Fri, Feb 11, 2011 | 16:21 GMT

Yu Suzuki to receive Pioneer Award at GDCAs

Think Services has announced that Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki will be the recipient of this year’s Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Suzuki, who’s also created OutRun and Virtua Fighter, will also give a rare one-off development session at GDC next month in a session featuring Cerny Games’ Mark Cerrny in a talk called “Yu Suzuki’s Gameworks: A Career Retrospective” on March 2.

“By creating classic titles from Out Run through Virtua Fighter and Shenmue, Yu Suzuki has truly created some of video games’ iconic game design, and was a key favorite from our Advisory Committee to be awarded this year, during the 25th holding of GDC,” said GDC director Meggan Scavio.

ThinkServices also announced the Ambassador Award will go to two recipients: Tim Brengle and Ian MacKenzie, managers of the Conference Associates program at GDC.

It follows an announcement in January that Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux is to receive the Lifetime Achievement award.

The Game Developers Choice Awards takes place on March 2.

5 comments

EscoBlades
11/02/11, 4:26 pm

*claps*

YoungZer0
11/02/11, 4:56 pm

Congrats, nobody played your games.

OlderGamer
11/02/11, 5:03 pm

Well desurved. He created a huge amount of fantastic games.

OrbitMonkey
11/02/11, 5:13 pm

Friend of mine was playing Outrun in his room, waaaay back in the day. Totally blown away by the graphics, especially the smoke. Didn’t realise it was from the living room downstairs being on fire till the fireman broke in