Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Hey, a Japanese Virtual Console update we don't have to be jealous of! Usually, Japan gets all kinds of great stuff, and we get, at best, Japan's great stuff from a month ago. This week: nothing to fret about, really.

• Front Line (Famicom, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points)
• Adventures of Lolo (Famicom, 1 player, 500 Wii Points)
• Golden Axe II (Mega Drive, 1-2 players, 600 Wii Points)
• The Kung Fu (PC Engine, 1 player, 600 Wii Points)

We like Golden Axe II, but we feel confident it'll be here soon. We already know we're getting The Kung Fu this month (as China Warrior). We've never played Front Line, but it looks very ... proto-NES. That leaves Lolo, which, as a HAL Laboratory title and an okay game, is no doubt the subject of a lot of frothing demand. It'll come out here eventually!

The folks at Kiff News were not satisfied with the latest news and rumors surrounding the intriguing Sadness and the split between Nibris and Frontline Studios -- so they investigated a little further. The e-mail they received from Nibris confirms the break from Frontline Studios, but they also insist that Sadness -- and their other announced games -- are in development, and that they've been quiet on the situation because their head has been out sick. We wonder if he has a doctor's note.

They also acknowledged that their silence was probably the source of the rumors surrounding Sadness, and offered an apology, as well as the promise of an official statement within the week. They also report that there is a new developer working on the game. We hope they'll not only work fast (and thoroughly), but be forthcoming, as well. We've been in the dark on this one for a long time.

We are definitely sad about Sadness. That was really something we had high hopes for, as the gameplay sounded truly revolutionary, and thus perfect for the Revolution Wii. But it's probably easy to talk up something that may or may not even exist. Still, the Frontline/Nibris split, and the delays on Nintendo's most-anticipated first party titles, plus what we've seen so far ... well, frankly, sometimes it makes us a little concerned. While a lot of the added-waggle ports have been surprisingly good so far, we're not seeing a lot of right-here, right-now, pop-'em-in-the-Wii original games for our shiny original system. At some point, we just have to ask ... is developing fresh, new games with sensible motion sensitive controls (like Wii Sports, but bigger) really so difficult? Some of these games have been years in the making, after all. And we're all for the wait, mind you, if it results in a more perfect gaming experience, but we're still a little anxious at times when we see fallout like this.

Doubting that there was a real game involved, an IGN forumite decided to check up on Nibris's claim that their mysterious Sadness was going to be co-developed and published by Frontline Studios. The conclusion supports the claim but may not justify the meanness.

Basically, he contacted Frontline to see if they were actually publishing Sadness and if it really existed. Frontline responded that they were "no longer interested in developing Sadness game based on Nibris' concept." This sort of makes it sound like there never was a game, and now there may never be. We might disagree with the poster's tactic, because it's kind of rude to openly doubt the existence of a game in an interview with its erstwhile publisher, but it sounds like his doubts were not misplaced.

In a move that totally shattered rumors of Majesco publishing Sadness for the Wii, NIBRIS and Frontline finally announced the publisher: both of them. That's right, earlier reports that the game had found a publisher were true, just not the one we thought.

Aside from co-producing Sadness with NIBRIS, Frontline Studios developed the recently-released DS title Sudoku Mania and have worked with NIBRIS on other, smaller projects in the past. Interestingly enough, the announcement on Frontline Studios' webpage states that Sadness has a 16 month development cycle, giving us some kind of idea when we could be seeing the game at retail.