3RRDC Samba

There are just some things that you can only find on Dreamcast. Here
we have Samba de Amigo, the smash music/rhythm game from the
arcade. The music game scene is full of a lot of fun and interesting
games, Dance Dance Revolution probably being the most well known.
Well here's a game that utilizes a special set of instruments to be
played, much like Drummania and the guitar freaks games. Here in
Samba you get maracas. Well if you can find a pair. For this review, I
had only the standard Dreamcast controller, but even still, was the
game fun? The four key things to music genre games are: Fun, Sound,
Replay, and Difficulty. Let's get ready to shake shake shake!

First things first. There is no story to speak of in this game. I would
have enjoyed cut scenes and dialogue for the zany cast of characters
but Sonic Team (the developer) deemed it not to be. Besides it is an
arcade port just like DDR so I guess I can't expect a story. But the
characters are sweet! The main character is Samba, a small Mexican
monkey who wears a sombrero and shakes his maracas to the music.
He is joined by six other crazy characters who dance and play
instruments in the background with him. There's Linda the dancer,
Bingo and Bongo, the two giant blue and pink teddy bears, are on the
drums, Chumba and Wamba are two cool cats on drums and guitar, and
finally Rio one of the weirdest characters ever in a video game. "She"
looks like a cat of some sort who dances around onstage. But in the
background in one of the levels you can sometimes see a picture of
her topless and her upper body is that of a male's. Censorship? Or
something else. I don't know! The point is these characters are weird
and hip. Funky fresh. Of course look out for dancing cacti, the dancing
sun, dancing stars, and dancing spectators. So as you can see, the
characters are varied and bizarre. Love it.

Like most music games, after a few quick rounds of playing, you get
how to play, but it will take forever to get really good at it. The game
play is simple enough. There are six circles on the screen. They are in
left, right, up left, up right, down left, and down right positions. Little
blue orbs appear within the middle of the screen and shoot out
towards the six circles. And thus, you then press the corresponding
button for what ever circle the orb flies to. Ok easy enough. The
controls are kinda hard to get at first. But you can customize them in
options to a few different layouts. The one I used utilizes the d-pad and
the 4 face buttons. It's hard at first to hit the circles that are high and
low. You have to do diagonals. Like for up left you have to hold up left
on the pad. Or you can do x and y on the face buttons. But after
playing the game a bit you get the controls mostly.

Also of note when playing are the red orbs. These are continuous lines
of orbs that you have to repeatedly shake at as fast as you can. Finally
there's the pose sections. At various points in the song a picture will
appear and you have to match the pose that is presented by doing the
correct button placement. So with all these things going on, you gotta
start on the easy or normal difficulty. Some songs are really easy,
some seem impossible. And that's a big gripe is the gap in difficulty.
Either a song was too easy or too hard. But practice makes perfect.

There are a good amount of modes to play in. First is Arcade. Choose
your difficulty and set your height (for scoring with maracas) and away
you go. First there are 3 songs to choose from. Pass one of them with a
"C" grade or higher and move on to the next three. Get an "A" or
higher in the first set and then the second set will have 6 to choose
from (after unlocking I think). Beat the required amount of stages and
you win. Game over. Original mode is next. It's the same as arcade,
except you get to pick what songs you want to play and they are not
set up in groups, just one long list. Fail a song in either mode (that is
your life bar drops to zero with an "E" grade, or get a "D" or "E" grade)
and it's game over. But there are unlimited continues so get back in
there monkey man!

The next big mode is challenge mode. Here you have to complete
songs that have set conditions, like pass this song with a "C" grade or
higher on normal difficulty. These challenges are organized into 5 big
sections from beginner to King. Each one has 3-5 challenges in it. You
cannot move on to the next challenge until you beat the one your at.
Beating the challenges will reward you with new music and such. The
beginner challenges are easy enough, but everything after that is hard!
Good luck! It's very frustrating I might add, but you just can't put the
game down.

