The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has honored Nintendo with two Interactive Achievement Awards, including Handheld Game of the Year for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS and Adventure Game of the Year for Super Mario Galaxy for Wii.

Both games have also enjoyed strong momentum, with more than 2.5 million copies of Super Mario Galaxy sold since its Nov. 12, 2007, debut and more than 1.1 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass sold since its Oct. 1, 2007, release.

Nintendo received nine nominations in eight gaming categories. The awards were presented the night of Feb. 7, 2008, at the Academy’s annual Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain conference in Las Vegas. The awards are among the most respected in the interactive entertainment community.

I should think that, in a year’s time, we’ll look back on the launch of Super Mario Galaxy as the true beginning of the Wii’s rise to dominance. Sure, it’s got the hardware numbers, and has three top 10 software titles right now, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. To kick off the SMG coverage that’s sure to inundate the Net over the next few weeks, GameDaily has some picks of Mario going zero-G.

Anyone lucky enough to be heading to E for All — and yes, I just said “lucky enough” — will get a chance to play Super Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. Brawl.

Nintendo’s PR firm just pinged the Infendo mailbox with the good news… and there’s more:

Nintendo will be showing a huge lineup of cool games for both Wii and Nintendo DS, including the hugely anticipated Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The Oct. 18-22 event at the Los Angeles Convention Center will be the first opportunity for the public to get their hands on these games and take them for a test drive. In addition, Nintendo will host a daily Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament. Competitors get a free Wii-themed T-shirt, and a different T-shirt will be available each day of the show.

Hands-on play time. Tournaments. Free things. A Pokemon “gotta catch ‘em all” approach to conference swag. Sounds like a pretty good time to me. I take everything back and offer my apologies to the little consumer show that could.

OK, so strike my previous rant on the September Surprise. Nintendo was a little late, but today they came through in a pinch.

Basically, Nintendo is going to be giving away free money to people who pre-order Super Mario Galaxy.

Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy Horoscope
For Monday, Oct. 8, 2007

You’ve got plenty of energy today; it’s a good day to dream of future rewards. After a lifetime spent chasing coins, finally one comes to you!

Now through Nov. 11, stop by a participating retailer and place a deposit to reserve your copy of the magnificent Super Mario Galaxy™ for Wii™. Your cosmic bounty will be great: When you return to retrieve your game on its Nov. 12 launch, you will claim a limited-edition shimmering silvery Mario™ coin, an eternal testament to your foresight.

Don’t put off tasks you know need doing-–surely this is one of them.

So it isn’t really free money, unless your closest friends are mushroom-wearing asexual midgets and you have a curious tendency to go to the wrong house eight times in a row looking for your girlfriend.

And I’m sure it’s just me, but why is the prospect of getting a free, meaningless coin about ten times more appealing than a Spartan helmet DVD case holder?

That’s right. The highly anticipated, Super Mario Galaxy, has reached 700,000 preorders in Japan alone. Preorders in Japan started not to long ago, which makes the number even more impressive. This information comes from Crown Jewel Blog, a respected Japanese blog that covers just about every genre of entertainment. A very rough translation of the article spills the info…

…As for the number of incoming orders of Wii “[mariogiyarakushi]” where now sale is planned in end of the month
It became the successive highest approximately 700,000 book as the title for Wii….

This surprising number of preorders really shows what Japanese gamers want, though after watching Galaxy’s prologue…you understand why. I’m not sure what the current numbers are for the US or Europe, but I’m sure it’s growing. Just one more month!

Do you think Galaxy will overtake Halo 3’s record breaking preorders/sales?

Link

Perty.

Before you start yappin’, I was not in Belgium this weekend. I wasn’t even on the Internet and I certainly haven’t started blogging or writing for any Belgian video game sites. That said, what the magazine Gunk did recently is so positively me that I had to stop, admire it, and then fire off a pithy post to spread the word.

What Gunk did, basically, was fake a review of Super Mario Galaxy.

CVG:

“It is 100 percent not a review”, a Nintendo spokesman told us, who went on to confirm that “no one in the world will have access to final game code until October 10 at the earliest.”

A cheap ploy for some attention? Sure it was, and the score was too low. Galaxy will be the first game to get an 11.0 in the history of game reviews (/sarcasm). It was a cheap trick, but it also did something else. We now know that someone, somewhere out there will have their lucky (yet grubby) little hands on Galaxy by October 10. My bet? IGN’s Matt C. Unless Perrin Kaplan resigns before then. If that’s the case he’s out of luck. Infendo would gladly take up the slack.

[Via Wired; Thanks, Seth!]

Relax, this is by no means a spoiler — but it’s not as if Mario game plotlines are all that hard to figure out to begin with, right? Mario, save princess, fight Bowser. W00t! (Note: Mario does not say “w00t,” nor should anyone else. It’s ridiculous.)

Nintendo Power (via WiiPals):

“Every hundred years a comet passes over the Mushroom Kingdom and rains down magical stars and stardust. As Princess Peach and the citizens of the kingdom are celebrating the centennial event, Bowser and his legions attack. Mario attemps to put a stop to Bowser’s shenanigans, but things go awry: the next thing he knows, he finds himself on a mysterious moon high above the Mushroom Kingdom.”

Then everyone dons black Nike sneakers and track suits and commits suicide. No no, that’s not right. I’m confusing crazy zealots with Mario characters again. It’s the fanboys, you see, they confuse me with their wacky ways.

More Mario info: The game will have 120 stars. 40 Galaxies to Explore. 6 Major Regions.

Power-ups include: Super Mushroom (health to max), Invincibility Star, Fire Flower, Bee Mario suit, Boo Mario suit.

From the preview: When Shigeru Miyamoto suggested this week that games should be fun, it was easy to snigger and accuse him of stating the obvious. But Super Mario Galaxy proves his point to perfection: it’s amazingly, dizzyingly, idiotically fun, in a way few games are these days. We’re not going to call it a classic Mario yet - we simply haven’t seen enough of the game to make that call… but we are going to predict that it will plaster millions of big smiles on millions of faces come November.

I can’t remember the last time I was this excited for a Mario game. I was one of the naysayers on last year’s New Super Mario Bros. for DS (and was admitingly wrong cause it’s a pleasant game!). Having tasted the Galaxy goods at E3 this year, I’m overjoyed ’cause Galaxy is crazy! CRAZY I tell ya.