Hudson Developing Deca Sports for 3DS

Hudson Soft’s Makoto Kawaguchi, the producer of Deca Sports, has recently spoken of a new entry in the infamous series built specifically for the 3DS. When asked by Nintendo World Report about what he had in mind for the series regarding the 3DS, he had the following to say:

We really want to exploit what’s really unique about the 3DS, and one of the things that we are really focusing on is the tilt feature of it, and there will be some of the popular sports from the rest of the series. We are incorporating a completely new sport that’s just specific to the 3DS, so you will have to wait and see. We can’t talk about that quite yet.

It looks like we finally know a game that will use the Nintendo 3DS’s newly-added motion and gyro sensors. It’ll be interesting to see whether Hudson breaks the 3D effect or not while doing this, or if it will even be there at all.

According to the statement, the most popular sports from past entries in the series will make a reappearance here; while it’s currently unknown what they will be, some of the more interesting and exotic sports Deca Sports has included in the past include curling, figure skating, swimming, wall climbing, bobsled racing, and cheerleading. Yes, you read that right: cheerleading.

The other thing we know about the game at this stage is that it will include a brand-new sport that hasn’t been seen in Deca Sports before and that it has been selected and tailored to take advantage of the 3DS’s capabilities. What this new sport could be is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be something minor and relatively unknown.

For the uninitiated, Deca Sports is a series of games that try to cash in on and sell off the hype and positivity surrounding Nintendo’s own Wii Sports. Each Deca Sports title is a compilation of ten sports, a good idea in and of itself, but the games are generally hammered by critics for their poor controls and lack of charm. However, the games often include sports that one is extremely unlikely to find elsewhere (curling, for example) and some reviewers give Hudson credit for at least making the effort. The series, while commercially successful, is still widely regarded as “shovelware,” low-quality game fodder that isn’t worth its retail asking price.