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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.

Look, we get just as tired of seeing Nintendo's remarkably high software sales figures every few months as you do -- that's why, this time around, we're going to do things a little differently. We're just going to add up all the life-to-date totals for the company's biggest titles, and just drop them in one big chunk. Ready? Okay, here we go: 247,780,000.

Well, that sure didn't work. Fine, we'll break down each of the games highlighted by Nintendo's recent financial report (warning: .pdf link) and post their FY2010 sales and life-to-date sales after the jump. (Fun fact: All of the Wii games actually have "Wii" in the title. It's like the Nintendo 64 days all over again!)

There are all kinds of different reasons for choosing to write one story over another. For instance, I'm telling you about a Pokémon-centric GameStop promotion solely to irritate Joystiq co-worker and co-brother Griffin McElroy with my ignorance. It's a pretty big sacrifice for a major gaming website with millions of readers, but Griffin loves Pokémon more than you love most members of your immediate family, so it's absolutely worth it.

So, apparently, if you take Pokémon Platinum, Pokémon Diamond or Pokémon Pearl (are there really that many?) into GameStop between January 30 and February 14, you can get a Pikachu-colored Pichu. That Pichu will also give you access to the mythical, spiky-eared Pichu in Pokémon Heart Gold and Pokémon Soul Silver (There are more of them? And they're called that?!). So make sure to say "Hi" to Griffin and his girlfriend there.

Oh, and by the way: That thing to the right is a Pichu. I don't know how to break it to you, Griffin, but he is Pikachu-colored and has spiky ears.

Click to go-oh into the galleryEven though you guys are all going to buy them anyway, Nintendo has seen fit to offer pre-order bonuses for Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, the upcoming DS remakes of the Game Boy Color's Gold and Silver. Starting February 1, a pre-order for either version at "participating retailers" will earn you a figurine featuring the Legendary Pokémon on the game's cover, produced by Japanese toy company Kaiyodo (the company also responsible for Revoltech figures like the amazing Professor Layton coming soon).

You'll get Lugia (left) with your SoulSilver reservation, and Ho-oh with copies of HeartGold. If you get them both (as we know many will), you'll totally be setting yourself up for some thrilling battles on your desk when nobody's around.

Today, Nintendo announced that the PokéWalker accessory, a Pokéball-shaped pedometer that interfaces with Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, will be packaged with copies of the games when they arrive in stores on March 14. Nintendo had previously dated Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver along with the rest of its Q1 lineup, but it omitted mention of the accessory -- though the game's Amazon listing didn't.

The Pokéwalker allows players to earn "Watts" with their steps, which can be used both to catch Pokémon inside the device and unlock routes in the main game. In addition, the device enables wireless item trading between two Pokéwalker carriers. Gotta walk the mall to catch 'em all!

Yes, the year technically isn't over yet -- but let's be honest: Nobody's going to be buying any new games over the next four days. As such, Dengeki publisher ASCII Media Works thought it appropriate to track the 30 best-selling games in Japan for 2009. Or, rather, 99 percent of 2009.

There aren't too many big surprises; Dragon Quest IX took top honors with 4,089,136 units sold, and Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver came in second with 3,301,873 in sales. Despite having only been out for a little over a week, Final Fantasy XIII actually managed a sixth place finish with 1,455,505 units sold. Check out the full list of top-selling games after the jump.

Though Japan has been enjoying the adorable bounties of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver for months now, us poor westerners still don't know when to expect the games on our store shelves, or whether they'll include the Pokéwalker accessory which allows you to take one of your encapsulated soldiers out for a discreet night on the town. Fortunately, if the games' Amazon listings are on the money, both these Unown pieces of info have been divulged: According to the listings, they're coming March 14, along with the Poke Ball-shaped peripheral.

The latter information actually comes from the games' supposed box art, which we've posted above. We've contacted Nintendo to find out if the Amazon listing is authentic. If it's not, we're going to give them the most guilt-inspiring sad puppy face anyone's ever seen. It will be absolutely brutal.

ONM has posted the first English screens of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, coming to North America and Europe in spring 2010. The site highlights the newly redesigned Pokedex, which comes in both red and pink, and enables touchscreen-based obsessive browsing of your collection. Also visible: your starter Pokemon, who now follows you around like Pikachu in Pokémon Yellow.

There's still no mention of the PokeWalker accessory, unfortunately, making it increasingly likely that the Pokemon-training pedometer will be left out of the Western release.

