The winners of the 2006 Best of E3 Game Critics Awards have been announced, with Nintendo picking up a total of five awards, from a record number of thirteen nominations. The nominations and winners were agreed by a panel of on and offline journalists that include representatives from a diverse a range of publications as The Los Angeles Times, GameSpot and Rolling Stone. Only games which the judges themselves were allowed to play were nominated for the various awards, with non-playable titles at the show not being considered in any category. The all-important Best of Show award was won by Nintendo’s Wii console, beating off competition from the likes of Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Gears of War and Spore. The Wii, which debuted in playable form for the first time at E3, also scooped the Best Hardware award, with Nintendo also winning the Best Handheld Game award for The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, Best Sports Game award for Wii Sports and the Best Racing Game award for Excite Truck on the Wii. The second biggest winner in the awards was Will Wright’s ambitious life simulator Spore, which won awards for Best Original Game, Best PC Game and Best Simulation Game. Epic Game’s Gears of War on the Xbox 360 was the only other multi-award winner with nods for Best Console Game and Best Action Game. Other winners include Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed for Best Action Adventure Game, Ninja Theory’s PlayStation 3 exclusive Heavenly Sword for Best Fighting Game, BioWare’s new Xbox 360 title Mass Effect for Best Role-Playing Game, Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander for Best Strategy Game, Harmonix’s Guitar Hero II for Best Puzzle/Trivia/Parlor Game and Splash Damage/Id Software’s Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for Best Online Multiplayer Game. A full list of nominees can be found at the official Game Critics Awards website.