Nintendo 3DS competition winners
The people we're sending to Amsterdam.
Last week we invited two of you to join us and the rest of the gaming press on a jaunt to smoky Amsterdam later this month, where Nintendo is hosting an event to – hopefully – announce the release date and launch line-up for its upcoming 3DS handheld, due out this March.
As well as hearing from the company brass, attendees will also get to play the games before almost anybody else. Half the people at Eurogamer have only seen the 3DS on the internet, so the winners really will be part of a privileged elite – at least until the end of the quarter when Satoru Iwata and company have inevitably sold four million of the things to every man, woman and Nintendog.
In order to stand a chance of netting this magnificent prize trip, we asked you to submit reviews of Nintendo games released in the last 12 months, creating a pool from which we would then judge and pick our two favourites. The winners will not only fly to Amsterdam for free to play on the 3DS, but will get to report on their adventures for Eurogamer when they get home. (Note to the winners: we're pretty mean about deadlines, but we're pussycats when it comes to Viva Pinata references.)
And the winners are... HairyArse and the_dudefather!
Longtime friend of Eurogamer HairyArse put his quill to task expounding the virtues of Kirby's Epic Yarn - not to be confused with Kirby's Epic Yam, despite our website font's insistence to the contrary. "Kirby's Epic Yarn is undeniably cute, delightful and brilliantly well designed," he refused to deny. "Every single stitch looks painstakingly hand-sewn and even in standard definition the Wii yet again makes the point that strong visuals are more often than not down to fantastic design." Quite so.
Meanwhile, the_dudefather assailed us with his views on the DS curiosity known as Art Academy. "If you're used to Photoshop or any other desktop program, you might find the application quite lacking in some respects... It makes up for this by achieving a great tactile feel," he wrote. "Paint streaks as it's spread, pencils hiss as you sketch and colours smudge as you dab... It all leads to the game teaching you some of the ways you can do these effects in reality, rather than making them abstract."
Congratulations to the both of them. We're in the process of sorting out the chaps' travel arrangements now, and you'll be able to read their thoughts on the 3DS soon after next week's event, which takes place on 19th January.