If the unveiling of Nintendo's 3DS-based Kid Icarus game wasn't enough to make Nintendo fans smile, some brand-new characters from the company may very well be on the horizon. Speaking during a recent investor call, as picked up by Sankei Newspaper (via 1UP), Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto admitted that "We need new game characters soon," adding that we could see the new characters as soon as next year. While we might argue that Nintendo still has plenty of characters left languishing in a vault somewhere (Balloon Fight, anyone?), it certainly wouldn't hurt to see some fresh faces from the man who brought icons like Donkey Kong and Link into the world. (And no, Miis do not count. Seriously.)

Though Miyamoto didn't bring up where said new characters might end up, the possibility of it being on any hardware other than Nintendo's apparently doesn't exist -- during the same conference call, Nintendo head Satoru Iwata answered one analysts question about the subject with,"Nintendo's software and hardware are the same thing. Other companies don't share Nintendo's values or traditions when it comes to creating devices. We are absolutely not thinking of doing that." Yikes!