It’ll be a MadWorld on Nintendo Wii.

I’ve just checked out the trailer for Platinum Studios’ new mega-violent game MadWorld (release date to be anounced). To say this game is violent is an understatement; in stylistic comic-book black and white (blood spatters are startlingly contrasted in bright red) the trailer depicts a character cleaved with a chansaw, impaled on spikes, the ever popular manually removed heart, and, of course, a “caution” sign rammed through the chest. Just watching the trailer brought me back to the heady days of youth playing “Splatterhouse” in the local arcade. Needless to say, it looks like it’ll be great fun. But why Wii? It is completely at odds with the “Family Console” image that Nintendo have cultivated. I can just picture mom, dad, little Johnny and little Susie sitting down together on Sunday evening to spend some quality time dismembering the enemy in Madworld.

If Wii is “all” about family fun MadWorld just can’t have a place in the Wii universe. That is, unless we reinterpret the concept of “family fun”, or change “all” to “largely”, “mostly”, or possibly “sometimes”. Of course, “Wii is sometimes about family fun” just doesn’t have the same family-that-plays-together-stays-together ring to it.