In an impromptu press event late last night, Nintendo made a number of surprise announcements concerning the Wii – and the one that has got the fanboys foaming at the mouth is that Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog will appear as a playable character in the upcoming Super Smash Bros Melee.

In addition, the first two original titles for Nintendo's upcoming Wii Ware download service have been revealed - Nintendo is developing Pokemon Farm, a game that interacts with DS titles Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, whilst Square Enix is working on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

Elsewhere at the event, the platform holder confirmed that it will soon launch a DS download service that will allow users to sample a range of titles from their home – cutting out the need to seek out an authorised public download station.

And on the downloads theme, it was also confirmed that there have to date been 7.8 million purchases from Wii’s Virtual Console service – a statistic that suggests sales of around $50 million.

Other news included confirmation that a new Mario Kart, featuring motorcycles, is on the way next year, that Wii Fit will be released in Japan on December 1st and that Capcom’s Monster Hunter Freedom 3 will now be a Wii title.