If you’re a fan of the music in Capcom’s superb Ace Attorney series, you’ll no doubt be disappointed to hear that you missed the chance to hear it performed live by a full orchestra at the Gyakuten Saiban Tokubetsu Hout Orchestra Concert 2008 in April of last year. Unless you were there, in which case well done you.
But if you’re prepared to accept second best, then you can now get your hands on a DVD of the concert from Play-Asia. Fully realising that watching an orchestra play on its own isn’t the most visually-exciting thing ever, the organisers projected images from the games on massive screens throughout, and these are all viewable on the DVD.
There’s also a booklet which accompanies the DVD as a digest of the concert, with commentaries from the producers involved. And it all comes in a fairly posh box with the Japanese Gyakuten Saiban logo adorning the front.
Bit of a collector’s item, then - be sure to get your order in at the not-entirely-OBJECTIONable price of $31.90/£22.46 while stocks last.
Anyone who has been inspired by Wii Music to learn a little more about creating songs would do well to purchase Nobilis’ forthcoming DS title, simply called Music. Out in April, the ‘edutainment’ release apparently lets you “play music in a FUN and EASY WAY!”
Unnecessary shouting aside, this could be a genuinely useful piece of software played in conjunction with Nintendo’s more freeform jam creator. Developed by Shiro Tsuji (a famous Japanese music teacher) this goes a little deeper than Wii Music’s fairly rudimentary approach to learning musical styles, tackling music theory in twenty-one separate lessons, with players tested on their knowledge in eighteen quick-fire quizzes. You’ll even be able to put your knowledge into practice, with a virtual piano and drum to tap away at, while Nobilis clearly hopes players will return to Music on a regular basis, with a built in ‘coach calendar’ to plot your progress to musical competence.
Hell, it might even make your Wii Music efforts a little less cacophonous, which can only be of benefit to those poor unfortunates who’ve had to suffer through twelve badly-played versions of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Apparently, there’s more to come on the game’s official . site, at www.music-thegame.com. So get clicking if you want to know more.
The hound that howled is set to get his own album - yep, the regular Saturday night visitor to your Animal Crossing village, the incomparable KK Slider, will be strumming his merry way through a selection of his greatest coffee shop hits, with a CD set for release in Japan this April.
You’ll get all of the background music from the game, along with that oh-so-hummable title tune, but the most important addition is the selection of tunes that KK bashes out on a weekly basis at his favourite haunt, The Roost. With such a vast repertoire to his name, it seems that the CD won’t feature all his songs - the music-loving mutt needs help to pick the best of his renditions for inclusion on the disc.
Aniplex.co.jp is where all Japanese Crosso fans will be going to lodge their votes - with a closing date of Monday March 2nd to get your choices in. The CD itself is launched on April 22nd, and retails for a price of 2310 yen (roughly £17.20).
What do you get when you combine two of my very favourite things - attractive women and Hotel Dusk: Room 215? The answer is this song, performed by the good-looking, talented and good-looking Rebecca Mayes (above), who may be my new favourite person ever.
Or she would be were her song not a thinly-veiled attack on the wonder that is CiNG’s noir-tinged visual novel, Mayes seemingly only prepared to put up with the regular game overs and the lengthy dialogue sequences so that she might fantasise about Dusk’s hunky hero, Kyle Hyde. Meh, I’m more of a Louis deNonno man.
“Whatever you do keep your mouth shut for five minutes can’t you Kyle? If you give me another game over and I have to listen to your jabber one more time I might just have to shoot you,” sings Mayes, before egregiously giving away a blatant plot spoiler. Well, sort of - I mean, it happens at the start of the game, so I’ll let her off.
Mayes has also crafted musical critiques of Wii Sports and Okami, of which she’s even more critical. I’m with her on the latter - the paintbrush controls were far too finicky. Her next target is Hello Kitty on the DS.
