As we slowly drift out of summer — Can someone send Ra a memo on that one? I'm sweating like Anubis in a Baptist church. — and into the interminably long holiday season, gaming news goes from a steady trickle to a deluge capable of wiping out small Panamanian villages.

Today is no exception, according to my inbox full of variously dull and incredibly awesome announcements. Here's a short rundown:

A Lil Roger For The Ladies.
  • Sega
  • A Lil' Roger For The Ladies.

Virtua Tennis 4 Announced: The greatest tennis series in the history of tennis series' (which also has a pretty solid claim to the titles "best sports games ever" and "only reason to care about tennis that doesn't involve blond Russian teenagers") is getting another sequel. Currently it's only been announced for the PlayStation 3, via a press release promising compatibility with Sony's latest swath of gimmicks (including their 3D TVs and the Wii-emulating Move), but if you can look past all of that annoying marketing bullshit, it sounds like yet another reason to love Sega.

And the world can always use more reasons to love Sega.

The Sims Medieval Gets A Trailer: While this game was announced a short while back, it wasn't until just now that EA decided to release footage from the game for prospective players to make snap judgments and get overly angry about.

In case you missed the news the first time, the succinct explanation for The Sims Medieval is that the wildly popular Sims series is ditching its suburban "rule virtual lives with an iron fist" premise for the somewhat similar "rule virtual lives with an iron fist, only this time in the Dark Ages."

I'm just shocked that whoever pitched this concept lead off with this idea instead of the inevitable "The Sims IN SPAAAAAAAACCCCEEEEE."

I give it two years before we see that spin-off.

Team Jacob
  • Blizzard Entertainment
  • Team Jacob

Blizzard Announces Collector's Edition For WoW: Cataclysm: Surprising none, the next World of Warcraft expansion will be released in a standard edition as well as an $80 Collector's Edition. This morning Blizzard released official details of what the more expensive release will include. Aqui:

· Art of the Cataclysm art book, featuring 176 pages of never-before-seen images from the archives of the Blizzard Entertainment cinematics department and the World of Warcraft development team, as well as progressive visuals from multiple stages of development.

· Exclusive in-game pet: he may not be a breaker of worlds just yet, but Lil’ Deathwing will still proudly accompany heroes on their struggle to save Azeroth from his much, much larger counterpart.

· Behind-the-scenes DVD with over an hour of developer interviews and commentaries, as well as a special Warcraft® retrospective examining the rich gaming history of the Warcraft universe.

· Soundtrack featuring 10 epic new tracks from Cataclysm, including exclusive bonus tracks.

· Special-edition mouse pad depicting Deathwing menacing the ravaged continents of Azeroth.

· World of Warcraft Trading Card Game cards, including a 60-card starter deck from the Wrathgate series, two extended-art cards, and two Collector's Edition-exclusive hero cards, marking the first appearance of goblin and worgen heroes in the TCG.

If all of that sounds familiar, it should. That was almost exactly the same content included in the Collector's Edition for the last WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Since I really liked the WotLK CE, I shouldn't be bummed about the Cataclysm CE, but after Blizzard trumped every other CE ever released with their special version of StarCraft II, I guess I just expected more.

All I'm saying is that a hearthstone-shaped USB thumb drive with WarCraft, WarCraft II and Tides of Darkness pre-installed would go a long way.