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LostWinds is a video game for the Wii's WiiWare service. It was released on May 12, 2008, along with the launch of WiiWare. The game was created by game developer Frontier Developments and is exclusive to the service. It costs 1,000 Wii Points, or $10. A sequel, LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, was released on WiiWare on October 19, 2009.

The innovative title stars protagonist Toku. The player directs Toku left and right via the Nunchuck's control stick, and to make him jump the player will have to thrust the Wii remote upwards. Using the in game cursor, Toku, or rather the player, has the ability to control the wind, which will not only allow the character to jump, but will also effect other things as well. For example, one portion of the game has a woman holding her baby. If the player makes the wind go upwards, the baby will fly in the air for a short time and then fall back into its mothers' hands. It has no effect on the gameplay, though is fun anyway. To defeat enemies, the player will have to use the wind to make them vanish. And, of course, the wind is used to solve the game's multiple puzzles.

Development[]

LostWinds was one of the initial WiiWare video games, and at the time of its release was one of the most critically acclaimed titles for the service. The concept of LostWinds came about in 2005 when the Wii's Wii Remote was just announced at the Tokyo Game Show, according to the game's executive producer David Braben.

A couple years later in November of 2007, Nintendo invited the group of Frontier over for a secret meeting in London to talk about WiiWare. They were extremely happy to hear about the service, as it would allow them to flesh out their ideas for LostWinds. They had already created concepts for the game, and brought the title with them to show off to Nintendo.

Next month in December, the group created another prototype that fully convinced them that this game would be very fun. It didn't have incredible graphics yet, and was apparently very blocky with a static protagonist. In January, the company then started to construct the puzzles for the title, and decided which ones would work and which wouldn't.

In February at GDC, Frontier showed off the game to some developers for the first time. According to them, they all liked it. In April of 2008 the game is complete and they send it to Nintendo to make sure the game is in top condition. The next month the game is finally released on WiiWare.

In November 2008 Square Enix (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest) announced that they were going to publish the game for the Japanese market [1].

Trivia[]

  • LostWinds was the only known non-delisted WiiWare game that is neither transferable to nor available to download on the Wii U. This has been fixed as of May 2014.

External links[]

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