He wait is officially over. After nearly a year of keeping gamers in the dark about PlayStation Portable (PSP) software, Sony unveiled the first-ever title for its eagerly awaited handheld—Death, Jr., a cartoony 3D action-platformer from developer Backbone Entertainment (formerly Digital Eclipse, maker of Spider-Man: The Movie and the Spyro the Dragon series on Game Boy Advance). The video, shown at the annual Game Developers Conference, featured the game’s main character, the son of the Grim Reaper, running and jumping in vast indoor and outdoor environments, as well as hunting down fiendish creatures with his trusty scythe and pint-sized rocket launcher. (Head to our website, 1UP.com, to check out the minute-long Death, Jr. gameplay video for yourself.) Unfortunately, Sony didn’t bring an actual model of PSP to the conference.

And in other GDC news:

PSP will connect to your PlayStation 2 and computer, enabling you to exchange data such as music and movies. According to Sony, 89 developers are already working on PSP games.

On the Zelda front, Wind Waker Director Eiji Aonuma hinted that the franchise is coming to Nintendo’s upcoming dual-screen portable, Nintendo DS.

Sony is working on five new titles for its EyeToy camera peripheral, including a yet-to-be-named racing game in which players control with their body movements a character grinding on rails.

Sony CEA Vice President Andrew House told attendees that “competitive movement will not be a factor on when we release our next-generation console.” Translation: Sony doesn’t care when Xbox 2 and Nintendo’s next system come out—PS3 can wait.

The next Oddworld Xbox game (a Western-themed shooter of sorts) should arrive on store shelves before the end of the year, but Microsoft will no longer be publishing the title.

Remove the word “Xboy” from your vocabulary. Peter Moore, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, reiterated that the company has no plans to compete with Nintendo and Sony in the portable-gaming sector. Shucks.

Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the man behind Space Channel 5 and Rez, wants to create his next game for PSP or Nintendo DS. He mentioned it would be similar in style to the PS2 musical shooter Rez.

At the fourth annual Game Developers Choice Awards (held during GDC), LucasArts’ Xbox role-playing game

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic won three awards, including Game of the Year honors.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Electronic Gaming Monthly.