And, needless to say,
Samba has playability in spades, hearts, diamonds, and even clubs. This is a Game, one that we’re not likely to forget, and it’s a testament to Sega’s daringness. Yes, it’s expensive to really get the full experience of
Samba de Amigo, but it’s worth every penny. And with the recent announcement of the sequel being U.S.-bound, it may not be as much of a one-time deal as you think.
The object of Samba de Amigo is to play to the beat. Every song has a pattern that must be played. You can do it with either the Dreamcast controller or the special Maracas Controller, which costs $80 a pair. And while that’s a lot (and you need two pair for the party experience), it’s really the only way to play the game.
There are six ‘locations’ that a maraca can be -- high, medium, and low on both sides. The screen shows six circles representing the six locations. As the music plays, little balls fly out from the center of the group and head toward one or more of the circles. By shaking a maraca in the proper location when the ball gets to the circle, you get an Amigo (hit). Sometimes it’s one-by-one; on the harder levels, the balls are going everywhere and you have to figure out what order to hit them in, and fast. The game doesn’t care if you shake too much -- just make sure you shake in the right location.
Every once in a while, a stick figure will pop up in the center instead, with its maracas pointed to various places. This is a Pose, and you’ve got to try to match it as quickly as possible. The last ‘variation’ is when a bunch of red balls fly at a circle, which means that you must shake your maraca there as fast and often as possible.
Each song has its own patterns, and the patterns get more difficult as you choose harder difficulty levels. What may be easy at first often gets hellishly difficult on the high difficulty levels. But they’re all (usually) doable, and part of the fun is just -having- fun, not necessarily winning.
The game comes with quite a few modes. There’s Arcade mode, which is a port of the Japanese arcade game. Then there’s Original mode, which lets you play any of the songs you’ve unlocked (in either Arcade or Challenge mode), instead of having to follow the order that Arcade mode goes in. There’s the aforementioned Challenge mode, which has you complete certain goals (complete song XXX at difficulty YYY with ZZZ points, etc.), and rewards you generally with new songs. There’s Practice mode, which lets you try songs at various difficulty levels without being able to ‘mess up’ and end the song prematurely because of a poor score.
And then there’s everyone’s favorite, Party Mode. You can play against another person, or play to see how ‘Love Love’ you are with someone else (huh?), or finally play a menagerie of mini-games. They range from Guacamole (guess...) to seeing who can complete the most poses in a given amount of time. They’re all fun, and really make for a great party game.
And, like PaRappa the Rapper, the real enjoyment of the game doesn’t come from just beating it. It comes from completing the challenges, playing against friends, and just playing for the sheer joy of shaking some maracas. People will look at you like you’re a damn fool, and then they’ll play, and then you’ll wrest the maracas out of their cold, dead hands. It’s good stuff.
