Zorro, Zorro, Zorro, He Makes the Sign on the Wii

Hmmm.

Well, here's the good news first: Someone is making a Zorro game exclusive to the Wii.

I know what you're thinking. You're excited that we're finally going to get a realistic sword-fighting game that accurately represents the experience. I mean, what better character could there be for that? What character is more defined by his sword?

"Players tend to do better and get less tired with abstraction," Pronto President and Creative Director Randy Angle said. "It's not a sword-fighting simulator."

Oh, well, OK. Hmmm. So this begs the question: Why make a game based on Zorro, a character whose entire mythology is based around swordfighting, and have him be controlled by waggling the Wii-mote hither and yon?

Look on the bright side, maybe we can find some comfort in the pedigree of developer Pronto Games. Looking at their site it looks like we've got "NickToons Winner's Cup Racing" for the PC, "Ten Pen Alley 2" and "Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder" for the Game Boy Advance, and a few games for the Leapster. On the home consoles? Nada.

Well, maybe there's a long-standing tradition of good Zorro games that we can take comfort in. Let's look at all the Zorro games released in the past decade.

Let's see, there was "The Mask of Zorro" for the Game Boy Color ... and nothing else. There was "The Shadow of Zorro" for the PS2, but that was canceled.

It should come as no surprise by now that I'm not exactly bursting with confidence about the announcement. At the same time though, I'm not ready to write this one off completely. Perhaps instead of looking to the past, to what Pronto or Zorro has done before, perhaps we should look into the future, to what this means.

There was a lot of complaining when the Wii's hardware power was revealed (I've let a few fly myself). But maybe this is the environment it creates. Perhaps it makes an even playing field where even an untested group can be inspired by a character or a controller, and make a bid for current-gen legitimacy. If you're inspired by the Wiimote, you don't need to know how to wrangle hardware horsepower, you just have to know how to make a fun game.

My dad used to say that rain is the great equalizer in football, maybe limited graphics on systems like the Wii are the same thing video games, a situation where even little guys can make their stand if they have a lot of heart.

Perhaps we shouldn't sheath our swords (or our Wiimotes) just yet.