July 17^th, 2008 (9:00pm) - Gamers who supported Capcom’s Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition can thank themselves for securing another port to the system: Dead Rising has been unearthed for the Wii.

The Wii version will be called Dead Rising: Zombie Sacrifice. The game’s producer and director, Minoru Nakai, had a talk with Famtisu about it.

"The 360 version was hard to get to grips with, in a good way. You died a lot in the beginning, and you have to raise your level if you want to proceed in the story," Nakai said. "It’s a really fun game if you can deal with that, but I think some of the experience was a little rough for casual users. That’s why we’re adjusting the game to make it easier to play."

The game will have new enemies and items, and a new Resident Evil 4 style over-the-shoulder view, though at the cost of the photography minigame. The producer said the picture-taking just doesn’t work the same with the new view.

There will be changes to the game’s pacing structure. "In the Xbox 360 version, the story proceeded as time passed, and you’d get messages about how there are survivors at this or that location that you should check out. With this version, that aspect of the game is now treated as a series of submissions," Nakai said. "As you advance through the main story, Otis will give you three or four submissions at once; when you finish those, the main scenario advances. This results in us being able to put a lot more story volume to the game."

Changing weapons is a simple affair, as it’s simply assigned to the D-pad. The Wii Remote is also uses similarly to how it is in RE4, with a targeting reticule on screen.

"Basically, you use the Nunchuk to move and the Wii-mote to perform actions. You can press the A button to attack with your subweapon, but you can also attack by swinging the Wii-mote. That makes the attack stronger but expands the backswing -- sort of like regular and heavy punches in a fighting game."

In the end, Capcom hopes to find a more casual audience with this version of the game. "My brother is a casual gamer, but he’s the sort of person who doesn’t like it when the visuals are too intricate or elaborate -- he gets nervous about whether he’s good enough to play it at all," he noted. "That was a very novel surprise to hear that from him. Looking at it that way, I wonder if Wii users are a lot more forgiving about the visuals of the games they play. Of course, we have lots of fans of the 360 version, so we’re still aiming for a level of visuals that will keep them satisfied."