It's long been known that "Project Needlemouse," announced by Sega last September, was the codename for a new 2D, console Sonic the Hedgehog title. It was subsequently revealed (much to our delight) that Sonic would be its only playable character, and we now know that the game will, in fact, be a direct sequel to 1994's Sonic & Knuckles on Sega Genesis. Not only that -- it'll be (wait for it) episodic.

We also know that the officially titled Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 looks like a proper Sonic game -- i.e. there's hope for it yet.

GameSpot, which has a first look at the blue bolt's new downloadable XBLA, PSN and WiiWare adventure, reports that "episode 1" will be available on all three platforms "this summer." Additionally, Sega confirmed to the site that the game will support online leaderboards and motion control on Wii and PS3 (SIXAXIS for the latter; sorry, "Arc").

You can watch the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 after the break. What do you think?

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The latest carrot to be dangled before the teeming mass of The Legend of Zelda fans comes from a recent interview in Famitsu magazine, via Andriasang. There, director Eiji Aonuma says he hopes that Nintendo will be able to "show something playable" at E3. What? That's, like, four years ahead of schedule! We jest, but it's not like Nintendo really needs to rush anything. It's The Legend of Zelda. You want it, even if it's supposed to be different this time around.

Aonuma wouldn't provide much in terms of how far along the game has come, other than talking up the MotionPlus support and stating the team has "progressed in development since last year" and that the "core areas have come into clear view." We take that to mean the team has finished rendering Hyrule Field.

With posts that go back to 2006, the public embarrassment that is Sadness is far more interesting than the game could have ever been. The epic tale of vaporware, which is comparable to Duke Nukem Forever, receives another notch in its timeline today.

The latest is that the Sadness website is gone and the URL is up for grabs. Developer Nibris has yet to speak on the matter and, frankly, whatever they say doesn't really matter.

Dare we say this is the end of Sadness? Heck no. Where there's a developer and a desperate fan base, there's a way.

[Via GoNintendo]

Yep, it says it all right there in the headline, folks. Gameloft swiftly took $122 million from consumers in 2009, roughly equating to 15 million digital copies of DSiWare Oregon Trail. Alright, alright, the digital distribution-based publishers probably sold some of its other games too, we guess -- mobile games (in general) represented a whopping 94 percent of the company's sales in 2009. And despite our voracious habit for mobile games here at Joystiq, North Americans were second place in terms of worldwide sales at 32 percent, with Europeans leading at 39 percent and the rest of the world trailing at 27 percent. Good luck catching up, rest of the world!

And yes, even amidst the global economic recession, Gameloft predicted "further growth in 2010 in terms of revenue and profitability." The publisher also pointed out its strong position in the long term, saying it will "benefit from the rapid emergence of digitally distributed video games on mobile phones, tablets, consoles, and from major technological innovations." You catch that tablet reference in there? Yeah, we did too. Hey, it's 2010, right? The future. We're in it.

The official GDC 2010 website has revealed that Metroid director Yoshio Sakamoto will be leading a lecture at this year's conference. The lecture is titled "From Metroid to Tomodachi Collection to WarioWare: Different Approaches for Different Audiences." The session will focus on Sakamoto's "thought processes and techniques on game designs that have allowed him to find market acceptance for his expansive portfolio of titles." In other words, it will delve into the success of Sakamoto's many wildly different games.

Assuming the lecture has a Q&A session, we also imagine it will focus on journalists needling Sakamoto about Metroid: Other M. Curiously, the lecture listing also fails to mention the inevitable follow-up event: Watch fanboy journalists and developers rush Sakamoto to get their DSes autographed.

[Via Gamasutra]

Back in early 2009, THQ hinted at more games in its De Blob franchise. In early 2010 ... it's hinting again. During an investor conference call, CEO Brian Farrell told us to expect more from its amorphous hero in fiscal 2011 (which takes place in real time between April 2010 and March 2011).

The franchise has been similarly amorphous, consisting of one Wii game, one iPhone game, and one cancelled DS game. Given THQ's recent attitude toward Nintendo consoles, if we were to guess a platform for whatever this new game is, we'd go iPhone.

In November, Yuji Naka's studio, Prope, revealed a new original IP, Ivy the Kiwi? ... for Windows Mobile. The latest Famitsu reveals that the developer is porting the game to some game consoles! Namely, DS and Wii. Namco Bandai will release Ivy the Kiwi in Japan on April 22 -- it's the first Prope game to be published by someone other than Sega or (in the case of the Windows Mobile version) Prope itself.

However, despite its origins as a mobile game, and its simple pick-up-and-play gameplay (which involves stretching and bouncing drawn lines to move a bird through a maze), Ivy the Kiwi is destined for retail on consoles, at a price of ¥3,990 ($43).

