We sat down with Hudson to chat about their upcoming Wii Sports inspired game.

John Lee, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Hudson chatted with us recently about their upcoming Wii game, Deca Sports. He was also kind enough to provide us with these exclusive screenshots from the game.

What was the original inspiration for the game?

Clearly Wii Sports is a big inspiration for us, and it has blown us away at how popular it has become, and how it single handled revolutionized the casual sports market. We wanted to take that concept to the next level, introduce new sports that haven’t been done before on the Wii, and make it appeal to both casual and hardcore sports enthusiasts at the same time.

It simply feels natural taking a sports game and making the controls more interactive, using your whole body to play the game. Kudos for Nintendo for introducing a whole new way to play games! Hudson is the type of company that loves to innovate with new gameplay mechanics, so this really opens up a whole new ballgame for us.

What makes Deca Sports a worthwhile investment for those who already own titles like Wii Sports or Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games?

Wii Sports and other recent casual sports games pretty much ignited the interest in this emerging sub-genre. But what we often hear is that people want more, after playing through the game. In many ways, we view it as the appetizer, and what we are providing is the full course meal. There are 10 sports total in our game, and we introduce gameplay modes that a more dedicated gamer would appreciate, like the Deca Challenges, the Tournament Mode, and so forth.

In addition, we wanted to have a great mix of sports, so we have a couple of racing games, some winter sports, some summer sports. Each sports game in Deca Sports is strong enough to stand on its own, and when you put it all together, it becomes a real no brainer that this is a great compilation package.

Will both the Wii Remote and Nunchuk be utilized? Could you give us some examples of their usage?

For some sports, yes, the Nunchuk will be used as well. We found out that the gameplay was more fluid when you had the dual controls. For instance, in Soccer, you use the Nunchuk to move your player around the field, and you use the Wii Remote to kick the ball around to different players.

Will the game feature online multiplayer/functionality? If so, could you provide details? If not, why not?

This version of Deca Sports currently supports local multiplayer, so you’ll have to play with family and friends in one room. That’s mainly because of the timing of the launch of the game - only recently has online gaming been available for the Wii. We’re definitely looking at how sequels for Deca Sports will be handled, so online gaming will eventually make its way into the series.

Hudson Entertainment CEO, John Greiner has noted that the game will be accessible to casual gamers, but should also offer enough depth to appeal to "hardcore sports enthusiasts." Could you elaborate on how this has been made possible?

When we did some market research to determine what people wanted in a casual sports game, the top two things were “easy to pick up and play” and “gameplay depth”. It seems like these things are contradictory, but they are actually very complimentary. We ended designing a game that is easy to pick up and play. Anyone can pick up the controls, and within a few tries know how each sport works.

By focusing in on the core gameplay elements for each sports, it became natural how someone would swing a Wii Remote and how the characters would respond on screen. But once a gamer masters these basic controls, there are layers of gameplay elements that a more advanced sports player can learn.

For instance, in Badminton, you can actually place your shot in one of 9 quadrants. You can do cross court shots, then do a drop shot, then set up a shot for a power slam. Each of these advanced techniques requires a gamer to master the finer details of the controls. One way to teach these controls is that we introduced a new mode called the Deca Challenge.

Each of these challenges show a gamer some of the advanced techniques for each sport. In addition, to all these specialized moves, there are also multiple gameplay modes, and team dynamics that come into play. We wanted to make sure the hardcore sports enthusiasts feels like this game is worth coming back to over and over to play.