Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Could it be -- possible forward motion on Sadness? According to a recent press release, Polish developer Nibris has licensed Emergent's Gamebryo platform for the long-discussed, never-seen title ... and word is that the recent screenshot was real. Gamebryo is the base of several recent and forthcoming titles, including Civilization IV, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Fallout 3. Of course, it's also being used for Chiquititas.

But don't get excited just yet. Nibris has been promising screenshots and video from purported black-and-white thriller Sadness for two years now, but according to the press release, they've only recently chosen the Gamebryo engine and have been working on the title for "several months." They recently said we'll see something concrete next month, and while we're not holding our breath, we will be pleasantly surprised if the game actually seems to be under active development.


[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Are you keeping up with your South American telenovelas? If so, you've probably heard of Chiquititas. If not, which is probably the case, the show (known in English as Tiny Angels) is a fictional series about a group of orphans in Buenos Aires.

You're probably worriedly wondering what this has to do with the Wii, so let's just rip the band-aid right off. Portugal based developer Biotroid is making a Wii game about the series. Interestingly enough, though, the game is being published by Emergent Game Technologies, who are giving Biotroid access to the Gamebryo engine. In case you haven't been keeping up, that's the same engine that's been powering games like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Civilization IV. Obviously, Emergent is looking to cash in on the success of the popular Argentinian show.

Let's be honest -- we don't have high hopes for this game, which will be a platformer of sorts. Aside from licensed games usually being terrible, Tiny Angels seems like a particularly stupid license to use. But, in some crazy twist of fate, this has the potential to be one of the prettiest titles on the Wii.

The Gamebryo development engine, used for games including The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Civilization IV, and many Xbox Live Arcade games, is being ported to the Wii.

The engine, which is specifically designed to facilitate multiplatform development, should make it easier for developers to create Wii games using the same development tools as Xbox 360, PS3, and PC games. The new version 2.3 includes in its Wii support "a Wii-specific viewer, extensive libraries and APIs to simplify pipeline integration."

We don't pretend to know the first thing about technical game development, and we're certainly not going to applaud porting by any means, but we think that anything that makes it simpler or more cost-effective for developers to create Wii games is a positive development. Does this mean a Wii Oblivion is on the way? Not without a hard drive, it doesn't.