A nicalis published game failing the approvement process? Where have I heard this one before...

Oh well. Given the pro-level dross that Nintendo will say works well enough to go on sale, there must be something bad bugs with it in its current build.

Here we go again...

Can I start my "where is La-Mulana?" whining now?

Ouch, that sucks. Especially for me as i was really looking forward to playing it. Given another year would only be a good thing, the devs should take advantage and polish it even more and alter/fix it so we can play it already.

Game looks great. Wonder if its content that has to be censored.

Man, Super Meat Boy AND this? Oh well, I guess I can finally get some of those Virtual Console games I was hoping to get months ago..... (and then eventually Sonic 4 perhaps?

This looks OK. I wonder why it was not approved. If you look at some of the stuff on there, you sometimes wonder if they even checked it out before approval.

@Rensch Have you ever heard of bugs and glitches?

LaMulana was deemed "No good" by Nintendo. Triple Jumping Sports, however, was deemed "$*@&ing awesome!!!"

Nicalis really needs to get it together. Cave story was submitted then regected and submitted again. They finally released it despite still being full of bugs and glitches. It took another six months after that for patch to be available. How did cave story still get approved when it was all messed up? I'm quickly losing faith in these guys at Nicalis.

Seriously? Nicalis never seems to get their games right the first time, and that fact is SERIOUSLY killing gamers.

Nigoro made this game not Nicalis

Nooooooooooooooooo!!!
@zranoll They are co-developing it. Plus I think (don't quote me on this one) Nicalis is doing the publishing. Nigoro will be the main name on it though.

I don't know why everyone is waiting for these halfheartedly co-produced game adaptions from Nicalis. Both Cave Story and La-Mulana work (and look) great on the PC and you don't have to pay 10 bucks in advance and then wait desperately for some bugfixes.

That's not to bad. I don't think I'll ever get into La-Mulana anyway, we've got Indiana Jones. Hopefully Nicalis will focus on Cave Story for DSi.

People, Nintendo doesn't playtest the games. All they check for in their approval process is for the game to comply with a series of specifications that have to do with the game working fine in the Wii's environment. That's why Cave Story was eventually released the way it was the first time. Even though it had bugs, they were gameplay bugs. The game passed Nintendo's lotcheck back then because it complied fine with the Wii's internal system, which is all they check (and even then, it's still a pretty long list of things they check).

What, no "thanks Sandman"? I sent this one to you guys 3 minutes after this was posted on their main site, there is no way anyone could beat me to that!

I lost interest in this after hearing about its weird story and restart-when-you-die mechanic. Not for me.

I was expecting a face-dog article picture.

Back to the bug testing. Not surprising. We'll see it eventually.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ninty was a bit more thorough with games from devs that released games with major issues before. I'll be interested in the release, since, as far as I can tell, there's no mac port, unlike with Cave Story.

Meanwhile, Space Trek passes inspection with flying colors.

Well, I suppose after all the problems with Cave Story it wouldn't hurt to double check.

Seeing as this is a nicalis game, it probably wouldn't have been released this year in eu even if it was in na.

Well, there are many reasons a game can fail the Approval Process, the simplest of which might have to do with the instructions manual not being properly translated into spanish and french.

@GeminiSaint
I think you're right... if they did check if the game was good there wouldnt be so much alwful games on the system. Nintendo Seal of Quality is long-gone

Ah that's ok, well shell see it next year. Too many games to play as it is.

LOL, didn't Dive get by with it's inability to find every treasure glitch? I guess La Mulana must have a gamebreaking bug/glitch/etc that was pretty epic. The world may never know...

If it was released in it's current state right now, it would be totally buggy. We might not like it, but this is actually a benefit. "A delayed game is good. A bad game is bad forever."

that's really too bad, because it looks like a great game.

prob cause the game sucks.

It's just not fun. It wasn't good on PC. It's not gonna be good remade with shiny graphics and a pricetag.

I'm glad to see Nintendo has turned up their shovelware filter. /endsarcascm

What, no "thanks Sandman"? I sent this one to you guys 3 minutes after this was posted on their main site, there is no way anyone could beat me to that!

poor baby lol

That's unfortunate, hopefully the finished product isn't riddled with bugs like Cave Story.

@SandMan: you forget that NL also has connections with Nicalis; chances are they knew this had happened already and the article had merely been sitting in the system for a while. :3

Meh, that's fine, so long as it means it won't come out with so many glitches the way Cave Story did.

Sonic Sez "That's no good!"

Wait, what? There's lots of crap on WiiWare, but this game is 'no good'? Would be nice if they explained why it was 'no good'.

Why does everyone keep comparing this game to Cave Story? Nicalis isn't developing it! It's annoying when news of this game comes up, and half of the comments have something to do with Cave Story. Seriously.

Boo. But not terrible news. This holiday season is flooded with great releases already - who can focus on a wiiware game? Even if you don't own other systems by now (btw, boo to you), Wii alone has Kirby's Epic Yarn, GoldenEye 007, Sonic Colors, Epic Mickey, Donkey Kong Country Returns, etc. They actually have a very strong holiday lineup. Hoping that those third party titles see as much success as nintendo's own - its encouraging to see Activision support Goldeneye with a nice ad campaign, and ads lead to sales. Hope Sega and Disney are as aggressive supporting their games as Activision and Nintendo are.

Wow... a game can FAIL the Nintendo inspection process! My wants for this game just slammed the floor instantly.

I suspect "No Good" means it's buggy and they need to work out the kinks.

you know what it might be? religious overtone or something like that. Anyone played Terranigma for the SNES? Brilliant game, never made it to the USA due to religious controversies.

This game has a lot of mythology, statues, and... well idunno it might have some intense content in it (i never got that far on the pc version, its very very very hard)

@WhoKnew_and_some_other_people

Nicalis did make it, its on their site: http://www.nicalis.com/games-2/la-mulana/ , and they also made Cave Story, hence the comparisons

Son of a...this stings even more given the recent developments with Super Meat Boy. The number of WiiWare games I was looking forward to quickly went from two to zero. Oh well.

@Marioman64 Terranigma never made it to the USA due to it sucked.

@ Marioman64:
Nicalis did NOT make it. NIGORO made it. All Nicalis is doing is the English translation and the publishing. That's why it's listed on their site. But they did not develop the game.

they may not have single-handedly developed the game, but their name is still on it as publisher and the Nicalis/Nigoro partnership is still in effect. that's why everyone's drawing the connection to Cave Story and all the problems it had going through the lotcheck process, and to be honest, you can't really blame us for doing so, lol -- not when here's yet another game with a delayed release due to lotcheck failure.

i am confident it'll make it through to the service eventually, and of course i'm content to wait; i'm just a bit disappointed that we may not see it this year. :/

Nintendo usually does not stop flawed design, they stop buggy games. Or the game may have contained offensive content...

@WolfRamHeart: Please NO!

Considering pOp made it onto WiiWare, I'm surprised.

Again, since no one read it, the game could have also failed because the manual wasn't properly translated to spanish and french using the official terms. It's happened to me before.

Agreed; this is hardly news. Liight just failed Lotcheck for the 4th time in two months. Its just hard to get stuff to get all the way through their testing. I just had to fix a bug where the game would lock up if you repeatedly pressed the power button at an exact moment during the loading screen. That sort of thing. It has nothing to do with the actual game; Lotcheck doesn't do that.

Nintendo continues to show they have no idea what to do with their downloadable services. Let's release shovelware instead!