA has sold pretty well: 330,000 copies in Europe, 460,000 copies in Japan, and an astounding 760,000 carts sold here in North America. That's well over 1.5 million sold worldwide, which is a stupendous number for a portable game.

From the Dreamcast to the GameCube, a lot of gamers have been, er... phulfilling their phantasies.

With Phantasy Star Online III: C.A.R.D. Revolution due out in Japan next week, Sega thought it would be a good idea to remind everyone of the success that the previous games in the series had.

From the first game in the series for the Dreamcast, up until the beginning of this month, the total amount of registered players across all versions and systems (including the GameCube's PSO Ver. 1&2) has hit 600,000. This number only signifies how many people registered, and doesn't necessarily mean there are currently that many PSO players right now, or that that many people own a copy of a game.

Play a little puzzle game to see some GBA screenshots for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Golden Sun 2 and Advance Wars 2.

The last of the “thinking games” for Game Boy Advance from Nintendo this season is Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, available in Europe from 24th November. Golden Sun 2: The Lost Age and Advance Wars 2 were released earlier in the quarter.

To celebrate this, Nintendo UK have launched a “Brain Game” website with a small “match the pairs” game. Clicking on the boxes reveals part of a picture from these titles, matching two that are the same gives you the full size picture.

If you complete the entire puzzle within a limited number of clicks, you’ll be taken to a gallery with a selection of screenshots from each game.

Ooh! Head to the store! Now!

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME(tm) SHIPS FOR GAMECUBE(tm) TODAY

November 18, 2003 - Ubisoft's highly-anticipated Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has officially shipped for all major consoles, with the Nintendo GameCube version heading for retail today. The PC version will follow in the coming weeks. With fluid animations, ingenious and challenging level design, a gripping story and an inimitable hero with the ability to manipulate time, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time delivers an extraordinary, singular gaming experience - one that's been repeatedly mentioned as a strong candidate for Game of the Year by several industry heavyweights.