As you might expect, several larger-than-life figures ("some of the biggest playable characters on Wii," in fact) from world mythology are embroiled in the titular tournament, including a minotaur, gladiator, Valkyrie and Gorgon. Up to two players can enter the arena and have at each other with different weapons, magic and supported Classic Controllers. You can also summon "a man-eating lion," which scientists have repeatedly shown to be the only useful variant of the lion.

Gallery: Tournament of Legends (Wii)

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WBIE announced today that Scribblenauts, 5th Cell's puzzle adventure game that spawns any object a player writes in, has now shipped one million copies worldwide. According to WBIE, which, as publisher, has an admittedly biased view of the situation, Scribblenauts has now reached "blockbuster status."

Keeping in mind that the reported figure is one million units shipped (and not necessarily sold), it's still an impressive number for a third-party DS game -- especially one as weird as an adventure game that features puzzle solving through the use of one's vocabulary. How are other developers expected to rip off that formula?

We've seen some pretty comprehensive breakdowns of how the U.S. gaming industry performed last year -- however, industry analysis firm GfK-ChartTrack recently compiled a sizable amount of data to inform us how the whole planet did. In short, the planet did okay. U.S. sales faltered somewhat, the U.K.'s past-gen console sales sunk like a rock (or, rather, an original Xbox), and Japan stayed afloat upon a makeshift raft of Nintendo DS RPGs.

The worldwide best-selling game of 2009 was (you'll never guess) Modern Warfare 2, with 11.86 million units sold. The runners-up were all proud members of the casual Wii suite: Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Wii Fit Plus, and plain ol' Wii Fit. For more details on how the gaming industry did across this great big terrestrial mass we call home, check out MCV's analysis of the statistics.

If you're hoping to play a cute DS game starring a young witch, but not NIS's A Witch's Tale, Natsume has you covered. The publisher just announced Witch's Wish, a new game joining its DS lineup of extraordinarily quirky stuff.

Witch's Wish stars "Vicky," a girl who wants to go to Hogwarts witch school, and has to help save her town from some kind of "dark force" while simultaneously learning how to do magic. The ESRB reveals a bit more about the gameplay, describing "comical duel sequences" -- rock-paper-scissors style duels in which "buckets of water are dumped, little tornadoes may twirl, and bursts of cloud-and-fire are sent." Precious!

(Retailer orders for) Witch's Wish will be fulfilled this spring.

We've always thought the regular inclusion of slot machines in the kid-friendly world of Pokémon to be bit strange, and apparently we weren't the only ones. According to Official Nintendo Magazine, the English-language versions of Heart Gold and Soul Silver have had their gambling devices replaced by a new mini-game which, according to the magazine, is surprisingly fun.

In the new game, players must flip over panels in a five-by-five grid. Some panels hide multipliers for the player's coins. Some, however, hide Voltorbs, which end the round and cause the player to lose all coins accumulated to that point. You can guess where each Voltorb is hidden using numerical clues at the end of each row and column -- it other words, its Picross meets Minesweeper. Meets Pokémon. Yes, please.

There are plenty of things to love about Final Fight. There's the ridiculously diesel, shark pile-driving wrestler-turned-mayor the story is centered around, Mike Haggar, and the fact that citizens in Metro City like to store whole turkey dinners inside of dirty oil drums. And, after 20-plus years, somebody's finally getting around to making a movie.

You'll find the initial teaser trailer for the fan-made project after the break which, while a very tasteful take on the series, has made one small error: Jesse Ventura is the only man on the planet who can play Mike Haggar. We're sure this is paying more than his current gig, so get in touch!

[Via Capcom-Unity]

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Apparently, Sega's plan is to represent every Sega franchise ever in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing -- except, of course, for Segata Sanshiro. The publisher announced two more playable characters today (well, four, actually, in pairs): Virtua Fighter's Akira and Jacky, and Bonanza Bros.' Mobo and Robo. The Virtua guys appear to be riding in a red Ferrari, which would add the OutRun franchise to the list as well. All these reveals are in line with the character portraits found hidden on the website.

NiGHTS will appear in the game as well, though not in a capacity that will cause superfans "DiGi" and "Trippy" to lose their bets and burn their NiGHTS memorabilia collections. The androgynous dream-monster will appear as the flagman in the racing game.

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia says that Sony is in for a good 2010 -- he expects the PlayStation 3 to experience its largest year-over-year growth from last month's sales among all consoles, and for Sony to beat its own record from the month before for the console's best sales ever. The PS3 appears to be on a roll, and January sales are expected to continue the trend.

Bhatia also says that the Wii's sales are being hurt by "meaningful shortages," and points out that just 28% of the stores NPD checked in January had Nintendo's console in stock. Bhatia also suggests that Xbox 360 sales would be up slightly, due to a big GameStop promotion, and that software sales would be down in general. Not unexpected, given that January almost never matches up to the frenzy of the holiday season, but 2010 has already started off with a bang in terms of quality releases. NPD's official info, released soon, will let us know if there were sales to match.