Tecmo's SPRay — oddly capped that way due to the game's protagonist, known as Spirited Prince Ray — may serve as an adequate substitute for Wii gamers waiting for Nintendo's Mario and Zelda teams to wrap up their next projects. SPRay is not unlike a Zelda-style adventure and comparisons to Mario Sunshine will likely be inevitable, as the game features a liquid spraying mechanic that's not too dissimilar from that GameCube non-classic.

Ray, here to save the world from an evil something or other that's covering his kingdom with a black goo, has a pair of familiars that will help him in his fight against, you know, evil. One, a portly bat-winged devil sprays a cleansing orange slime and a sticky green goo. The other, an angelic wisp, sprays water and ice that puts out fires and lays down ice tracks.

The combination of all these things is what gives SPRay its uniqueness.

As you can probably suspect, SPRay takes advantage of the Wii's remote for directing Ray's flow of slop. He'll need to lay down the sticky green stuff to stick to walls (or have other objects stick to walls), stuff that's in a more limited supply. As Ray and his liquidy partners level up, the player will have access to more abilities, giving it a Zelda-like adventure feel.

Like that series' star, Link, Ray also has a sword. He'll use it in concert with the liquid attacks to take out foes, something that should add variety to battling hordes of enemies.

The game looks to have epic boss battles that take advantage of your progressive abilities, something that will surely further comparisons between SPRay and The Legend of Zelda. While the visual design on some of these creatures may not hold up as well to what Nintendo's team has been capable of, we were surprised at how good some of them looked in motion.

The game is due out by the holidays. We look forward to getting some additional time with it... whenever that may be.