Okami director Hideki Kamiya, in Tokyo picking up an award from the 10th Media Arts Festival for that title, was asked how he felt about the latest entry in Nintendo's long-running Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Blog Joystiq translates his response thusly:

"To be frank, I was disappointed when I saw [Twilight Princess'] visuals. I'm a Zelda freak—it's no overstatement to say that I created Okami because of Zelda. I really wanted [Twilight Princess] to have that regal aura, because Zelda was what we were aspiring to. I wanted it to show me things that were surprising, but..."

Okami and Twilight Princess both scored top honors in our annual reader-driven Game of the Year competition, for non-Nintendo platforms and Nintendo home console game of the year, respectively.