I know there are a lot of Prince of Persia fans here, so here’s the news you’ve all been waiting for. It was a toss-up for a while as to whether the role of Dastan in Jerry Bruckheimer’s big blockbuster adaptation of The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time would be played by Gyllenhaal, Orlando Bloom, or even a fellow named David K. Zandi, a wealthy actor who just so happens to be a legitimate Persian prince.

Gyllenhaal will star opposite relatively unknown actress (but current Bond girl) Gemma Arterton. No, I’ve never heard of her either, but apparently her character will be a “feisty and exotic [and seductive?] princess”.

Here’s to hoping the movie turns out well. With Bruckheimer behind the wheel, I’m sure he’ll throw enough money at it so that even if it’s bad, it’ll fool us all into thinking it’s good.

Hollywood Reporter

If you haven’t picked up on my love for LostWinds, this must be your first time reading nWaffle. To get you up to speed, I love Frontier Developments’ LostWinds. I gave it a gushing review a few days ago, and I can’t wait to play the sequel. As for Frontier, that’s not the only series idea that they’re working on for the Wii, as confirmed in an interview by GamesRadar with Frontier’s head honcho, David Braben.

GR: Do you have plans to continue making new IP for the Wii beyond LostWinds, either within or without WiiWare?

DB: Most definitely – we have a ton of great game ideas, and the Wii is one of the major platforms, and making games for the major platforms is what we do!

Hot damn. Hit the link to read the rest of the interview, which gives you a little insight into the origin of LostWinds and their plans for the future.

GamesRadar

One more day and Wii Fit is upon us. Sure, the official release date is the 19th… supposedly. Truth is, it’s been street dated until the 21st, so don’t even bother going out today to try and find a copy.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty excited for it. There was a lot of disappointment with Nintendo around the announcement, but I’m proud to say that I didn’t initially poo-poo the idea (”usually that takes a couple of hours”… lol@Simpsons), and have since gotten more and more excited about it. Sure it’s not going to be the most complex workout system on the planet, but whatever…

I’m in need of a bathroom scale anyway.

And now without further ado, I present the winner of the nWaffle Wii Fit Box Art Photoshop Contest… after the jump!

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I’m incredibly fond of my early days of gaming. GamingExcellence has put up a good list of reasons why the early 90’s were the tops for gaming.

I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely agree with what he has to say.

10) Jumping Sound Effects

Unfortunately, as video games have gotten more realistic and complex, those wonderful jumping sound effects seem to have fallen by the wayside. While there is no place for a “BLOING” sound effect in hardcore games like Call of Duty 4 or BioShock, adding the sound effect would add a hilarious throwback to any title. Mario would be proud if Gordon Freeman “bloinged” as he jumped through City 17.

Hit the link below to continue the list.

GamingExcellence

When Nintendo unveiled the WiiWare service our minds were sent reeling at the possibility of quality short titles and independant developers finally getting a chance at mainstream exposure. We hoped for titles that would understand and embrace the Wii’s control scheme, and bring us new and engaging experiences that we haven’t been getting from a lot of full-cost releases from third-party developers.

One of the more hyped games for the WiiWare service has been LostWinds, the latest title from British-based Frontier Developments, created exclusively for the WiiWare service. The game was getting a lot of positive press before its release. Does it live up to the hype? Or should this title just get ‘lost’?

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Announced recently, Platinum Games (a developer made of key former employees of Clover Studio <3) is currently making a wii-exclusive ultra-violent action game called MadWorld. It features stylish black and white cel-shaded graphics with the frequent “splash” of red. Think Sin City meets Manhunt 2.

You play Jack, a man with a chainsaw for an arm (sounds familiar…) who is a competitor on a bizarre TV show that requires competitors to commit insane and grotesque murders.

“In certain markets there are a lot of limitations on the amount of violence you can show, so we definitely have the Western market much more in mind.”

While over the top violence isn’t really my cup of tea, the graphics look pretty damn cool.

French magazine JeuxVideo recently had an interview with Ubisoft’s own Michel Ancel, the father of the Rayman franchise. He was also the creator of Beyond Good and Evil, a 2003 Zelda-esque action/adventure game that has been hailed by critics but never found large commercial success. The Gamecube version of it is one of the rarer and most sought-after Gamecube titles out there.

In the Interview, Ancel spoke about Beyond Good and Evil 2, and confirmed to the magazine that it is indeed in the very early stages of preproduction. My French is pretty rusty, but the gist of it is such…

“I’m working on Beyond Good and Evil 2. We’ve been in preproduction for a year, and we have a small team working on it. Though, for the moment, it’s in the outline stage. “

He mentions that there are currently 10-12 people working on the title at the moment.

“We want to keep the continuity of the first [game]: a large variety of levels, and lots of emotion in the gameplay as well as the characters. This time we look at the future of the planet, and the relationships with the animals.”

Ubisoft has yet to agree to the project, which is why it has yet to start development, though the article mentions the UbiDays event which is coming May 28-29 in Paris. Perhaps there will be an official announcement then.

JeuxVideo

*UPDATE* (Shaan)

It has been confirmed via a French magazine clip that the title will be for the PS3 and 360 ONLY. There may be a Wii version down the line, who knows, but nothing has been announced. It’s sad, I know. I personally am guilty of not trying the first one and I’m going to see if I can find it somewhere down the line, but even I’m saddened by this.

But in Ubisoft’s defense, and in defense of a lot of developers, the remark that only Nintendo games seem to sell well on their consoles is true. There were/are plenty of high-quality third-party games that have been overlooked and have undersold. When that happens, developers feel it isn’t worth it, and stuff like this happens. Maybe this is just a matter of the hardware limitations of the Wii, but you can’t rule out that possibility.

There’s been a  rumour floating around for the last while that Factor 5’s mysterious “big wii-exclusive game” is a revival of the Kid Icarus franchise. Kombo has gotten their hands on some (apparent) early concept art from Factor 5’s pitch to Nintendo. They remind us that this in no way reflects what the final product will look like, but it definitely gives us an idea of what Factor 5 has in mind for the series.

I’ve got to say that I love the darker, more adult style they’re going for. Not all of the art work reflects this, but some of it does. Some of the other work makes Pit look like He-Man, though I’ll let you discover those pictures for yourself.

Head on over to Kombo to check out the rest of the artwork yourself. I’ll leave it up to you to debate its legitimacy, but real or fake, this definitely makes me excited for a new Kid Icarus game, whoever ends up developing it.

Kombo

Aside from the obvious big news today (See the post below), I figure I’d continue with my on/off tradition of letting you know the releases for the week.

Tuesday, May 13th

Wii

Castle of Shigami III, Aksys Games

Deca Sports, Hudson Soft

We Ski, Namco Bandai

DS

Drone Tactics, Atlus

Myst, Empire Interactive