Everyone’s favorite Princess rescuing plumber is 25 years old today. That’s right, Super Mario has been around since 1985 and is probably one of the most recognized game characters in the world. This news makes me feel old.

Nintendo is celebrating Mario’s birthday with a contest where you can win a bunch of Mario themed prizes. They are giving away a range of Nintendo DSI XL consoles as well as a copy of the new Super Mario Bros. You can also check out a cool video which shows Super Mario Bros history over the last 25 years here.

Nintendo must be pretty happy with the news that the Wii video game console has now sold 30 million units in the US alone. That figure was achieved in just 45 months, making it the fastest-selling console in the history of the industry. Wow.

It also hit the milestone 15 months faster than the next best-selling console. Obviously this is due to the Wii’s innovative gaming experience, even if some consoles do end up collecting dust after a few months when the novelty wears off.

I like my iPad and I have taken it with me many places for reading and playing games when I get bored. Lots of folks are finding that the iPad is good for a great many things, including a group of surgeons in Japan.

These docs used the iPad during surgery apparently to view images to help during the procedure. The iPad was held by an assistant during the surgury. I imagine it went something like this — scalpel, suction, iPad, landscape please.

It’s the console with a name only a performing circus clown could love. And it is now out and about, doing it’s thing in Brazil. According to UOL Tecnologia, Tectoy’s Zeebo game console is on sale now in Rio de Janeiro. After that it will spread across the rest of Brazil later this year.

The system costs R$499 (Or about $299) and ships with three games in its memory. FIFA 2009, Need For Speed Carbon, and Brain Training. They are all in Portuguese, if you were wondering. The console also ships with credit for three free downloads, which are: Prey Evil, Quake, and Quake II. Video below.

We love video games around here. Whether we’re playing the Xbox 360, the PS3 or even an old Atari 2600. We thought we would take a look at the history of gaming consoles from 1972 to the present. You grew up with the vintage consoles, you play the new ones, so take a walk down memory lane and revisit all your favorites from the massive list below.

That’s right. New York City’s Toys “R” Us Time Square gets its very own Nintendo department. The Nintendo department, located on Level One of the Toys “R” Us international flagship store, is almost 1,000 square feet and is easily visible from the store’s windows overlooking Broadway. It includes more Nintendo products then you can shake a Wiimote at, and should make hardcore nerd fanboys wet their pants.

The department store will include a Wii wall so fans can slam a Wiimote into a TV that they don’t own, and eight Nintendo DS systems for customers to play with and try out new games. There’s also a Nintendo gallery with images from Nintendo’s history in video games.

Last week we told you about the Beamz Laser Music System, but we had no idea how um…retarded this thing is. I’m still not sure if I watched a comedy sketch or not and I’m not entirely clear on what era I’m living in.

Unless you are a middle-aged metrosexual who loves lounge music, you really aren’t going to want this thing for $600. It makes you look like a cat pawing a ball of yarn. Your money is better spent on video games. The big bald guy seems so desperate to fill the void in his soul with his playing. Probably because he looks like fat bald Vader from Return of the Jedi. The video is below.

Nintendo is celebrating its first year anniversary for the Wii with more good news. In the first week of release for its heavily anticipated title “Super Mario Galaxy” over 500,000 copies of the game were sold by retailers. This distinction places SMG as the bestselling Wii video game to date. It’s also one of the best reviewed games in Nintendo’s entire history with many publications calling it to be a top candidate for Game of the Year honors.

While Microsoft will likely put out its own press release next week to hype the anticipated big sales of its new IP “Mass Effect” it will also probably try and steal some thunder from SMG’s big sales by pointing out that its flagship title “Halo 3″ sold over 2.7 million copies worldwide within the game’s first seven days of release this past September. To be fair to Nintendo their 500K figure only includes domestic sales of “Super Mario Galaxy” but as PC World’s gaming blog points out its estimates for European and Japanese sales of the game would still peg the title at below 1 million units sold for launch week. So is Mario still as popular worldwide as Master Chief or has a new king of video games finally been crowned?

This game cube will actually fit in your pocket. It’s a new interactive cube game called levelHead. The technology is fairly simple. Software is used to detect the cube’s motion and a set of digital cameras then display the appropriate image, depending on your response. Currently, it is still being worked on. As it stands now, the players job is to guide a wandering silhouette through this amazing new cube world. For instance, if you move the cube left, the person will walk left. The goal is to direct him to the exit of the virtual world inside. You can check out a video of the game after the jump.

Richard Garriott has been one of the founders of computer role-playing games since the days of the Apple II. Under his gaming name of Lord British, the creator of the best-selling “Ultima” series and the first MMORPG “Ultima Online”, Garriott cemented his place in the video game history books. Now he wants to set another record: to be the first second generation astronaut (his father Owen Garriott was a NASA astronaut on Skylab and one of the early Shuttle missions) and the first-ever video game creator to fly into space. Garriott has announced his plans to fly to the International Space Station in October 2008 where he will help perform a number of science experiments.

“I am dedicating my spaceflight to science,” remarked Garriott in a press release. “It is my goal to devote a significant amount of my time aboard the space station to science, engineering and educational projects. I understand the necessity for conducting research in extreme environments whether it is collecting microorganisms from deep sea hydrothermal vents to carrying out experiments in the continuous micro-gravity of Earth orbit. We need to be adventurous in mind and stimulate our intellects to answer today’s most daunting scientific questions and to invent tomorrow’s technological marvels.”

Microsoft let it be known today pre-sales of the three Halo 3 editions are on fire at the moment, having soared past the 1 million mark. The game debuts Sept. 25.

Halo 3 preorders are so intense, said Microsoft, it expects the Legendary Edition to be sold out by the time the game launches. Retailers such as Gamestop and Best Buy have indicated that presales are among the fastest in video game history.

Wouldn’t it be great to enjoy your favorite video bar games without all of the smoke? Now, if you have $3,795 lying around, you can via the Megatouch Gametime.

The Megatouch Gametime, with its 15-inch touchscreen display, looks much like the counter bar games you find when you are out on the town having a drink. This pricey video game machine allows you to play 100 integrated games across a variety of categories including quizzes, puzzles and kid’s games. Up to four players can compete against one another and the Megatouch remembers the high score and game history of each player which uses it.

The Nintendo Wii has emerged as the most revolutionary game console since the Atari 2600 because it’s doing what no other console in history has done: made it cool for the entire family to play a video game together. If you have any doubt of this claim I present to you Nyko’s Wii Party Station.

This battery powered hub of fun has four slots for a quartet of Wii-motes, a storage drawer for your nunchuks, four numeric LED displays so you can keep track of each player’s points and four cups that can be …

The long awaited World of Warcraft expansion “The Burning Crusade” hits store shelves today. What can fans expect? Two more races, a new profession, a new continent, new mounts and a load of other stuff. Not to mention the fact that a player can now achieve level 70.

They can also expect long queue times and server crashes if history is any indication. With 8 million subscribers already online world wide, the infrastructure may be a little strained.

Blizzard originally delayed …