Samba De Amigo for Dreamcast Review

So now Donkey Konga is all the rage. You can play the drums with your PS2. Japan has even more rhythm games of that nature. Did you know one of the first musical instrument games was on the Dreamcast? It’s called Samba De Amigo and you play the maracas. You heard me right.

You can play this game one of two ways: with the controller, or, if you were brave enough to withstand the clerk’s mockery, the optional maracas. After picking a song, you go to the shaking screen to see what you need to do. There are 6 colored circles on the screen. From the middle of those circles, dots emerge and float to one of the colored circles. Your goal is to match the correct button (or sequence if more than one dot) in time with the music.

Using the controller is a bit harder, as you might expect. You use the digital pad and corresponding colored buttons to input your ‘shakes’. It’s fine for the easy songs, but as you get harder and more hectic, it gets problematic trying to keep time and responding quickly.

Of course, the maracas give you the full experience. Shaking the maracas and posing them to the correct placement is natural and you’ll find yourself getting higher scores and more perfects than using the controller.

You probably guess it already, but Samba De Amigo contains a lot of Latin music and Latin remixes and remakes. Shake your thing to Ricky Martin (Cup of Life and Livin’ La Vida Loca), the Macarena (you knew that would be in there, right?), and a Latin remix of A-ha’s Take On Me. All of the songs are catchy and to me, seemed like obvious choices to include in the game.

Upbeat and fun. Sure, they’re cartoonish, but remember this is a game from Sonic Team, the same guys behind Space Channel 5, Feel the Magic XY/XX and, well, the Sonic games for the Dreamcast. The main screen where you’ll stare the most is 2D and the backgrounds are 3D with cuddly little animals cheering you on (or booing you if you stink).

If you’re a music fan or a fan of music games, find this game. If you do, I recommend buying the maracas if you can find them. I had to get mine off of Ebay, but I got them at a reasonable price, even though they are collector’s items. And don’t let the monkey on the cover frightened you.

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