DS bags Monkey Ball, Castlevania and Silent Hill?

Nintendo has done well in presenting a sizeable selection of possible first-party titles for the forthcoming DS handheld, and the third-party roster has subsequently begun to swell. Although there have been few official confirmations, respected American magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly recently spoke to several notable developers with regards to possible DS games.

Sega Sonic Team member Yuji Naka is continuing work on Project Rub and has also been asked to create a DS version of Chu Chu Rocket, which could make optimum use of the DS’s unusual features. Toshiro Nagoshi of Monkey Ball fame also announced that he would love to do a DS version of the classic spherical ape banana-collection simulator.

Konami piped up with a few of its own tentative suggestions, with Koji Igarashi mentioning the prospect of adapting Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow with extra DS-specific features thrown in. There has also been talk of bringing a Silent Hill game to the new Nintendo machine, although the developers are considering a radical change to the gameplay format in order to make it more suitable for the smaller screens.

Shinji Noguchi from Namco also added to the list of maybes, with a Kaitos DS game under serious consideration. This could be an RPG card-battling affair that would be the first of its kind on the DS, but may work out to be too demanding on the DS battery to work out practically.

Watch this space for all official DS news as and when it breaks.