Yeah! Yeah! Perfect! (Samba de Amigo (DC))

Member Name: quirky

Product:	Samba de Amigo (DC)
Date:	23/10/01 (530 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It is the Funnest game ever, has a monkey in it, make a fool of yourself, laugh as others do the same

Disadvantages: er.... your arms feel tired afterwards?

This is the only game I have ever seen proper grown ups play and enjoy. And it stars a monkey shaking maracas, a bee with a tiara and a cross dressing leopard. No, really.

Now harder to find than dodo eggs, at least in the UK, Samba De Amigo is based on a Sega arcade game of the same name. It involves the crazy task of shaking electronic maracas in time with Latin-flavoured songs (think Ricky Martin and Tequila, not the impossible to learn ancient language) to achieve a sort of super-funky high score, while impressing your friends and relatives with your smoothness.

Samba is a sheer joy to play. You feel like an idiot at first - after all you are stood, maraca in each hand, looking at a screen full of dancing animals - but soon the music gets you moving. Everyone I have shown this to has immediately said "this is GREAT!" and wanted to play more. A plentiful supply of alcohol in the fridge may also have helped, but I still play this one player to beat the "challenge mode".

This isn't a novelty game without substance. It is a genuine classic.

You can move the maracas freely, but they only register 6 positions. These correspond to high, middle and low, on both left and right side. On the screen are 6 donut shaped things, arranged in a circle with 2 high, 2 in the middle and 2 low. From the centre of the circle of donuts appear blue balls. Each one moves from the centre to a donut, and when it reaches you have to shake the maraca in time and at the right position.

For example, a blue ball goes to the top right donut; you must shake the maraca in your right hand in a high position when the ball arrives. Do this and a little "yeah!" appears, miss it and you get a "boo!" Too many boos and it's game over. Get all yeahs and you achieve a "PERFECT!" score.

It is more difficult to explain than play. The hard part in playing is getting the rhythm right, as the blue
balls start off fairly easy to hit, but later levels and on harder difficulty settings, they become impossible! Your mum might just about be able to manage easy or even medium difficulty, but try hard and she'd be throwing the maracas at you in frustration!

There are various modes too, some better for beginners, some for experts.

Training Mode is good to start off with, as this allows you to keep playing without getting "Game Over" for missing to many balls.

Arcade and Original are the standard Samba De Amigo game, you play through 1, 2 or 3 songs in a row and try and get the highest score. There are 3 difficulty levels and it can be played 1 or 2 player.

Party mode is ok if you have some friends that are at a decent standard of maraca shaking, but is too tricky for the beginner. Also you really need 2 sets of maracas to get the most out of it. This mode has various mini games, but it doesn't seem as much fun as just shaking the maracas to the music.

Challenge Mode is a 1 player game that sets various challenges, such as achieve a score over 400,000 points, or get a perfect on a certain song. As a reward, you get more tunes and sound effects unlocked for use in the other modes.

In all there are 23 songs, 14 are "real life" ones, such as Tubthumping, Macarena, Samba De Janeiro, etc. and 9 are taken from old Sega video games. You only start off with 6 though. The rest have to be unlocked by playing the challenges or in arcade mode.

Typically the game goes for £100+ on eBay now, making me wish I had bought a few PAL copies last November. However, there are cheaper ways of buying it if you are determined.

I bought my copy from a US online store, www.tronixweb.com, for about $40 and it works fine on a Dreamcast with a mod chip or with a "boot disk" (a disk that you load first that will then let you play American and Japanese games.) Recently though, I have see
n it cheaper at around $20 to $30.

Maracas are harder to come by. The original Sega ones, at least, are impossible to find. Luckily, third party maracas can be bought from some UK based import stores, although even these are rare nowadays. I recommend www.ink-4-less.net, as this is from where I got my first set. They are about £30 from there. I also bought a second set from www.lik-sang.com and, although cheaper, the shipping was pricey, so all in all it probably worked out the same.

These sets are called "Cha Cha Amigo" maracas and work pretty well. The detection of the movement is accurate and they have flashing lights too! Only downside is that they need a good shake to register sometimes. Get those arms pumping! With two players the fun is more than doubled, although you will need a fair amount of space, as the maraca shaking can get quite wild. I haven't damaged anything with them yet though.

All in all, this is the best party game ever. The great 1-player bonus modes add a lot to the single player longevity too. Just don't let anyone catch you playing it on your own. In fact, if they do, they'll probably want to have a go themselves!

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