Super Meat Boy isnt coming to WiiWare

Team Meat reveals that the game cant be downsized to the Wiis 40MB downloadable game limit

Super Meat Boy, the retro-styled platformer that was originally announced to be Wii-exclusive, but was eventually released on the Xbox 360 and PC while the Wii version kept getting delayed due to WiiWare’s file size limit, has just had its WiiWare version cancelled. It’s been well known that the developers of the title, Team Meat, were having trouble downsizing the game, which was released on PC with a file size of over 200MB, to the Wii’s 40MB limit for WiiWare titles. And now it appears that Team Meat have given up on trying to cut the game down.

In an interview with Joystiq, Super Meat Boy designer Edmund McMillen told how the game got out of control: "We knew of the limits early on but overestimated our ability to get Nintendo to raise the file size. It’s lame that there is a 40MB cap on WiiWare games… but it was our fault for blindly assuming this cap wasn’t set in stone, and we are sorry for that… Probably, honestly, we got so lost in making a cool game we totally forgot about how strict the limitations for the Wii were, we just wanted to make something huge and the game got a little out of control."

When asked why they couldn’t cut the game down even more, he had this to say: "There is no way to avoid the fact that if we released a 40MB version of Super Meat Boy it would be a sh*t version of the game. It’s a lose-lose situation, but the fact of the matter is if we release a sh*tty game, we will have to live with that for the rest of our careers and have to cop to the fact that it is a sh*tty game."

But is there still hope for a retail release of the game? It’s not looking good, says McMillen. "Right now we have talked to three larger publishers who have passed on the title because they believe Wii retail is a bad idea profit wise. Most places we have talked to believe that only Nintendo brand games sell well on their system and don’t even understand why we want to release Wii retail." McMillen has said that he will keep talking to game publishers about the possibility of a retail version of Super Meat Boy, but so far the chances of it happening are slim.

Super Meat Boy has been released on XBLA and PC, so if you were one of the people who were hanging out for the Wii release and still want to play it, then unfortunately you’ll have to buy it on another system.