Samurai Warriors 3 slicing US Wiis

Two years ago, Koei introduced its historical Japanese action series to the Wii with Samurai Warriors: Katana. However, the first-person on-rails action game deviated from formula, eschewing the third-person hack-and-slash gameplay for which the franchise and its many sibling series had become known.

That game flopped with critics, but now Koei (Tecmo Koei, to be precise) is attempting a more traditional adaptation of Samurai Warriors for the console. Nintendo today announced "a unique partnership" with the publisher to bring the Wii-exclusive Samurai Warriors 3 to North America this fall. The game was released in Japan in December.

Samurai Warriors 3 will forgo the system's motion controls entirely, instead allowing players to hack through battlefields full of fodder with a Wii Remote-and-Nunchuk combo, the Classic Controller (Pro or "amateur"), or a GameCube pad. Although it seeks to return to the form of previous games in the series, Samurai Warriors 3 will include a handful of new gameplay features, including" kaiden" special moves that go above and beyond the existing "musou" attacks.

The game will also include two-player online and offline cooperative gameplay with some form of sharing feature, as well as a new gameplay mode based on a Nintendo Entertainment System game never released outside of Japan, Nazo no Murasamejo (The Mysterious Murasame Castle).

For more on the next installment of Samurai Warriors 3, check out GameSpot's hands-on coverage of the Japanese edition of the game, straight from the 2009 Tokyo Game Show.