Now get ready for party mode! Lots of cool stuff in here. Party mode
has 3 sections: Battle, Couples, and Mini-games. Battle is where when
you get a combo you have a bomb that slowly reaches 100%. Once it
does it launches to the other side and blasts the opponent lowering his
life bar. But miss a beat and your bomb will explode. Fun two-player
action. But I like couples mode better. Here you play with a partner (or
alone with your Dreamcast) and see how in sync you are with one
another. Hit the beats at the exact same time and your love rating
increases. Then after the song it shows your rating on a 100% scale
and gives a little explanation to your score and you get to see how
compatible you are with your partner. Very addictive. I keep aiming for
a 100% with my Dreamcast. Finally there are 5 mini-games to play like
whack a mole, break the rocks, strike a pose, hitting numbers in the
right order, and following the beat and order of the computer. Doing
well in these games reward you with new maraca sounds.

To round out the modes there's a training mode where can go and just
play whatever songs you like. Then there's internet mode. You used to
be able to connect to the Samba home page and post high scores and
download new songs but the link is dead. So how will you get the 8
downloadable songs? The only way to get them is download them
(duh). Thankfully, in the samba de amigo saved game section at
gamefaqs.com, they have a save file with all songs and everything
unlocked. This includes the downloadable songs. Finally there's
options where you can customize controls, listen to music, change
maraca sound effects and more.

Sonic Team didn't go cheap with the graphics either. To go with the
hyper up-beat tone of the game, samba is filled to the brink with crazy
colorful 3d graphics Many characters dance in the background, as
Samba and his band dance around on stage. There are also a few
different locations like in a town, in the studio, at an outdoor concert,
etc. And when you obtain an "A" ranking in a song, the background
changes to a trippy rainbow world that is a visual feast for the eyes.
The only real gripes are that I would have liked more levels to dance in,
and that the characters could have used some more polygons here
and there. These are mainly just for dancing characters in the
audience, but some were rather simple. Also Samba has a bizarre cube
head. Maybe this was all intentional and just goes with the style
though.

The sound is obviously real important and will please most. Overall it's
mostly Latin. I recognized most of the available songs. Songs like
Tubthumping from Chumba wumba, and Livin' la Vida Loca and The
Cup of Life from Ricky Martin (but not sang by him). I really liked the
Take on Me cover. But to be honest, generally this style of music really
doesn't suit my tastes. I don't have anything against these songs
though. There aren't any bad ones. Of all the non downloadable songs I
enjoyed El Ritmo Tropical the best (music fans may remember it from
DDR second mix).

Thankfully though, there are the downloadable songs. I think there are
8 of them. You get classic Sonic tunes like the main theme from Sonic
R and Sonic Adventure, and even You can do anything from Sonic CD.
Also there are songs from Nights, Rent A Hero, Burning Rangers and
more. These new songs add much more variety and increase the
replay.

Unlockable things are some of the songs. You can get these in
challenge mode, but be careful as they are hard to get. Also playing
the mini-games reward you with new maraca sounds. But I always have
the sounds off as they annoy me. There are quite a lot of sounds to
choose from though.

Overall if you're looking for something a bit different with a good beat,
Samba is your man. Just remember that playing with a controller, while
okay, will not give you the same effect as playing with the maracas.
Also fans may want to track down Samba de Amigo 2000. This import
only title has all the songs from this game and much more. And more
songs is what this game needed. Yes the downloadable ones helped
the list greatly, but still there aren't even 30 in all. But at least all the
songs are of good quality. Here's to you monkey man.

Review by: Orochi Sonic

Note: Remember the scores reflect playing the game without the
maracas. I would guess that if you were lucky enough to have them,
and even another pair for a second player, then game play and overall
would go up by 10. Also minus 10 from sound and replay and 5 from
overall if you do not download the downloadable songs. They just add
so much more Sega love to the game.