Okami Wii created for you

Capcom business development boss Christian Svensson has revealed that Okami Wii would never had been made if you lot hadn't belly-ached about it.

He was chatting openly on the official US blog, praising you lot for being so tenacious and helping prove there was an appetite for it.

"Even before the Okami's PS2 release, the media and Capcom fans would constantly ask us if it was ever going to come to Wii, citing the interface as being ideal for the brush mechanics," chirped Svensson.

"Okami Wii specifically exists because of that direct communication, especially those we receive on our message boards (even if they're sometimes mean to us)."

You may remember us giving Okami top marks on PS2, but despite our - and many others - singing and dancing it failed to fly off of shop shelves. For Svensson, this was a problem bought about by the choice of platform.

He added: "The bulk of our core audience was thinking about new platforms. And while there are standout new IP successes like God of War that released that same year (albeit 9 months earlier than Okami), its was still an uphill battle no matter how you sliced it."

Ready at Dawn, of Daxter and God of War PSP fame, is handling the port - a relationship formed in a hotel suite at GDC back in March and helped considerably by the onset of beer.

But the choice was far from easy, according to Svensson; for a game as beloved as Okami only the best would ever be good enough for the Capcom's table [get out - Ed].

"This was never going to be a quick turn and burn cash in..." proclaimed Svensson. "The project was far too important to do anything other than applying the utmost TLC if we were going to be successful."

The Wii version has no new content as Capcom feels it is big enough already, but alongside the new and naturally fitting motion-sensing controls Svensson hinted we may see some technical nips and tucks. Quick, belly-ache about 16:9 support.

So far work on Okami Wii is going swimmingly, and Svensson is confident it will be in (US) shops by next spring.

"As it stands today, the team has the game assets converted (quite the laborious process), up and running in a ported version of Clover's engine. There are still several systems getting set up properly but there's most definitely a Wii-driven Amaterasu running around Wii-rendered environments as we speak," concluded Svensson.

Pop over to our Okami PS2 review to see why we are so excited about it all.