Despite the handicap of not being for sale in most of the world, Dragon Quest IX for the DS sold more copies than any other game in the world between July and September of this year, according to a Top Global Markets report. With 3,925,000 copies sold in Japan, it outsold the number two best-selling game for that period, Wii Sports Resort, by almost 1,000,000 copies -- and that game was available worldwide.

Following Wii Sports Resort in the top five: Madden NFL 2010 at 2,612,000, Pokemon HeartGold And SoulSilver at 2,068,000, and Halo 3: ODST, which was only out for a week in Q3, at 1,847,000 copies. All these games have plenty more sales ahead of them as the holidays approach!

We got our first indication that the Japanese gaming industry wasn't doing too hot in July, when gaming hardware and software sales from the first half of 2009 had dropped 24 percent from the same period last year. The recently released sales figures from the first half of fiscal 2009 (which runs from March 31 through September 28) are equally downtrodden: According to the industry analysts at Enterbrain, the Japanese games market fell 10.5 percent during this six-month period. That figure represents a 15.1 percent drop in hardware sales and a 7.5 percent decline in software sales.

The various models of the Nintendo DS were the biggest sellers during this period, moving nearly 1.7 million units combined. Appropriately, the top two selling titles during the half-year were Dragon Quest IX, which sold nearly 4 million copies, and the recently released Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver editions, which sold a little over 2 million combined. Not faring quite as well are the PSP (813k units sold), Wii (594k units sold), PS3 (581k units sold) and Xbox 360, which moved a paltry 137k units in the first half of the fiscal year.

No use crying over spilled milk, we suppose. Things can only go up from here! Unless, of course, they continue to go down. That's also an option.

[Via Kotaku]

The top two games on the Media Create charts for the week ending September 13 are Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver. Despite coming out just one day before the end of that week, the games managed to outsell everything else in Japan, almost by a factor of ten. The distribution of the 1,442,990 copies sold was pretty evenly split between the two versions, with Soul Silver's 722,904 copies edging out Heart Gold's 720,086.

The number three spot belongs to Tomodachi Collection, also on the DS, followed by Dragon Quest IX, PS3's Gundam Senki, and Wii Sports Resort. The only other new game in the top ten is MAPLUS Portable Navi 3, a PSP map/navigation program.

Turn those baseball caps backwards and clear you calendars, because Nintendo's latest Pokemon titles, Pokemon HeartGold and Pokemon SoulSilver, are set to invade North America during spring of next year. The games release in Japan next month and take players back to the Johto region, recreating the classic Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver games on the Game Boy Color. The press release made no mention of the walking functionality, which kind of bums us out. What, you didn't think we would actually beef up our Pokemon by playing the game, did you?

Yes, the once-vague "fall" launch window for the pedometer-infused pokéremakes, Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, has evolved into a much more specific Japanese release date of September 12. The game will be catchable if you've got 4,980 yen ($50) to spare, which seems an exorbitant price, but is actually the standard cost of Pokémon titles in Japan, thanks to that completely unwarranted Adorability Tax.

North America hasn't gotten a release date or price for the remakes -- probably because Nintendo has yet to formally announce the games in the States -- but we'll let you know when it finally does. You'll know which post contains this announcement, because it'll be written in bold all-caps to reflect our uncontrollable excitement.

Turns out that the same technology used in Personal Trainer: Walking to train you will also help you train Pokemans in Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. According to Andriasang, the Pokémon Sunday TV show revealed a new pedometer device used in the game, called the "Poké Walker," that resembles a cross between a Pokeball and the Pokémon Mini handheld. For some reason, Nintendo decided to make another wireless pedometer peripheral for the DS rather than allowing people to use the existing one.

The device allows you to build one Pokémon's experience and personal affinity simply by walking. In addition, the Poké Walker generates "watts," which can be used to catch wild creatures and find tools inside the Poké Walker world to send back to the full game.

Check out the first screens of the remakes in our gallery, as you come to the terrifying realization that Nintendo didn't mention this game at all at E3.

As promised, today's episode of Pokémon Sunday brought the now not-so-surprising reveal of Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver. While the actual revelation wasn't particularly mind-blowing, the episode did feature a few seconds of gameplay (posted after the break) that will likely whet the appetites of many a pocket-sized monster fanatic.

The gameplay itself isn't that interesting -- the protagonist merely walks in circles a few times -- though we do get a good sense of the Pearl and Diamond-esque art style the remakes will adopt. Also, if this clip is any indication, it looks like your starter pokémon will follow your character around in a Pokémon Yellow-esque fashion. We feel so sorry for Pokémon detractors. If you guys had hearts, that news would make them feel pretty warm.