Let's take a quick breather from all the drama and seriousness of those LittleBigPlanet and interlaced PSP-3000 news items, shall we? For now, we celebrate gaming as a whole!

To usher in the London Games Festival (which starts today, and runs up until November 7), we hear from Sega via a press release. Turns out their blue hedgehog was crowned king of video game characters in a poll.

Yeap, out of some 500 votes casted in the "most popular video game character" poll, Sonic the Hedgehog garnered 24% of total votes, making him the top video game character against the likes of Mario, Lara Croft, and Niko Belic. Check out the final tally!

The UK’s top ten most popular video games characters are as follows:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog (24 per cent)
2. Super Mario (21 per cent)
3. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) (16 per cent)
4. Donkey Kong (11 per cent)
5. Pac Man (10 per cent)
6. Link (The Legend of Zelda) (5 per cent)
7. Max Payne (4 per cent)
8. Pikachu (Pokemon) (3 per cent)
9. Niko Belic (Grand Theft Auto series) (2 per cent)
10. Blanka (Street Fighter) (1 per cent)

What? No Sackboy? No Master Chief or Marcus Fenix (and aww, Dominic Santiago)? No Solid Snake or even Drebin? Ok, maybe not Drebin. But what about Little Sister or Pyramid Head or... or... or Tingle? (Well, it is halloween season, after all, so... yeah, Tingle's up there with BioShock and Silent Hill.)

Coupled with the press release is a batch of photos showing Sonic having fun around London. Cute as some of the pics are, I worry for the Londoners who might have been traumatized to see this huge blue mascot running around the city that day. (What's up with that "Le gasp!" pose in the car?!)

  

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Related articles:

• London Games Festival 2008 officially announced