More fun than a barrel full of monkeys (Samba de Amigo (DC))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	Samba de Amigo (DC)
Date:	01/05/03 (752 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Another bank holiday this weekend

Disadvantages: My flatmate's cat destroyed our telephone

Console games usually fall into one of several well-worn categories. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find anything that tries to be different. But sometimes you stumble across a game that's so unbelievable, so wonderful, that it completely restores your faith in human nature and makes you think that, yes, maybe we do deserve more than just a fiery nuclear death. Samba di Amigo is such a game.

The problem is that it's a Dreamcast game. They don't make Dreamcasts any more. And if you have a Dreamcast you're going to have real problems getting hold of a copy. It had a pretty small release in this country (it was very expensive, retailing at the time for about £70). The reason for the high price is that as well as the game disk itself you also got a pair of maracas that you had to plug in to your Dreamcast. The maracas are what you play the game with. Yes, that's right. Maracas. Ha, bet you weren't expecting that!

The maracas are very expensive these days. I hear that you can expect to pay more than £100 if you can find them at all. It took my Dreamcast-owning friend quite a while. He had an American version of the game, but no maracas. In the end he managed to get some 'unofficial' ones. (You get a mat to stand on with the official set, but the unofficial ones light up when you shake them, which is cool.) The maracas plug into a plastic strip that is then plugged into your DC. This strip has sensors at either end, which read the position of your maracas as you wave them around. (You specify your height before you play, so that you can shake the maracas at a level that's comfortable for you.) You have to navigate through the various options menus to get to the game by using your maracas. (They have a start button on them, but otherwise you have to shake them to select things - negotiating the menus at the start is quite tricky until you get the hang of it, but it does let you get used to the maracas befor
e you start to play.)

The game itself, when you finally get there, is awe-inspiring. Music plays (crazy party music!), and you have to shake the maracas in time to it. On the screen there is a series of six circles, arranged in a hexagonal configuration. Small white balls flow towards the circles as the tune progresses. When the balls reach the middle of the circles, you have to shake one of your maracas in the right place (so that it highlights the circle - there are three different positions on each side of your body). Does that make sense? You shake your maracas in time to the music, basically, but change the position of the shake according to what you see on the screen. How well you do - how many times you shake the maracas in time to the little balls on the screen - determines your final score for the song. Your overall rating ranges from A (very good) to E (shockingly bad).

There are three modes to play the game in. Arcade is the original version (this is a Japanese arcade game that's been adapted for the DC). You only have six songs to play with, and if you do well enough (C or above) you get to play again. Then there's Challenge Mode, where you are set certain tasks (for instance, get an A on such and such a song). Neither of these modes is as good as Original Mode though, where you get a free run of all the songs (there are about 25 - some have to be unlocked as you play, some were downloaded from the Internet).

You can choose which difficulty level to play at. Easy is for beginners - most songs are manageable at that level. Normal is more challenging (this is the level I'm currently playing a lot), and if you don't do well enough then you won't be allowed to finish the song. Hard is a lot more difficult, although I can at least get to the end of most songs on it. There's a secret Extra Hard level that's absolutely impossible - you'd need to be an octopus or something to do well on extra hard. If y
ou have two sets of maracas you can play in party mode, where two players play the same song in competition with one another. Sadly I only have one set.

In the background, while the songs play, you get some astonishing psychedelic visual effects. The main feature of the backgrounds is a cartoony Mexican monkey called Samba. He dances along with you, smiling and laughing when you do well, and getting upset when you let him down by messing up (you get booed if you do too badly). At the end of the song he cries if you get a D or an E. Making the monkey cry is the ultimate badge of shame, at least in my household. The backgrounds also feature other dancing creatures, weird abstract patterns, and, in one song, monkey skulls with sombreros on flying all over the place. You can't really watch the backgrounds while you play, as you can't afford to miss a single beat, but for other people eagerly waiting their turn the visuals are a pleasant diversion.

A lot of the music is Latin flavoured. Along with stuff like the Austen Powers theme and La Bamba you get modern rubbish like Livin' La Vida Loca. Tubthumping is the only song that's so bad I outright refuse to play it. There are a lot of old computer game themes too, my favourite being a little number called Super Sonic Racing. You also get a good version of Take On Me, although it isn't by A-Ha. (Samba di Amigo 2000, which is even harder to get hold of, was a sequel that featured the theme from Rocky and Mendelssohn's Wedding March among other things.)

The best thing about this game is that the more people you have playing it the more fun it is. It's a lot more enjoyable if you have other people watching you (most things are, I find). And watching other people is great, too. Most players adopt a look of immense concentration, interspersed with the odd moment of sheer panic and outbursts of surprisingly vitriolic swearing. This is especially funny, because obviously they&
#39;re also dancing, that being the point of the game. Everyone who comes into contact with the game wants to play it. People often start off by saying 'no, no, I'll just watch you', but before too long, having broken through the embarrassment barrier, they'll be jumping up and down trying desperately to get the maracas in the right place. I have a housemate who point blank refuses to play computer games normally; even she loves Samba.

I don't think I'm getting across just how good this is - it doesn't seem quite as exciting trying to describe it as it is to play. I can honestly say that Samba di Amigo is the most fun it's possible to have that doesn't involve naked ladies or hard drugs. Chances are you won't be able to find it for an affordable price now, and will never know the joy. But should the opportunity ever present itself then you'd be a fool not to take it.

Sadly I don't own the Dreamcast. It's been lent to me by a friend. This means that eventually he's going to want it back. But I don't like to think about that. For now I'm just looking forward to going home tonight and shaking my maracas vigorously in front of the television. I'm going to make that monkey smile.

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