I would have thought the press release announcing Hurry Up Hedgehog was a joke if there weren't screenshots to prove it's actually a puzzle/boardgame and not an action platformer. Because my first thought was that some enterprising young lawyers at Sega are going to be working late tonight. But it turns out this isn't a nod to another hedgehog so much as an issue of the people in Germany speaking, like, a whole other language.

Hurry Up Hedgehog! game play dynamic is based on the popular board game Igel Ärgern (also known as Egelrace) loosely translated "Hedgehogs in a Hurry" and designed by Doris Matthäus and Frank Nestel.

I fully support developers for the Nintendo DS -- or any platform, for that matter -- working from German boardgames. To many videogamers, German boardgames might seem like an esoteric place to turn for inspiration. But for those of us into boardgames, it's rich territory to be mined.

Hurry Up Hedgehog, whatever the heck it's supposed to be, is published by O-Games. Called that because you make an "O-face" when you're playing? Actually, it's called that because it's the videogame publishing arm of Oxygen Interactive Software. I blame my lowbrow inclinations on the doofuses who thought it would be funny to found a company called Gamecock.

After Hurry Up Hedgehog, O-Games will publish Marco Kart, in which a plumber races against a a monkey named Mule Zilla to save Princess Pear.