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Sproing Interactive has announced Corto Maltese: The Fable of Venice Coming for the Nintendo DS next fall. The game will be developed by Cong SA.

Players of this puzzle/adventure game will romp through early 20th century Venice while solving mysteries and mini puzzle challenges and meeting oddball characters. The MacGuffin is a gem called Solomon’s Clavicle.

“Corto Maltese is an incredibly successful and long-lasting comic brand with a huge following among both boys and girls. Venice was Pratt’s hometown and Corto Maltese his favorite and most successful character,” said Patrizia Zanotti, artistic director, Cong SA. “Corto Maltese – The Fable of Venice will certainly please and charm the fans who have read the comic book as well as those who will discover Corto Maltese for the first time.”


Created by Italian comics master Hugo Pratt , Corto Maltese remains one of the most popular characters from graphic literature in Europe, and maintains a devoted cult following among American readers and creators. English-language editions of his books are all long out of print — several publishers have been trying to get the rights for Casterman for a while, but things have been held up. Until then, at least we get a video game.

1 COMMENT

  1. Hell, these days I may not even care if they’re in English or not, just as long as they don’t cost me an arm and a leg. I have an issue of Totem that has a Corto Maltese story in it in Italian and it suits me just fine. Pratt’s a great story teller.

    George- thanks for the heads up!

  2. I have to agree with a couple of the people here- it’s ridiculous that there’s going to be a Corto video game and yet, worldwide, there’s no English language body of work by Pratt. Who do they think is going to buy the game? Blood-hungry teens who are used to playing first person shooters? American teens who don’t care about any war unless it’s WWII? (Maybe they should make a Pratt-style Antoine De Saint-Exupery air combat game….that’d be more up Teenage America’s alley- until they figure out St. Ex is just flying a recon mission.) Or are they doing this to create interest in the Corto “brand” and THEN release the comics and cartoon movies in English and Region 1 DVD’s? Well, maybe then they’ll also publish “The Scorpions of the Desert”. I’m bitter too. I’ve been waiting for years to complete my meager Corto Maltese collection. I have everything in one foreign language or another, but I’d still like it in my native tongue.