Koei tried porting one of their most venerable franchises to the Wii, in the form of Sangokushi XI (Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI) with Power-Up Kit. By most publishers’ standards, it bombed, selling about 6,000 copies. But how much could those ultra-hardcore strategy games really be expected to sell? Apparently, not that much. Maybe the development costs are low enough that Koei can recoup their expenses just by selling to a small audience.

Koei (having been recognized for a long time as one of the leading providers heading up the extremely competitive videogame market) were well aware of the not-so popular port of the complex Sangokushi XI. Sangokushi XI, a.k.a. “Romance of The Three Kingdoms” sees the player whisked off to an ancient civilization with a turbulent history. We haven’t tried it yet but apparently the gameplay has been improved substantially and players must really prove their political skills along with displaying the ability to make sound military decisions.

In any case, ported strategy games are cheaper to develop than original RPGs, and sell about the same. Because of that, we can kind of understand why Koei’s putting another of their classic strategy series on the Wii. Well, that and the fact that pointer control is a natural for this kind of menu-driven game.

We’re really looking forward to getting our hands on a copy of this. It’s great to see more and more games being released for the Wii. We have been pretty addicted to the SNES version at home but the Wii has completely transformed the way we look at computer gaming and the kids will be thrilled to have a go at this game on the Wii.

As long as they keep putting out art like this that we can then post, Koei is free to do whatever they want on the Wii.

Yeah that’s one of the things that we really like about this game. The artwork is fantastic. Some real talented illustrators have been working their pants off and have managed to create an authentic environment which is truly beautiful. The images really make it.

We would go so far as to say that it is worth going out and getting hold of one of the increasing numbers of discount Wii systems which are available out there just so that you can play this game on Nintendo’s revolutionary console.

Sources : WiiFanBoy