Oct 19, 2007

Everyone's got Wii Sports, everyone's played it and everyone's still playing it. It's wrist-bustingly successful, which makes it an utter surprise that it's taken this long for dollar-seeking moneymen to grab a slice of the action - though Deca Sporta seems to try and improve the model rather than pilfer from it.

As the name might suggest, there's 10 sports on offer, and all of them differ from the ones on Nintendo's roster of five. Motocross, Basketball, Badminton and Volleyball are the first four, with Archery, Soccer and - interestingly - Go-karting also announced. Hudson have placed teasing question marks over the three remaining sports in the shots they've released so far, though job-free 'net speculators have since given them a dual-fingered salute by discovering that they're probably Speed Skating, Ice Hockey and Snowboarding. Either way, there's definite potential here - especially the Kart game, which could give us a taste of Mario Kart a few months early; and Snowboarding, which will ease the suffering of anyone awaiting any sort of update of 1080°.

There don't seem to be many surprises in the way the sports handle - Badminton is a mirror image of Tennis - though we're intrigued by the Soccer (five-a-side rather than full-on elevens), where your passing and shooting is determined by how hard you "thrust" the controller and in what direction. Watch this space for a full review soon.