Samba De Amigo is a re-run of an expired game originally developed by Sonic Team and homed exclusively on the Dreamcast.
The original was supposed to be good, but many had a hard time warranting its hefty £100 price tag largely due to its maraca controllers. Like so many old Dreamcast games, Samba De Amigo has now moved on and I couldn't think of a better home for this rhythm based title than the Wii… at least in theory.

Samba De Amigo for the Wii was rebuilt by Gearbox Software to utilise the accelerometers inside the Wii remote and the nunchuck without the need for fancy maraca controllers retailing at £35. A nice saving overall, but is it anything like the original, or even worth £35?

So, what is the game about? Simply put, it's another rhythm based game like DDR except it largely focuses on latin music and you use your hands rather than your feet, but the controls are so poor you may as well be; but before I go into more detail of why I hate the controls, I'll explain the game.

Using the Wii remote and the nunchuck, you shake the remote in one of 6 directions – 3 per hand, in the air, in the middle, and down low. Scoring is achieved by successfully hitting the note travelling to the direction indicated by shaking the Wii remote. Successive hits results in a higher combo and a higher score. Perfect timing will also increase the players score.

So how easy are the controls? Shaking a Wii remote seems pretty hard to fault. Nearly everyone who has ever held a Wii remote has made an ass out of themselves by pretending they are maracas; and most still tend to do it.
Unfortunately the accelerometers offer little in the way of precision. Sure they feed the information with a very high degree of accuracy to the console technically, but what it fails to understand or recognise is which note you are attempting to hit. Unwritten rules would dictate that you should hold the remote horizontally, up, or down to dictate which notes you should hit, except in practice this doesn't work. More often than not, harsh shaking will result in a flailing frenzy regardless of the direction you want to go, and soft shaking will result in a miss because your shake was a touch too soft. There's no happy medium, and even when you think you have discovered it and grow bored with EASY, hard mode is a completely different ball game all together. The game is just too difficult to like or play for a long period of time and frustrations – especially in competitive multiplayer – get the most of the situation making you feel like ripping off your competitors head because their notes were being detected more frequently than yours were and weren't sharing with you how they got it to recognise the remote movements more accurately… but I'm beginning to ramble now.

Putting the shifty controls aside, the game play is actually very good if not very samey across every game type. If you've played one you've played them all. Head to head multiplayer battles might make this game last a little longer if you can stomach the unresponsive controls and Career mode doesn't seem like much of a career. You unlock new items as you progress such as new sounds for your Wii-maracas, music and mini games.
The mini-games are a nice break, but still suffer the same control issues and aren't really all that entertaining in the long run. I'd personally sooner switch the console off if I'm bored of the game than endure the pitiful selection the mini-games section has to offer – most of which are just aspects of the main game crammed into a palatable chunk that wear thin. But they're not all bad, most are terrible, particularly those that stray away from the games main focus to begin with, such as Piñata and Volleyball.

The music is more Latin than Samba with hints of tripe thrown in for good measure (Las Ketchup) and a few that will get you tapping your feet.
The maraca sounds the Wii remote makes gets very annoying, as well as the noises it makes, but it makes me glad that the game has an option to turn this off anyway. Should that have failed, I'm also glad that the Wii has the ability to turn off the speaker in the remote all together!

What more can I say about this game? I'm not a fan. My girlfriend wanted this game more than I did and even she found this game tough to chew.
For what it's worth I think the game was probably better on the Dreamcast and resurrecting it from the dead was probably not the best thing Sega could have done for it, but I guess for some it's a bit of nostalgia or a second chance for those who missed their opportunity to play a short lived bit of Dreamcast history before it was long forgotten.

Game play 7/10 – Perhaps not the best rhythm based game out there, but certainly a unique one.

Graphics 5/10 – Entertaining, but severely distracting.

Audio 7/10 – I would have loved to have rated this higher. This is the rating that should tell you whether this game was worth buying, but the sound effects from the remote and some of the poorer song and lack of anything traditionally Samba made be downgrade this rating to a 7.

Multiplayer 3/10 – Nothing worth hanging around for. Your friends and your family would be quick to suggest playing Mario Kart or something a bit more entertaining than a few songs you shake your fists at – and I'm not talking about the maracas.

Lifespan 2/10 – Disappointing. We got this game 3 weeks ago, delayed playing it for a while, played it, switched it off, and only really played it a second time in order to write this review. I just wasn't as entertained. I guess games are no fun when you're losing constantly, but hey.

Controls 1/10 – I really regret giving this such a low score since it will ultimately affect the percentage and rank I'm about to give the game, and to be fair, it all boils down to what the Wii remote CAN'T do rather than what this game can or can't do well. It's well known that the Wii remote suffers many issues with motion sensing with its accelerometer but at the end of the day, if the controls are broken, they're broken; no amount of defending the game will fix the Wii remotes problems and the Wii is the console this game is on.

I feel bad about that score, I had high hopes for this game and its biggest let down was the console it was put on.