Sega to Publish Gladiator A.D.

Sega have announced that they will be publishing Wii exclusive fighting game Tournament of Legends this May. The High Voltage developed game, formally known as Gladiator A.D., was pitched to potential publishers during E3 2009. Sega had previously published High Voltage's previous Wii exclusive, The Conduit.

Tournament of Legends is a one-on-one 3D fighting game. You can go solo against the computer, battling through the likes of the Minotaur, gladiators and Valkyries, or you could pummel a friend to pieces instead if you feel so inclined. Battles consist of magical attacks, legendary weaponry and fearful abilities such as...being able to throw nests of snakes about. Or, more impressively, you could rain arrows down your foe. Maybe if we combine the two, we'd have something really special...

The game will support both Wii Remote and Nunchuk, and the Classic Controller. During fights you'll be dodging mythological creatures with 'controller challenges' - which may or may not be a new term for 'Quicktime Events' - and restoring your health and armour on the fly. There's also a mysterious training mode.

Tournament of Legends is once again being powered by High Voltage Software's custom Wii engine, Quantum 3, which should allow for lots of nice things like real-time lighting, blended animation and cinematic colour curves, we're told.

With Tournament of Legends, we want to take the Wii weapon-based fighting to a bigger place. Along with a wide selection of blade weapons and animated magic attacks we've achieved rich graphical effects and detailed, epic characters with the Quantum 3 engine. The mythological characters are some of the biggest 3D playable characters on Wii.

- Eric Nofsinger, COO of High Voltage Software

The game has a US release date of May 18th, with a European release in May also planned.

What do you think of the partnership of Sega and HVS again? Do you think the game will fair better than The Conduit?