Monkey Ball, Silent Hill among possible DS titles

Several notable game makers have reportedly been vox popped on games they would like to work on, or have been asked to work on, for the Nintendo DS in the latest issue of American magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. Amongst the games mentioned in connection with the DS were Super Monkey Ball, Castlevania, Silent Hill and Chu Chu Rocket.

Sega's Toshiro Nagoshi, to begin with, said he would "love" to work on a DS version of Monkey Ball, while Sega's Sonic Team lead Yuji Naka went one further and revealed that Nintendo had already asked him to update Chu Chu Rocket for the DS - an offer he has yet to refuse or accept, as he's still working on the enigmatic Project Rub.

Meanwhile, Konami's Koji Igarashi hinted that the Castlevania series may appear on the format, perhaps as something like recent GBA title Aria of Sorrow - with touch-screen support. A Silent Hill survival horror title is also a definite possibility according to the article.

Finally, Namco's Shinji Nagouchi reckons that the Kaitos series might appear on the DS. The most recent example, Baten Kaitos, appeared exclusively on GameCube.

Obviously we should point out that while these comments appear to be genuine, they are not as clear-cut as official announcements, and quite probably won't amount to anything in some cases. However, once again, it's a demonstration of the development community's eagerness to get on board with the DS, which already has a line-up of titles in development that's bound to cater for almost everybody.

For more on the Nintendo DS, please refer to our E3 coverage of the unit itself, the games as they were at the conference and how we felt when we actually played them. You can also download a movie shot over the shoulder of this reporter as we dabbled with the DS behind closed doors at the show.

The Nintendo DS is due out in the States later this year and Europe in early 2005.