The Wii-Exclusive Survival Horror Game That We Never Got To Play
The words "Nintendo" and "horror" don't often go together, but when they do, acclaim tends to follow. Examples of this unlikely partnership include titles such as Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and the (erstwhile) GameCube-exclusive Resident Evil Remake, 0, and 4. This is far from an exhaustive list, and not just because Luigi's Mansion is also technically a horror franchise. You should also include all the games that never saw the light of day.
Nintendo has backed many a canceled title, some of which remain buried. Nevertheless, the company has teased quite a few games at expos that were later quietly canceled. One such title was a horror game that was announced shortly before Nintendo launched the Wii. However, the game has since disappeared into the fog of obscurity, leaving gamers to wonder if it ever existed in the first place.
Not only was this game real, but you are about to learn that it had a very appropriate title, since it describes the emotion you will feel when you realize you never got to play this game.
Sadness
During E3 of 2006, Nintendo premiered a trailer for the game Sadness. It wasn't so much a cinematic trailer as it was more of a proof of concept. The video showed a woman swinging around a Wiimote (par for the course in Wii trailers), and her actions were mimicked by another woman pretending to be a video game character. The teaser didn't include a release date, so it had to be some sort of joke, right? Not at all.
According to the canceled game archive Unseen64, Sadness was originally developed for the Wii by Polish studio Nibris, a company best known for its work on ... Sadness. The game was supposed to follow Victorian aristocrat Maria, who survives a train crash and has to make her way through Eastern Europe.
After Nibris eventually closed, two more companies, HullBreach Studios and Cthulhi Games, tried to resurrect Sadness as a Wii U title. Both had to start from scratch and didn't get far. However, the tale of Sadness isn't all disappointment, since some ex-Nibris employees banded together to form Bloober Team, which went on to develop titles such as Layers of Fear 1 and 2, Observer, and 2021's The Medium.