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You may not know the name Platinum Games -- not yet, anyway -- but you definitely know the people behind it. Tatsuya Minami. Hideki Kamiya. Atsushi Inaba. Shigenori Nishikawa. These four alone have backgrounds with Capcom and Clover Studios and were integral in the development of some games you might have heard of. Viewtiful Joe. Okami. Resident Evil remake. Resident Evil 4. Kamiya created Devil May Cry. Nishikawa helped design Resident Evil 4. We can keep going, but you get the point. Today, Minami leads the ex-Capcom and Clover personnel as Platinum Games, a company which employs 130 people working on four projects: a PS3 / 360 game called Bayonetta. A DS science-fiction RPG called Infinite Line. A still-unnamed title by another person you might have heard of -- his name is Shinji Mikami; he created the Resident Evil series. And Mad World, helmed by Nishikawa, who is on hand at a SEGA event in San Francisco on Wednesday night to pull back the curtain on the Wii-exclusive -- yes, built from the ground-up for Nintendo's console -- action bloodbath.

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Inaba interrupts. "Perhaps some of you guys have already seen this trailer." By this time, we've already watched it on our computer monitors, squinting, a dozen or more times. "So today, I have prepared a special demo exclusively for San Francisco." Our jaws drop as Nishikawa picks up a Wii remote and nunchuk and begins to play. The aforementioned carnage ensues.

Controls are being tweaked, but from the looks of it, Jack is controlled through the world with the nunchuk's analog stick. The camera follows him via a traditional third-person behind-the-back viewpoint. As the characters draws closer to enemies, players can press the B-trigger to kick-start violent death sequences. Some of these waggle. For instance, gamers will flick the Wii remote forward to send bodies flying in Man Darts. (That really is what it's called.) Meanwhile, we presume taps and combos influence other stand-offs. Jack approaches and dukes it out with another foe during the demo. He punches the character twice in the stomach and on his third blow, his fist rips through his enemy's chest, where he grabs the beating heart inside, pulls it out in a disgustingly gruesome showcase of blood splatters, and then squashes it in his hand. And from what we've been told, this exaggerated level of violence is only the tip of the iceberg.

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We've often stated that Wii developers need to push the console from a stylistic perspective since they will not be able to compete with the sheer horsepower of systems like Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Having seen Mad World up close, we're thrilled that one of the best software houses in the world completely agrees. Platinum Games has with its first official Wii effort created not only one of the console's most beautiful games, but one with real gameplay substance and seemingly smart controls. Here is also a project unabashedly centered on the hardcore audience. Mad World has skyrocketed to the tip-top of our most wanted list and we are officially putting all Wii owners on (blood) red alert: prepare to go 'Mad' sometime next year.

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