Good stuff. Yahtzee, beware - your reign as the internet’s Most Wittily Scathing Gaming Critic could well be coming to an end.
The ESRB has passed Rhythm Heaven - the western version of Nintendo’s hugely successful DS music game Rhythm Tengoku Gold - for certification. It’s rated E for Everyone, and will contain ‘comic mischief’. The ratings board has recently added descriptions to its certifications, so here are the details on Rhythm Heaven:
“This is a rhythm game in which players can engage in a series of mini-games that test musical ability, rhythm and dexterity. Players earn points for how well they are able to match the on-screen actions with the beat of background music. Some mini-games involve slapping a man’s arm, flicking animals out of a garden, and zapping spaceships.”
Unless I’m sorely mistaken, I don’t remember a game in Tengoku where you flicked animals out of a garden. Evidence of new, more western-friendly minigames to replace the Japanese originals? Perhaps. It’ll almost certainly feature a few new tunes, so this could be more of an Elite Beat Agents-style localisation, where a very Japanese game is not just translated but entirely repurposed for a western audience.
Talking of which, an EBA 2 announcement next year would be most welcome. How about it, Nintendo?
The long tail has wagged. Wii Music had a sizeable sales spike for the holiday season, perhaps helped by positive word-of-mouth by those who’d actually spent more than five minutes playing the game. Though comfortably the least-successful Wii-branded game so far, it managed to comfortably outsell Sony’s great white hope LittleBIGPlanet in the month of November, with almost 300,000 Americans shaking their maracas to Miyamoto’s latest slice of casual genius.
Meanwhile, plenty of those pounds piled on over Thanksgiving will soon be shifted, with Wii Fit selling nearly 700,000 copies to hit number four, while people invited more plastic peripherals into their houses as Mario Kart Wii and Wii Play (with added remote) sandwiched Nintendo’s health-booster at five and three respectively.
Worthy of note is the performance of Guitar Hero World Tour - the Wii SKU being the only one to make it into the top ten, rocking a total just 25k shy of half a million copies. Impressive. Most impressive.
COGs and COD were the other big winners, with Treyarch’s WWII shooter being pipped by Epic’s third-person, er, epic to top spot, both on 360. Well, those Americans do love bigger, better and more badass.
Once again, glance below to see the full rundown.
1. Gears of War 2 - Xbox 360 – Microsoft – 1.56M
2. Call of Duty: World at War - Xbox 360 – Activision – 1.41M
3. Wii Play w/ remote - Wii – Nintendo – 796K
4. Wii Fit - Wii – Nintendo – 697K
5. Mario Kart - Wii – Nintendo – 637K
6. Call of Duty: World at War - PS3 – Activision – 597K
7. Guitar Hero: World Tour - Wii – Activision – 475K
8. Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360 – EA – 410K
9. Resistance 2 - PS3 – Sony – 385K
10. Wii Music - Wii – Nintendo – 297K
Regular readers of this blog will know just how enamoured I am with Wii Music. But that’s not to say that Miyamoto’s latest is without its flaws. On the contrary, there are some glaring issues which will almost certainly prevent it lasting as long on my current playlist as I’d like. What’s interesting is that most of these problems could be quite easily rectified, as you’ll see if you read on. So here are the five things I’d change about Wii Music, to not only make it a better game, but to substantially increase its longevity.
5. Overdub Omission
A bizarre one, this. Let’s say, for example, you’ve just finished the final part of a tune, but you want to listen to the song again before deciding whether it’s how you want it, or you’d like to remove one instrument which sounds out of place. Returning to the instrument selection screen, you finally get things sounding perfect and then you want to save your tune. Only problem is: you can’t. You’ll have to go through and overdub one of the instrument parts you’ve already recorded - either that or choose an instrument and then remain silent for the whole song before saving your music video once it’s over. Surely there should be an option to save without having to complete the final part of a song and then save. A patch to fix this wouldn’t be too much effort, I’m certain.
