October 28th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Game Awards | No Comments »

An international jury of experts has chosen the 26 nominees for this year's International Mobile Games Awards. The awards spotlight the most innovative and creative mobile games from around the globe.

The nominees for this year are;

Best Casual Game

Pancake Flips (Maxence Delaval -France)
Tropical Towers (RealNetworks -USA)
iBubble Boom (Zed -Spain)
Gear Wager (iGameStudio -India)
Kissing Frenzy (Tequila Mobile -Poland)

Excellence in Connectivity

Real Racing by Firemint (Australia)
Melokey, by C4M (France) and Jadestone (Sweden)
Combat Pillows by Sleepteam (Czech Republic)
Cubic Republic by IKS (Poland)
Party Island Bowling 2-in-1 by Digital Chocolate (USA)
Gamevil's Pro Baseball 2009 by Gamevil (South Korea)

Excellence in 3D

Real Racing by Firemint (Australia)
Kroll by Digital Legends (Spain)
Kodo Evolved by Tommy Palm, Sweden
Zen Bound by Secrit Exit (Finland)
BioShock by India Games (India)
Galaxy on Fire 2 by Fishlabs (Germany)

Excellence in Gameplay

Ghostwire by A Different Game (Sweden)
Chokkan Game by Taito (Japan)
Edge by Mobigame (France)
Secret Title by AirPlay
Secret Title by Nokia

Best Real World Game

Kurai: The Dark Monolith by Antonio Garcia (Spain)
Aikon Ghost Hunter by Jon Hayward (Australia)
Ghostwire by A Different Game (Sweden)
FastFoot-Challenge by Urban Team (Germany)
Move Ya! by T+1 Solutions (Estonia)
Kweekies by Int13 (France)

The IMGA jury commented: “We were agreeably surprised by the high quality of the submissions this year and the successful application of a wide variety of technologies such as multiplayer functionalities, social networking, augmented and mixed reality, GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometers and touch screens.”

Dr. Mark Ollila, Director of Games Publishing, Nokia commented, “We are excited to see developers creating original concepts that push the boundaries of mobile gaming. Nokia has a passion for innovation and creating rich games experiences on mobile devices and is pleased to be a sponsor of this year’s IMGA.”

“AMD is a pioneer in mobile gaming graphics technology, and we are pleased to support the IMGA again to recognize the very best mobile game developers,” said Jani Karlsson, director of strategy, AMD Handheld division. “As we continue to drive the handheld device ecosystem, it’s exhilarating to see developers take full advantage of ever more realistic graphics.”

"The strengths of mobile handsets are now being capitalized on to place traditional game story lines into the real world as never before. Games like these are going to help drive technology innovation across the spectrum of mobile hardware and software," said Justin Radeka, technology evangelist, ARM. "Larger screens and rapidly improving use of 3D graphics are enabling these IMGA nominees to develop consumer expectations for mobile handsets in new directions -watch out portable game players…"

Guy Tessier, President of Eurom