Joystiq [Nintendo]

"Monkey Madness Wii targets kids ages 6 to 8 years," reads the opening line of the press release for Ubisoft's new monkey sim. "Like hell it does!" say we. Okay, so maybe it does, but we can't help being drawn to Ubisoft's newest pet game (and at least it's not Monkeyz). Fact: monkeys are adorable and awesome. Everybody thinks this, so no wonder Ubisoft settled on making a game about them. We've had it with labradors and kittens, frankly.

In Monkey Madness Wii, kids we will be able to adopt a monkey and then befriend, train, feed, play with, and photograph our simian chum. There's a range of ridiculous outfits to dress George in (we've already settled on a name), and George's personality will be shaped by how you treat him -- he could be meek, courageous, loyal, indifferent, or something else. We can even cross-breed George with other species of monkeys to create "fantastical hybrids," which sounds a tad disturbing, but we plan on George being an amorous little bugger.

We haven't even touched on the neatest feature of Monkey Madness Wii -- the ability to upload George to your Wii Remote (using the Wiimote's 6 kilobytes of on-board memory) and take him to a friend's house to play with the monkeys on their Wii. Clever! In fact, this is wasted on chil'n, and we'll say it now, readers: DO WANT. Now, can you resist a monkey gallery?


[Via press release]