I had a deep love affair in 1999. Despite all the fear and uncertainty around the end of that decade, the bright spot in my life was a little console called the Dreamcast. Even after all these years later, I still have to wonder, “what if”?
But, Sega didn’t go out of business entirely; they just focused on the games we loved so much instead of consoles people don’t appreciate. So, a Dreamcast lover can still rejoice because some of the games that made the system great are being released. Right?
Along comes Samba de Amigo for the Wii. Samba de Amigo is a rhythm game played with maracas; you shake the maracas in time in different positions based on the location of little blue dots that radiate out toward six locations: three for the left side and three for the right. It was one of the first home rhythm games after Dance Dance Revolution to make a mark on the U.S. console market. The problem was that it felt a bit goofy to shake around maracas, but once you got past the self-consciousness, it was a blast to play. The game paved the way for other console rhythm games, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
I was lucky to get two of the maracas controllers for the Dreamcast version. It’s a bit of a pain to drag out the Dreamcast to play the game, but it’s usually greeted as a welcome addition to a gamer party. I really loved the game, too; I played until my arms were sore, and I got 100 percent scores on a lot of songs on various difficulty levels. So, yeah, I was a pretty hardcore player. When I heard about the Wii version, I was overjoyed. Instead of investing in relatively expensive maracas controllers, you can just use the Wii-motes!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite live up to my lofty expectations. Given the differences in the Wii-mote, the control system is quite a bit different. Instead of height, you change the direction the Wii-mote is pointing. The game gives you some tutorials to get you used to the control scheme, but I found myself still moving the controls to different heights as I did in the previous version.
But, the controls just don’t feel right. It seems like the developer anticipated these problems and tried to be rather forgiving; there have been a few times when I was sure I missed a beat, but it got counted anyway. However, this can sometimes work against you when you’re sure you’re shaking in the right position but miss the beat anyway. I think the game would have benefited from a slight change so that misses weren’t punished so heavily instead. I have gotten better with the controls over time, so perhaps I’ll stick with it and see if I can understand more of the potential.
The game features a new “career mode,” which you have to complete songs on specific difficulties in order to unlock content. Some of the content is new songs; some of it is funny (that is, annoying) sound effects; and there are a few bonus videos. The problem is that you have to complete all the songs to go to the next level. If there’s one song that is tripping you up, you can’t play anything else until you finish that one. I prefer what Guitar Hero did, in that you only had to complete four out of five songs in a group to advance and open up more songs.
In addition, there is a quickplay mode to play a single song, original mode where you play two songs and then get a bonus third one if you do well, and some party-focused minigames. One of the more interesting variations is “LoveLove,” which you play with a partner and get extra points for being synchronized, even if it’s a mistake.
In the end, I really, really wanted to capture the old Samba de Amigo feeling with the new game. The different — and imprecise feeling to me — control scheme just doesn’t capture that old feeling. I’m curious how someone who had not played the Dreamcast version would do. Perhaps I’m just too tied to the old control system.
Summary
Graphics: Good. You don’t buy this game to watch the pretty graphics. When you’re watching the little blue markers, you rarely care what the background looks like. It can be entertaining for other people to watch, though. One neat addition is that your Mii is part of the crowd during the song. The one new complaint I have is that it seemed easier to completely miss some of the blue markers against the background in this version.
Music: Excellent. The game has almost every song from the Dreamcast version, plus a lot of extras. Listening to the variety of songs gets you moving and in a good mood! Even if you’re not a huge fan of Latin music, it starts to grow on you after a while. Just don’t admit to anyone that you enjoyed a Ricky Martin song!
Control: Poor. If you’re used to the Dreamcast version, be ready to unlearn a lot of your moves. The controls take a lot of work to really get. For me, there is no sense of fine control at the harder levels. The more difficult levels become nearly impossible to do accurately because you miss a lot of notes. The system does seem to reward you based on movement, but even that is very imprecise.
Gameplay: Average. You have to pass some levels to unlock some of the songs. Given the poor controls, it’s very difficult to get beyond the Hard setting. I still have a few songs that cannot be unlocked because I cannot pass the song on Hard to play other levels. There are a number of party games to play, too, if you like that.
Extras: You can unlock a lot of options for maracas and other sounds that just seem more annoying than interesting. The game also features downloadable content, three additional songs for 500 Wii Points ($5). The three songs in the first pack include Are You Gonna Be My Girl (Jet), I Want Candy (Bow Wow Wow) and Mambo Mambo (Lou Bega).
Overall: So much potential that the game doesn’t quite live up to. The poor controls don’t translate the old experience very well at the higher difficulty levels. The game is still an awesome experience on Easy and Medium levels, but at Hard and beyond, the controls just aren’t precise enough. Since you have to unlock songs in the different difficulties, there are some songs you might just not be able to unlock, which is a real shame, because at the lower levels, it’s still pretty fun.
I'm an introvert that extroverts well (especially online). I'm a pretty typical computer geek, able to spend long hours in front of a computer focusing on a project or game.
I was born to be a gamer. Some of my most vivid earliest memories are of creating games to play while I was bored. As a child, I was naturally drawn to computer games. Even though my conservative religious friends thought D&D was "evil", we still got into fantasy role-playing through computer games. I played on the computers at school when I could, and played on the game consoles I could afford to buy at home.
It was my love of games that lead to me to programming. I finished my assignments in class and then spent the rest of the hour working on little games. This continued into college, where I learned about text MUDs. I started coding on them and spent many late nights in the computer lab.
It was around graduation in college when I realized that a career in the game industry might be a good fit for me. After working in a boring corporate job for a bit and thoroughly hating it, I started looking for work in the industry. I was hired on at 3DO to maintain an online game called "Meridian 59".
After working at 3DO then working at Communities.com (both currently out of business through no fault of my own!), I helped start Near Death Studios, Inc. We bought the rights to Meridian 59 from 3DO and have relaunched the game commercially. (Details at: http://www.meridian59.com/)
I'm currently doing design and programming work on Meridian 59 while sneaking in as much gaming of all types (computer, board, paper RPGs, etc) that I can.
