Smack Down Licenses Vicious Engine For Two Wii Titles

French developer Smack Down Productions (Red Bull BC One) has licensed Vicious Cycle Software's Vicious Engine for two upcoming Wii titles. Founded in 2005 and based in Lyon, France, Smack Down previously licensed the engine for two other completed projects for Wii, Build-A-Bear: A Friend Fur All Seasons and Koh Lanta, the latter of which is based on the French version of the Survivor reality TV series. The studio has also shipped titles for Nintendo DS and PC. The Vicious Engine was developed by D3Publisher subsidiary Vicious Cycle Software, and is designed as a portable engine for game development on personal computers, consoles, and handheld systems. The recently-released update, Vicious Engine 2, offers new features and changes geared towards current generation platforms, such as an updated lighting engine, an animation blending component, and modern pixel shader technology. Previously shipped titles using the engine include Epicenter Studios' Critter Round-Up for WiiWare, Perpetual FX Creative's Galactic Bowling for PC, and Collision Studios' 300 March to Glory for PSP. "What we really liked about the engine is that it let us get started working on features from day one, resulting in the creation of high-quality games in record time," says Smack Down Productions CEO Laurent Benadiba. "While developing Build-A-Bear and Koh Lanta, we were able to tweak and modify the Vicious Engine to fit our exact needs, considerably speeding up our production pipeline," Benadiba adds. "We're very pleased to be licensing the engine again for the development of two new games for Wii based on high-profile licenses."