Samba De Amigo

I'm about to make a pretty bold statement: Samba de Amigo > Guitar Hero (notice the bold type).

Now, put down your guitars, heroes, I come in peace. Months ago I had the opportunity to play this Guitar Hero game. I loved playing with the plastic guitar in my best possible bad ass pose and making the whammy bar go wawawawaoo. Good times. I told myself once I had the cash I’d buy a pair of guitars, but who are we kidding? Those suckers are ‘spensive! Might as well buy real guitars (and a band!) And if you’ve read anything on this blog you know poverty is one of my main concerns when choosing games.

So anyhow, through much sacrifice I got my kids a Wii this Christmas, the plan was to convince the rest of the family to get them games and wiimotes. I only got 1 wiimote and 1 game out of the deal but hey, there’s birthdays coming up! Anyhow, we were now in the hunt for cheap games. Enter Samba De Amigo. Just 20 bucks for a SEGA classic. Freekin’ bargain if you ask mii! (err… me).

So I pop that sucker in and was immediately captive of the epic opening theme. Freekin’ EPIC, man. Then I got to playing. It’s just like any other rhythm game, there are your “keys” and thingies slowly move towards them, you need to hit the key when the thingy hits it. In this case the keys are six fuit loops arranged in a circle. Up, down and middle for left and right hand. You hold the maracas (wiimotes) up down or straight forward and shake when the ball hits the uh… fruitloop. So you see at this point the game competes with games like DDR or Guitar Hero. Same game play mechanic. Guitar hero has the whammy bar, SDA has “rolls” where you get to shake it like you just sat on an anthill, meh, I’d say the whammy bar wins. On GH you point your guitar up to strike a pose, in SAD you are shown a picture of a pose and you get to emulate it, Mr. Pose wins, plus there are some dance moves done this way. Then there’s the music. Sweet, sweet music. Every stereotypical “latin song” is there. I make a pause to mention the rampant “latin” stereotypes, but it’s only a bit annoying if you understand (and care about) the culture. The songs will make you tap your feet and shake it just a bit if nobody’s watching, whereas when you play guitar hero you end up all sore from holding the bad-ass pose for too long. Also notice the lack of monkeys in Guitar Hero.

It’s a cheap game, just go get it. It’ll be fun especially if you have friends over.

Tip: If you have 2 wiimotes use them instead of the nunchuck.
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