The Wii has been out for around eighteen months now and still we are hearing about the wonder that is Wii Sports. Senior citizens love it. Parents love it. Little kids love it. Hardcore gamers love it - well, some of them do anyway! It seems like just about everyone loves the waggling mini-game extravaganza, yet Nintendo has made no obvious efforts to release a sequel. Bowling, baseball, boxing and golf are fine for a while, but it's about time for something new in the same extremely accessible style. Enter Hudson and their upcoming 'unofficial' sequel to Wii Sports, Deca Sports. With ten games on offer (none of which were featured in Wii Sports) and support for up to four players, does the Wii have a new simple sports king?

After putting extensive time into the demo, the answer just might be yes. What Deca Sports brings to the table is ten sports - Basketball, Soccer, Kart Racing, Curling, Snowboarding, Archery, Badminton, Supercross, Beach Volleyball and Figure Skating - with the latter four being the events contained within the demo. In the full game there will be four single player modes to hone your skills in, but for demo all that is available is Open Match and its multiplayer counterpart. Open Match is essentially a one off for computer or real players, with a short list of rules set to your choosing. This wouldn't be an accessible game if it was bogged with options and modes, now would it?

Badminton is a great one-on-one, mano-y-mano battle of who can create the perfect balance of light and strong hits to coax their opponent into setting up a killer slam. The controls are handled exclusively with the Wii Remote, with player movement entirely controlled by the A.I., which can be completely alarming at first, but once it proves itself competent you get used to it. The game boils badminton down to, more or less, soft hits and hard hits, executed by either swinging the Wiimote down slowly or quickly, respectively. The game is very accurate in its abilities to read your movements, eliminating all learning curve in regards to controls. If the shuttle is served up you can smash it right down into your opponent's face by hitting it as it glows in mid-air. Badminton can get pretty intense during long rallies, which can lead to players getting out of their chairs and putting more effort into their hits as they get into the game - at least this happened to my friends and I on more than one occasion.

Next up is the only game on this demo that disappoints - Supercross, where up to four players can race on three different dirt tracks for first place. The game has you holding the Wiimote sideways and tilting it left and right to steer, and while the extremely loose controls aren't exactly gamer-friendly, it's the crappy course collision detection and clipping issues that causes the most frustration. It is far too easy to get caught by the course boundaries or other players and brought to a dead stop that many times kills any chance you have of winning, and tilting the Wiimote forwards and backwards to steady your landings has yet to feel as if it has any type of precision that can be counted on. It's not that Supercross is unplayable, it's just far too unpolished, which is a shame when all the other sports included in the demo are so well programmed.

Volleyball has to be my personal favorite of the four demo sports, as it has provided some of the most intense multiplayer matches of my gaming existence (all twenty plus years of it), laying it all down on the line with that big white ball and the unforgiving net. The controls and play mechanics are basically the same as badminton, except that the playable area is larger, each side has a second player and the ball can be bounced around three times on each side before it has to be sent over to the other side. The biggest difference between the two is the speed at which volleyball plays out, moving far faster than badminton and really asking for the most of your twitch gaming skills. Timing is the volleyball player's best friend and once you get it down, epic exchanges might be all that you ever engage in. If getting up and moving around during intense badminton matches is acceptable then volleyball tends to mutate that to a crazed state, as voices raise and actions become more animated.

Last but surely not least is Figure Skating - and yes, I can hear your objection that this has to be the lamest sport to include in a video game. On paper you might be right, but in execution that assumption couldn't be further from the truth. As one of the few sports that not only utilizes the nunchuk but allows you to actually you're your character, figure skating has you essentially tracing a path with movement and flicking the Wiimote up when your skater moves over colored circles to execute tricks. Points are given based on accuracy, timing and your ability to follow the routine's tempo. Sounds easy enough, right? Not even close! Many of the tricks that your skater pulls off will alter that way that he or she handles until returning to normal skating, making staying in-time and on course quite the challenge. After playing through figure skating over and over again, I have to say that this is about as perfect a game of this nature as could have been produced, as the control system is both accessible and challenging - the best of both worlds.

To ensure that my love for this game is properly shown, I must outline how my friends and I played it, so if you decide to pick it up you will know how to get the most out of it. We competed tournament style, allotting a certain amount of games per round, knocking off the lowest scoring person until only two remained, which makes each event a little more intense. We'd start with four people and move through the four-player games one by one, ending with figure skating. Down to three, we would follow the same path, with someone randomly getting an A.I. partner for volleyball. After losing another player came the finals, where all four games would be played. Now we would approach badminton, supercross and figure skating the same as before, but volleyball had to have its stakes upped. That means each player has two Wiimotes and must control both players on their side of the net at the same time! This is not easy but it forces the win or loss to come completely at the player's hands, rather than being influenced by the A.I. We were getting so loud during these tournaments that we were told to keep things quiet multiple times by anyone around us, as we would get as rowdy and raucous as four guys can get. The winner of the tournament got to take home a 'cup' as the spoils, which is a Styrofoam cup from our work with 'Deca Sports Demo' written on it in ballpoint pen. It sits nicely on my desk at work (along with one for the full game... but more on that when our review hits).

As single player games go, Deca Sports doesn't have much to offer in the longevity department. But when it comes to multiplayer, with ten games and easy-as-pie controls, it's right up there with Smash Bros. Brawl as an ultimate party tournament game. For a game that I wasn't all that keen to even play when the chance was first given to me, to come to a point where I'm willing to say that the demo alone is one of the greatest multiplayer games I have ever played, is saying a lot. Maybe even too much - but I don't care. I love the hell out of this game and for the paltry sum of $29.99, you should too!

Previewed by Tony Peters for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).