Was this legendary arcade and Dreamcast rhythm game so popular because of its inherent quality, or was it for the crazy controller it was played with?
Namely a weighty pair of full-size plastic maracas with ultrasound emitters dangling off the bottom and a sensor bar that detected what you were doing with them.
In the days before Guitar Hero, it was the last word in music-game cool, and the Dreamcast version retailed for a cool £100. At that price, only a few thousand were released in this country, but they sold out very quickly and remain an expensive collectors' item even now.
So now we've got a console that comes with a motion-sensing controller as standard, and has become a party favourite in millions of living rooms around the world, Samba de Amigo for Wii makes perfect sense.
The one thing we were concerned about was the accuracy of the controls, but now we've got our hands on a revised version that fixes some early problems and is calibrated very much like the finished game will be, we're delighted to report that it seems to work every bit as well as it ever did on Dreamcast.
There's some kind of programming trickery at work, making the game know whether you're shaking each hand at the high, middle or low position, but whatever it's doing, it does it consistently and with reassuring solidity.
Carnival time
The gameplay is extremely simple. You have six circles on the screen, representing the three different positions you can hold each hand. Blue balls float out from the centre and you shake the maracas (or the Wii remote and nunchuk, in this case) when the balls enter the circles.
It's all choreographed to fit with the music and there are five difficulty levels. On the easiest, you'll just do a simple shake to the beat.
On the harder ones, the balls fly in opposite corners or force you to use both hands to one side, and by the time you've learned these fast, frantic patterns, you'll find you're swaying and dancing to the music as though you were playing the real thing. Which you are, in a way.
The maracas' shaking noise comes through the TV speakers and other audio cues are played through the remote, so it doesn't feel like you're just waggling a couple of inert plastic lumps.
Despite the comparative lack of weight, the feel of classic Samba de Amigo has survived on Wii.
Dreamcasted
So what's actually in the game now? The modes from the Dreamcast version are all carried over, as are the graphics, which are identical.
Classic mode is basically the original game all over again, while Love Love mode is a kind of two-player thing that rates your compatibility with the other player.
The more synchronised the shaking, the higher the love rating you get. Of course, it's possible - and preferable, in most situations - to play a normal two-player battle game, where you just compete for high scores.
Each player can set their own difficulty level, giving novices a chance to compete alongside experts.
We didn't get a chance to check out the Survival mode or the minigames, as they were both locked in our preview version, but that's something to look forward to in the finished game.
The original Dreamcast version also had a couple of mole-whacking games, one where you had to repeat a sequence of shakes, a game based on striking a pose with the maracas and one that involved counting numbers and avoiding bombs.
We reckon some, if not all, of these will be included in the Wii edition.
Brand new for Wii, the Hustle option tailors the standard maracas' arrangements to fit the enhanced motion-sensing abilities of the Wii controllers.
Dance dance
In this mode, the balls fly towards the circles, as before, but they're broken up every now and then by a dancing figure, which you have to emulate.
The figure waves its hand back and forth in time with the music - at different heights, too - or does a big, sweeping circle with one arm. We had a little trouble guessing which arm was which.
It all fits in pretty well with the existing Samba stuff, and as you move up through the difficulty levels you can expect a decent workout.
It didn't help that we'd knackered our elbows playing Boom Blox. At least, that's our excuse for being a bit weary after five minutes of arm-waving.
If you played the original Samba de Amigo, you'll recall that there was an occasional break in the music while the game made you strike a funny pose, and that's still here in every mode.
Boogie
The final music track list was one thing we weren't allowed to see. Licensing issues, probably.
It's still being worked on. Anyway, as far as we know, it's a mixture of songs from the earlier Samba games - whistle-blowing carnival classics - and some newer stuff. It's more than eight years old, after all, so some contemporary tracks would be a wise addition.
The Dreamcast game had a feature whereby you could connect to the internet and download a code that gave access to additional songs on the disc.
There's no word on whether that's going to be the case on Wii, although there's a Nintendo WFC menu option. At the moment, it's only confirmed to be for online leaderboards.
this is like playing House of the Dead without the shotgun
c'mon Nintendo, give us a proper recoiling gun and not some plastic rubbish 'zapper'. Heck, the word even sounds awful, surely everyone would prefer Link's Crossbow to come with "The Wii big-motherf****r-of-a-gun-that-has-massive-recoil-and-looks -like-an-assault-rifle"
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
