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Nintendo & developer respond to 'DS game ban'

'Nintendo bans DS holocaust game!' read the scurrilous(and totally unsubstantiated) 'news' on numerous websites,blogs and fan sites yesterday, relating to a 'work in progress' gameproject from British developer Alten8.

Imagination is the Only Escape is the working title of 21-year-old Luc Bernard's DS game, setduring the Holocaust, in which you play a French Jewish boy trying toescape the horrors of Nazi occupied France. Bernard describes as " Schindler's List meets Alice in Wonderland"

The game has already generated a considerable amount of pre-publicity, with Bernard telling the , that his concept for the game was non-violent and educational.

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In another interview,Bernard was quoted as saying: "From what I was told, Nintendo Europe isalso scared of it," which seems to be the source of the rumoursthat Nintendo was somehow planning to 'ban' Imagination is the Only Escape.

Takinginto consideration the obvious facts that Nintendo has no direct powerto 'ban' a game and that the game is in the very earlystages of development, TechRadar decided to contact Alten8 and Nintendodirectly to find out more.

Paul Andrews, CEO of Alten8 Limitedtold us that: "It is at this point a concept , which wasoriginally planned for DS , but may move to another Nintendo formatyet."

So it seems that it could be planned to develop thegame for Wii, but as Andrews himself reminded us, "it is still atearly pre-production / concept stage."

"Yesterday'snon-story about the supposed 'Nintendo ban' "waspicked up from artwork on Luc's blog and press interest snowballed fromthat."

When asked further about the background to the concept behind Imagination is the Only Escape Andrews avoided a direct answer, telling us: "Luc's work /concepts are under contract with Alten8, Luc does not work directly forAlten8, hence his views are his own."

Who controls Wii Ware?

So is there a publisher deal already in place for the game?

"Weintend to either self publish, dependent on our status at that point,or work with other publishing partners, or if it were to be changed to[distribution via] Wii Ware, this would of course go out via Nintendodirectly from ourselves," adds Andrews.

This raises an interesting point. If Imagination is the Only Escapeis distributed online via Wii Ware, will Nintendo have the final say ongreen-lighting the project? TechRadar has contacted Nintendo UK todayto get clarification on this issue.

Andrews confirms thatyesterday's media feeding frenzy "came about as reportersstarted contacting Nintendo asking when it was coming out, to whichthey replied 'it is not coming out', as correctly it had not beendiscussed with them at that point in time, and they did know nothing ofthe potential game. Nintendo will only confirm on games registered /schedule to come out at that point in time with them , not on concepts/ proposals etc.