I know there is some good stuff already lined up for release this year in the MATURE categories for Wii, a console that has suffered for unique and exclusive titles in this area. For me, I gotta have my Survival Horror. I, like the proprieter of the site I just linked to, am a connoisseur of these types of games, and am looking forward to "Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles," "Ju-on: The Grudge," and "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories," although I have to point out that the latter is by no means Wii exclusive.

Given the sales failure of MadWorld and the Conduit, Mature titles on the Wii are endangered. This is no surprise to me as Wii has made itself the console of the shared family space, as has been amusingly detailed recently, but also because (face it) the new Nintendo does a poor job of managing PR in hardcore and niche markets. It is, in fact, a recent trend for Nintendo, dating back to Gamecube, connectivity, me-too Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid, and the failure of the excellent but poor-selling Eternal Darkness. Yet there are good, interesting, mature titles for the Wii that are already developed, even localized, that are being held back from American audiences.

After everyone else is in bed, if Dad should happen to find himself drawn to the Wii, why should Carnival Games and Cooking Mama, and boredom after about 10 minutes, be all that awaits to greet this lonely late-night gaming pariah?

Come, then, and let me draw your attention to these injustices in case you don't know of them already.

FATAL FRAME IV: MASK OF THE LUNAR ECLIPSE

Three episodes of the Fatal Frame series (known as Project Zero in Japan) appeared on the Playstation 2 in America (the first two were ported over to XBox in deluxe editions with additional features too). This survival horror series has received high praise from fans and critics alike for being among the most frightening video game experiences available, with a focus on supernatural threats in locales with oppressing, terrifying atmosphere. The focus on using a supernatural camera to weaken and capture malevolent spirits seemed a natural experiment for the Wii's control scheme.

The fourth entry in this series was published last year in Japan by Nintendo, developed by Tecmo. Reviews cited a few bugs and some awkwardness in the controls, yet couldn't deny the Fatal Frame feeling was in effect. It has since sold the best out of all four in the series over there. Nintendo holds worldwide publishing rights... and has decreed it's not up to them to release the game in America.

A European release still is possible, which indicates localization may be underway, but no one can seem to nail down confirmation on this. In the meantime, a determined and pissed-off group of fans is developing a homebrew patch to allow gamers of every region to play the Japanese disk, patched with translated text and images on the fly. This prevents piracy of the game and gives us merely what we want--a way to purchase and buy this game if we'd like.

Of course I'm not going to be home-brewing my Wii, so unless Nintendo would like to change it's mind or sell the rights, they have essentially interrupted my long-running ability to follow this series I love by swaying its developer over to the Wii. Read more about how neither Tecmo nor Nintendo of America know why some Nintendo higher-up has squashed this release.

DISASTER: DAY OF CRISIS

This game pushes more to the survival end of "survival horror", but it still represents a range of games I'd like to see more of on Wii. Perhaps a few of you have been subjected to some of the more casual, mini-game based "emergency genre" games on the Wii. Unlike these, Day of Crisis is more of a third-person action game tasking you to survive natural disasters as they unfold upon the metropolis around you. That places it square in the vein of a few other "disaster survival" games I enjoyed on PS2, Disaster Report and Raw Danger, which were successes in my mind despite truly awful cover art (and tepid sales).

Disaster was localized for a European release, and NoA was apparently waiting for results on European sales to decide whether or not to release the game in America. European sales were below Nintendo's new, loftier expectations. Disaster's absence represents less of a mystery than Fatal Frame. It is a new IP, it got mixed reviews, and Nintendo doesn't like to publish things that are failures.

So sell the rights. Sitting on them is cheesy. Koei was happy enough with whatever Disaster Report sold to bring out Raw Danger. Not everyone expects to sell 24 million copies of a tank game bundled with a controller. Some publishers, like say Ignition Entertainment who just put out Muramasa: the Demon Blade, have got to find happiness in charting at #11 on release week.

WINTER

Here is a title from N-Space, a developer that previously had a relationship with Nintendo, who published "Geist" for them. It is uncertain how much actual work has progressed on the game, which posited a survival horror story in a town slowly being blanketed by a sinister, perhaps even supernatural, snowstorm.

What is certain is, as N-Space president Dan O'Leary states, “In almost every case we got hung up with the sales and marketing groups. They simply could not get behind a survival horror title on the Wii. In spite of great sales for Resident Evil 4 and the Umbrella Chronicles, these groups were unable to support the projections required to create a viable P&L for the title.”

The title lingers undeveloped, with no interest from a publisher allowing any further work. Fans are asking for Sega to consider the job, with its new "mature friendly" slant for the Wii. Well, guess what folks? Sega has taken a Mature-rated bath with the Wii with the Conduit moving just over 83,000 units so far, and Madworld moving 64,000 units. All of these are sales failures to that huge install base despite massive marketing efforts.

WE'RE ALL TO BLAME

The games I am essentially asking the universe to get to me will not be huge hits. They may be lucky to sell as well as the three titles I just listed. But the proper business model can make an acceptable profit margin out of a lower volume business, right? I sure wouldn't spend on marketing the way Sega did...

It seems to me that publishers, in the face of the Wii's larger potential install base, cannot be satisfied with sales numbers that are similar as those achieved for these types of niche and specialty market types of games on the PS2. Even though the development costs should be no more than PS2 development. Because some prick made a graph that expressed the percentage market share. Not because the money is not there, but because the share of the pie is not big enough to satisfy someone.

What this feels like to me is that the Wii is becoming like a "big three" network television company of the consoles, the ABC of video games. If the potential ratings for the program aren't high enough, it won't make it into the (illogically) limited number of "prime time slots." During the day, the thing is full of an indistinguishable wash of kids and female-interest programs, the Price is Right is on there, even. Early evening, minigame collections represent the reality TV pablum the whole family can enjoy. Plus there's plenty of effort and interest and money available to feed me fresh infomercials via The New-and-Improved Nintendo Channel. But the genre stuff that Dad enjoys keeps getting cancelled.

And of course the metaphor breaks down, because if I can't get this stuff on Wii, I can't get it at all. Video could go anywhere. Games have to go where they were designed to be. When Sony released Siren: Blood Curse as a PSN-only download in America that took 16GB of Hard Drive space, I was pissed. I had already been screwed with Siren when the first sequel never came out in America. But then I found their Japanese version had English text, and wasn't region-locked, and imported my first game ever. Sony let me buy my cancelled metaphorical TV series on DVD, and accepted my niche business.

But Nintendo is instead sitting on publishing rights it doesn't want, and other publishers don't want them either. Yet there I must stand in front of my Gamestop's wall of Wii crap, making my eyes tired scanning through for the few titles I know are even worth my family's attention in that reality TV minigame area. It reminds me of the Atari 2600 section just before "The Big Crash." Dozens of identical titles and not a one of them to stand out as worth buying, all milking weak implementations of the same basic gameplay ideas.

So scary and mature titles are struggling to find a way to the market on the Wii. But when it comes to cheap third-party games--it seems Nintendo would let me publish this forum post on my Wii if I added some pretty colors, made you click on a moving smiling face to scroll through it, and paid them the licensing fee.

Hey, maybe that's how I can call some attention to the matter! Look for it soon on WiiWare! If I can sign Jaleel White to do the voice work I think I might have a hit...