Samba De Amigo for Wii Reviews & Ratings by IGN

Many a gamer has beloved visions of a maraca-shaking monkey dancing in their heads. Eight years after its release on the Dreamcast, Samba de Amigo returns on the Wii -- minus the maraca peripheral you may remember. This version attempts to recreate that shaking feeling with two Wii remotes or a remote and nunchuck, and kind of succeeds. The motion controls aren't perfect and on harder difficulties they won't recognize many of your moves. But this is a casual game, and on the lower settings the game's charm and colorful visuals will win a lot of people over.



Samba is a rhythm affair where you shake your controllers in time to catchy Latin sounds. There are three shake zones represented onscreen: upper, middle, and lower. The game will calibrate the controls for each player so it knows how you will be holding the remotes in each zone. Orbs float from the center of the play field and you shake your stuff when they pass over the zone icons. There are also dance moves and poses thrown at you, requiring you to mimic the moves of the onscreen avatar. A helpful tutorial will walk you through all of the mechanics. Playing through career mode will unlock songs for free play, as well as new sounds for your maracas.







The problem is you'll find your shakes aren't always recognized, and the game will mistake other movements for shakes. Sometimes just lowering your hands from the upper to the middle zone will trick the game into thinking you're giving a shake. Sometimes you'll clearly have your remote pointed down for the lower zone, but the game will disagree. It's not a problem on the lower difficulties because the symbols don't come fast enough and you have time to compensate, but once you get to hard you'll find Samba de Amigo just can't keep up with your movements. On the Dreamcast the maraca peripheral was height sensitive and did a much better job of reading your movements. This Wii version puts all its hopes on the remote's accelerometer and it turns out it's not up to the job. There are onscreen indicators that show which zone your remotes are currently held in, but the game moves too quickly on hard for these to be much help.



Although this is a pretty major complaint, it's really the only one I have with Samba de Amigo. The classic game is beloved for a reason: it's an adorable rhythm game. It's got an awesome soundtrack, exciting visuals, and lots of SEGA fan service. Famous characters like Sonic show up to shake what their mama gave 'em. The Miis stored on your console will appear in crowds during songs, a feature more Wii games should include. There are lots of cute characters and colorful environments providing the backgrounds while you play. Even though it focuses on samba music, this is a very wacky, Japanese game. The song select screen asks you to "pick a music!"



Outside of the single-player career mode, two shakers can go at it in competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes. There are also several mini-games, but these are pretty shallow offerings like whack-a-mole and Simon Says.



This is one of the first Wii games to offer downloadable content in the form of additional songs. Three songs should be available to download on launch day. Thanks to a lengthy set list, single- and multiplayer modes, online leaderboards, a few mini-games, and downloadable songs, Samba de Amigo offers a good amount of content.

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