The shortlist for the 2006 EIEF Edge Award, which is to be presented at this year’s Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, has been revealed today.

The award aims to reward titles which expand expectations of what games are capable of. Drawn from games reviewed by Edge over the past year, the shortlist rewards neither commercial success, nor necessarily popularity, but instead highlights the games which have marked out innovative new paths or achieved new standards of excellence. This shortlist is then considered by an international panel of game industry insiders: people whose professional insight into games hasn’t dimmed their personal passion for playing them.

Margaret Robertson, editor of Edge said: “The end of the hardware cycle is always seen as a great opportunity for innovation, and this year’s shortlist is clear proof of that. The arrival of Nintendo’s DS has enabled a whole range of entirely new ideas to be explored, but even on more traditional home consoles new approaches and graphical styles have been paired with unusually high standards of innovation and excellence.”

The nominees for the EIEF06 Edge Award are:

• Amped 3 (360, developed by Indie Built, Inc., published by Take Two)

• Brain Training (DS, developed and published by Nintendo)
• Dragon Quest VIII (PS2, developed by Level 5, published by Square Enix)
• Electroplankton (DS, developed by Toshio Iwai, published by Nintendo)
• Fahrenheit (PC/PS2/Xbox, developed by Quantic Dream, published by Atari)
• Guitar Hero (PS2, developed by Harmonix, published by Red Octane)
• Killer 7 (GC/PS2, developed by Grasshopper Inc, published by Capcom)
• Ossu! Tatakae! Ouendan! (DS, developed by Inis, published by Nintendo)

The jurors for the award will be announced in an upcoming issue of Edge.

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