Gaming News: ‘Minecraft: Story Mode’ Coming to Wii U This Week

Minecraft: Story Mode

Development studio Telltale Games has announced that the first episode for "Minecraft: Story Mode" for the Wii U will arrive on January 21.

But, just like their Xbox and PlayStation counterparts, Wii U gamers will have to wait a while before they can get to play the rest of the game's episodes.

As reported by Tech Times, the first episode for the game, titled "The Order of the Stone," will be available for the North American and European markets next week through Nintendo's eShop and will cost $4.99. But, Wii U gamers will also have the chance to purchase the game's Season Pass for $19.99, which will grant them instant access all of the episodes once they are officially available.

As for what gamers can expect to see in "Minecraft: Story Mode" for the Wii U, it will still carry the same narrative and gameplay style as its other platform versions. But, instead of just being a simple port, the game has been tweaked to accommodate the features of the Wii U system. This includes off-TV play and extended support for the console's GamePad, which means player can enjoy the game with touchscreen controls.

Telltale Games, however, did not mention when the other episodes for the game will be available for the Wii U. But since the succeeding episodes for the Microsoft Windows, PlayStation and Xbox platforms came out withy around month-long intervals, Wii U gamers can probably expect to get their hands on episode two, dubbed as "Assembly Required," sometime in late February or March of this year.

Currently, there are four episodes available for the other console versions of "Minecraft: Story Mode." The latest one, called "A Block and Hard Place," came out in December of last year. It focuses on the last quest Jesse's gang as they confront the Wither Storm.

The upcoming and probably final episode, titled "Order Up!" follows the events the defeat of the game's main villain. Now that Jesse has restored peace to the land, the character must help rebuild the world. There is no exact release date yet for the fifth episode but it is scheduled to arrive sometime this year.

According to Telltale Games, the studio decided to create a story-based spin-off of the "Minecraft" game due to its popularity among different generations of gamers.

"Minecraft was a big favorite of ours around the office that presented an opportunity for much more of a blank slate," the studio's Job Stauffer told Eurogamer. "You can see that there's a huge appetite for fans that want to tell stories in the 'Minecraft' world."