I first read about Spyborgs during last years Captivate event and wrote up about it. I recall at the time being a little intrigued. I've always enjoyed the casual platform games with their addictive coin/ring/bolt collecting and obsessive replayability. Spyborgs looked like it was to be cut from the same cloth as Mario and Ratchet and Clank. The developers original goal at the time was to create something new and ready made for Saturday morning cartoons.

Spyborgs seems to have had a bit of a makeover since then.

Before it was bright and colorful and extremely cutesy, now its all mute colors and explosions. The new game seems more like a scrolling beat em up than the platform intensive kids game it was originally supposed to be. Not that the game has made a crazy leap into GTA level maturity. It just looks like it might be taking itself a lot more seriously than it was previously. The game will have three selectable characters, but the only ones revealed so far are a hulking robot and a ninja girl, who might also be a robot, its hard to tell.

What initially drew me to Spyborgs was the developers claiming to be annoyed at the range of novelty party games on the Wii. They wanted a game that you could really sink your teeth into, something you could really play for extended periods and enjoy. How times change... no wait, they haven't changed at all. The Wii is still plagued by novelty party games, in fact they frequently feature in the Australian top ten charts, depressing as that may be.

But in the meantime Mad World has proved that the Wii can make good games that appeal to people who really like games that don't involve waggle and The Conduit has proven there's a vocal market for more 'serious' games on the Wii.

But it has to be asked, why is this a Wii game at all. It certainly seems like something that should be multiplatform. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are crying out for some tween friendly franchise like this. Spyborgs will involve a little bit of a waggle, namely SpyVision in which you hold a button and use the Wiimote to scan the screen for hidden items. That seems to be about it though. I fail to see why this has to a Wii exclusive. It almost seems like Nintendo games need to disregard everything that makes the Wii unique when creating a game that doesn't have the word 'party' in the title.

Spyborgs will also bring Achievements to the Wii, in a manner of speaking. Medals for completing certain objectives and requirements that can unlock bonus content and new challenge modes in the game adding some of that tasty replayability to the title.

No release date has been revealed yet (to my knowledge) but you might want to keep a couple of double A batteries spare.