Wii owners waiting patiently for Team Meat’s fun, tough bastard of a platformer Super Meat Boy have been stuck with the proverbial coal in the stocking as the developer has announced on twitter (I’m real tired of ‘tweeted’) the cancellation of the WiiWare version. The dev added that a retail version appears “grim” but is still being looked into.

We reported in November a delay due to Nintendo’s strict 40 MB or less policy for WiiWare titles putting a strain on what could actually be included in the version of the game. Flash forward to today and Joystiq’s Ludwig Kietzmann has posted the response they received from Edmund McMillen which pretty much sums up why there’s no chance the game will see release on the console:

“If Super Meat Boy were to launch on WiiWare today, it would have no leaderboards, no Dark World levels and no support for downloadable additions. Boss fights and cutscenes would have no musical accompaniment, and only six music tracks (including just one for retro-themed levels) would be present. In the words of designer Edmund McMillen, it would be “a piece of shit version of Super Meat Boy.”

When McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes, who together form Team Meat, tested a version of their loopy platformer that could fit under the (previously disputed) 40MB file-size limit imposed by Nintendo’s WiiWare service, they weren’t satisfied with the compromises and decided to cancel it.”

An unfortunate situation to be sure, and one that I have a hard time pinning any piece on the developer. Sounds like they tried to work with the limitation any way they could, but bottom line the game would be a mutilated version of itself. That’s just not something Edmund or Tommy are willing to have on their records going forward.