Sorry to get your hopes up with that title. Sam and Max isn’t happening for the Wii, at least not yet. (UPDATE- It is now!)
But something else is. A press release issued by Nintendo during the Game Developers Conference this week delt with Wii Ware, their answer to the original content currently gracing both
Microsoft and Sony’s consoles. The downloadable games service is now confirmed to start up on May 12th. Lots of developers are working on titles, such as Square Enix, who’s cranking out yet another Final Fantasy game (remember when word of a new FF game used to be special?) But the most exciting news is that Sam and Max Seasons 1+2 developer Telltale Games will be bringing a brand new episodic game to the system. Let’s hope it’s more like Sam and Max and less like CSI: Hard Evidence, which I’m almost done with and will have a review on shortly…
Along with that there’s a title called LostWinds (one word) by Thrillville developers Frontier being developed as one of the early Wii Ware games. It looks like an interesting 2.5d platformer.
Nintendo also announced a release date for the next big game for casual players, Wii Fit, which will hit on May 19th. Let’s see how many people do that for a month and never touch it again (I’m looking at both you and my beer belly, Eye Toy Kinetic.)
I’m still curious as to how they’re going to get around the space requirements of the Wii, without using the SD cards that are used as memory cards for the system. Almost anyone with a camera has an SD card these days, and they’re getting cheaper every day… I’d actually rather some games require the cards than be forced to deal with a incredibly limited amount of storage room.
There’s still no word on pricing for the games just yet, but we’ll definitely hear about it in the upcoming months, along with a list of confirmed launch titles.