"It's better than shaking a stick at something."

So here's a game that sparked a special interest in me after three years of playing it, and just last month. For those who haven't lingered around during the SEGA Dreamcast days (and chances are you aren't one of these people because you're poking around this review in the first place), Samba de Amigo is like a Latin version of Dance Dance Revolution, except better or worse, depending on your taste in music. However, before you automatically worship whatever I type and shell out ten plus dollars on eBay, you better be prepared to spend more than one hundred dollars in total in order to fully enjoy this game, and this means the special maracas controllers, imported versions of Samba de Amigo ver. 2000 and a SEGA Dreamcast, and even Internet access. More on those later.

Where to begin... Samba is a musical game that depends on shaking your maracas (or pressing buttons on your controller, if you're a poor quack who can't afford a pair of one hundred-dollar maracas, like me) to the beat of the song. Blue rhythm balls appear on screen and hover towards musical circles (their positions are pre-determined, with the exception of Random mode, and depend on which mode you have chosen, which include Easy, Normal, Hard, Superhard, and Random modes). Once they make contact, shake, depending on where the rhythm balls are heading; if the rhythm balls are heading to the left, shake your left maraca at an average level, if they are heading to the upper right, shake your right maraca at a high level, and so on and so forth. You'll have to adjust height and screen settings in order to make this fully work, since the maracas use laser-censors to match up with the game. When red rhythm balls appear, that's your cue to shake extremely fast until the stream(s) end, and when Pose appears on screen, you'll have to position your maracas exactly as how he does. By default, it's stupid easy to play and master Samba de Amigo on a controller than with maracas, or so I have been told. That's why it sucks.

Songs are generally short, usually ranging from one minute thirty seconds to two minutes, and such. These are all licensed, and there are no original songs, so if you ever want to dance to the beat of any Sonic or other SONICTEAM-related songs like you've hoped, you'll have to get your SEGA Dreamcast to connect to the Internet and download additional music tracks. Or, if you are knowledgeable on how a boot disc works, you can even burn them onto the CD and import them to your VMU, following precise directions, of course. Considering this is much more pleasant than wasting any time on SEGANet just to download nine extra tracks for one game, I highly recommend this if you already haven't Internet access.

Along with the normal mode of gameplay, as I mentioned two paragraphs ago, there comes the main focus of the game: Challenge Mode. This can be a merciless work out during your first-time playing through it, but it becomes reasonably simple once you've mastered the game, but only when you've completely mastered it. Basically, the game will give you a song to play and a goal to accomplish, such as "Samba de Janeiro" on Hard mode with an A rank. Challenge Mode can unlock you some songs that can't be achieved by any other means (the other way to unlock the other songs is in Arcade mode, where you advance through stages and unlock songs as you play them). Some other modes, which are either extremely fun or extremely boring, include Party mode, which houses five different types of minigames (whacking moles, breaking rocks, mimicking, posing, and... some 1-2-3 game which I have no idea what to call, but the title is actually a pun in Japanese - a very bad one, at that - so meh), and Love and Battle modes. Love mode is generally a two-player thing, and depending on how well you and your partner (or computer A.I.) do on a song, the game will inform you on how compatible you are with each other. Battle mode is basically, "Shake better than your opponent so you can build bombs and beat their arse with them." Finally, there's also a Training mode, which allows you to play songs on any mode at your leisure, without having to worry how it would affect your puny game statistics.

With that overview in mind, it's time to evaluate the game double-handedly.

Graphics
They're splendid, considering there is usually a lot going on on-screen (with the exception of the horribly-designed Special Stages). The characters and background bounce and samba to the music, which proves just how crazy the SEGA Dreamcast can really make games appear. The problem with the graphics is that they can be too good, because as a player, you're going to have to focus on the rhythm balls nearly 100% of the time. No glancing at the characters, no drooling at the graphics allowed... If you're able to get a good look at the unlimited eye candy Samba has to provide, you'd probably have your score lowered, because before you know it you've missed some rhythm balls and your grade has fallen two levels altogether. The six Special Stages are arguably the worst in the game, because... there isn't even much to look at in the first place. Just a lot of rainbow colours, but none of the ludicrous stuff you've seen in previous tunes, with the exception of Amigo's amusing golden maracas and his ability to impossibly shake those huge bricks around to and fro.

Gameplay
I don't have any maracas controllers so I can't give this section a very good score. Playing with the regular controller really gets to your mind and it feels like a chore rather than an actual fun game. For this controller, you just press buttons according to the rhythm balls' movements, but when you start a new game, the controls are about as masterful as a not-so-nice girlfriend of yours. If you want Samba to be in any way merciful towards your progress, you can go back to the Options menu and switch controller settings to Type B, and anyone who finds Type A anyway easier than Type B does not deserve to be playing this game and needs to find much more intelligent means of expressing his mind's capacities, such as inventing a cure for cancer or a better bomb. Since, you know, those stuff would be easy for a person like you. The only real advantage Type A has over Type B is that you can perform Super Amigos, which is the maracas' equal to shaking both instruments in one circle area; of course, this is not possible when there are rhythm balls moving in more than one direction at a time.

Music
In Samba de Amigo, there are no original songs. Everything within the game is licensed, so chances are you've already heard "La Bamba" or "Macarena" sometime in your life. Some of them have been kept in their original format, though others, like "The Cup of Life" and "Livin' La Vida Loca," have been remastered, undoubtedly for copyright reasons with Sony and Ricky Martin. The old-timer songs such as "Tequila" and "The Theme of Inoki" get on my nerves quite a lot, although I did enjoy "Samba de Janeiro" and its 2000 successor. "Take On Me" is Latin-meets-American-rock, and needless to say I loathe it on general principle, but mainly because the rhythm balls just feel out-of-place with the tune. "Al Compas Del Mambo" is about as much fun as the game's songs get, and the rest are not much anything special. Of course, "Super Sonic Racing" and "After Burner" are still great songs here, and other SEGA/SONICTEAM songs have returned, ones you probably would have expected the least, such as Sonic CD's "Sonic ~ You Can Do Anything" (possibly the first time many American gamers would have heard this song) or "Magical Sound Shower" from OutRun. Unfortunately, "Sonic ~ You Can Do Anything" is not the version performed by Keiko Utoku but rather some American-accented singer (which I heard was the same one featured in SONICTEAM Powerplay, among other compilations), and "Dreams Dreams" is not the superior kids' version. However, I was pleasantly surprised that "Burning Hearts" was presented in its original Japanese format. However, if you're buying this game hoping to play any familiar SEGA tunes by default, dream on.

Well, there you have it. There aren't many categories in Samba de Amigo to evaluate, so I'll leave it at that. Overall, Samba receives a solid B. It would have been much more pleasant if there were more than fourteen default tunes, the download songs were unlockable within the game, if the maracas weren't so expensive for gamers such as myself, and if either game (ver. 2000) had actually sold well.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/05