Over this past weekend, a milestone was hit when Sonic the Hedgehog officially turned 16 years old. Sega’s mascot has been a teenager for some time now, but still has quite a rich reputation that he’s brought to the table in the gaming world, along with bringing a few friends with him for the ride on the gaming rollarcoaster.

What does this mean in terms of what is going to happen in the future for the blue speed-demon? Well, lets first recap on our beloved hedgehog’s life thus far.
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Last night, Level Up reported via their Newsweek blog that NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime will be making an announcement about new WiiWare downloadable games: original titles similar to those of Xbox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network. Today it has become a reality!

According to the release, WiiWare™ is “a game-creation service that will allow developers large and small to create new downloadable video game content for sale by Nintendo through the Wii Shop Channel” that “paves the way for smaller, more creative games to make their way to the public at lower prices, without any inventory risk to developers.”

Projects will be announced a later date, with first WiiWare offerings will not be available until early 2008. There is no indication of who is involved, nor how the independent developers they hope to foster can gain access to this development kit.

Compare this to Microsoft’s XNA Studio, which allows developers to create games cross-compatible in both Windows XP/Vista and Xbox 360. The technology is readily available (and free!), although the development kit that allows you to test your code on your 360 has a subscription cost of $100 a year — a drop in the bucket for the development budget of any serious offering.

Check back with us as more news develops. In the mean time, leave a comment and let us know what kinds of games you’d make for the Wii!

With the animated Doctor Strange DVD approaching its release date (August 18th, available for standard DVD format preorder here, and in Blu-Ray format here), there’s a ton of information available on it already. Read on after the jump to find out details on the DVD extras, Steve McNiven’s art process, and about the next Marvel/Lionsgate animated film – Avengers Reborn!
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X-Men #200
Written by Mike Carey, art by Humberto Ramos & Chris Bachalo, cover by David Finch

Just look at that David Finch variant cover. Beautiful, no? I imagine that the gatefold variant we have showing will be wildly overpriced in your local shop, but if it’s not, that’s definitely the version I’d get.

As for the book itself, Mike Carey’s been writing some strong X-Men stories lately, if not as epic as Brubaker’s space opera in Uncanny. And with the arrival of last week’s Endangered Species crossover/prologue-to-the-real-crossover, this book is the big kickoff to not only that, but what may well be an important story for the upcoming fall crossover, Messiah CompleX. If you’re planning on following the X-stories for the next few months, this is a book you definitely don’t want to miss. And hopefully, if Carey’s previous work is a good indicator, we’ll even get some good storytelling out of it.

To be perfectly honest though, I really just want to own that cover. Awesome.

You know you’ve done it before. You get your hands on a piece of bubble wrap, and you can’t help but compulsively begin popping the little bubbles one by one for hell knows how long, or even just twisting the whole thing in a massive fit of rapid-fire popping. It’s one of life’s little pleasures, and now someone is cashing in on the craze.

Bandai has swooped in to capitalize on this wonder with the new PuchiPuchi infinite bubble wrap toy. Designed to feel and sound like real plastic bubble wrap, you can continuously pop the bubbles on these little marvels to your heart’s content. They’ve even thrown in little twists to keep things interesting, such as unique sounds for each 100th pop!

So now, you can annoy the hell out of people around you with constant bubble-popping while also feeding your compulsion with these pocket-sized little toys. Sounds like a sure-win to me.

I’ve already told everyone I love this thing, made a few prank calls with it, and even annoyed viewers of my video blog. But since those I haven’t been able to torment with it don’t know what I’m talking about, I had to elaborate.

Now there is a variation I didn’t mention: some of these do NOT have Peter Cullen’s voice. Make sure you buy one that says “real movie sounds” and hit the button on the side of the helmet to make sure you get the real deal.

Professional Eater Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi has injured his jaw while training in his sport, an accident which seriously hinders his ability to compete. Yahoo News reports that Kobayashi has jaw arthritis and can only open his mouth the width of a fingertip, an insufficient size for eating hot dogs.

Kobayashi held the world record for hot dog eating, a sport at which no human being could defeat him until 2003 when he faced off against a bear and lost as the “Alaskan Crucher” devoured 50 hot dogs in 2 minutes and 36 seconds. After losing this match he claimed he would train hard and face off against the bear again and win, something which at this point may never happen.

The bear still appears to be in proper health to compete.

Check out this entry on Kobayashi’s blog for more on his injury… if you can read Japanese.

Watch Kobayashi vs. the Beast after the jump.

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