4. Handbell Hell
The Handbell ringing and orchestra-conducting minigames are hugely enjoyable - if lightweight - diversions that undoubtedly add to the fun of Wii Music. So why do we only get a choice of five songs in each? Opening these games up to cover a wider selection of music - if not the entire tracklist - would certainly make them more worth revisiting. But no - once you’re done there’s only high scores to aim for. Handbell remains entertaining every now and again if you’ve got friends round, but there’s little to keep the solo player returning once he or she has mastered each tune.
3. WiiTube
As you can see from the video above (and indeed the many similar ones featured on the site) YouTube is full of Wii Music owners videoing their performances to share with the world. It’s one thing to be able to swap tunes with Wii pals, quite another to be able to demonstrate to a potential audience of millions what Wii Music is capable of. It’s a tremendous advert for the game, so why can’t we just save YouTube-compatible vids for easy uploading rather than having to set up our video cameras for shaky and/or poor-quality footage of our best work? Games like Skate have proved it’s possible to do, and Nintendo would be wise to add a similar feature.
2. Battle of the bands
Mario Kart Wii has undoubtedly benefitted from regular online challenges and even the Check Mii Out channel offers competitions to inspire Wii owners to get creative. An excellent way to extend Wii Music’s lifespan would be to set regular monthly tasks - like performing the Animal Crossing theme in a jazz style, or tackling Material Girl only using wind instruments. There could be prizes on offer for the best examples, and the songs would be available for Wii Music owners to download and watch as further inspiration. Makes sense, no?
1. D.L.C.
Above all, Wii Music would be a much better and longer-lasting game if it offered regular downloadable content. I’m not asking for much - a new song or two every now and again to spark players’ imaginations into gear, the odd new instrument to master, perhaps even a new set of Jam Mastery lessons teaching you a whole new style, or the option to use the balance board for percussion instruments outside the special drumming mode. While fifty songs and sixty instruments sounds like a lot, there are bound to be tunes which people don’t want to bother with, and some of the novelty music-makers won’t be touched by those who take their Wii Music a little too seriously to bother with dog and cat noises. Given that Guitar Hero World Tour offers the opportunity to download tracks to an SD card, it’s not as if the lack of memory space would be a serious issue. At least think about it, eh, Nintendo? ÂÂ
Thought the extraneous accessories situation on Wii couldn’t get sillier? Wrong! Peripheral-maker ezGear has created a set of four instrument-shaped remote shells, representing a violin, a conductor’s baton, a saxophone and drumsticks/xylophone mallets, for Nintendo tune-em-up Wii Music.
Watching someone play Wii Music is faintly amusing as it is, but there’s a certain abstraction to the playing which makes it a little less daft. But wailing on fake plastic music-makers, which only cater for - at my reckoning - around ten of the game’s sixty instruments, seems like an even more pointless waste of time and money than those Cooking Mama kitchen implements.
Nonetheless, there’s clearly a market for this sort of thing, and if you really can’t do without a saxaphone shell when tooting along to the Animal Crossing theme, then you can reserve the pack here for $29.99. And I’ll concede that perhaps the violin isn’t such a bad idea.
Right, then. I finally got round to uploading some videos of my Wii Music compositions. Above is version one of John Lennon’s ‘Woman’ which I recorded a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I did another, very different take -with one instrument remaining the same - just to compare and contrast, and to show how you can change the feel of a song by the way it’s performed. See below.
To some people this is still going to seem like a load of old rubbish, but hopefully one or two of you will be inspired to pick up Wii Music after seeing just what you can do when you put your mind to it. Not for nothing is it in my top five games of the year…
The latest issue of industry bible Edge slapped onto subscriber doormats this morning, and if you’re not a regular reader then consider this a recommendation to pick up a copy when it reaches newsstands next Thursday. As you can probably tell by glancing at the pic above, the key feature is a lengthy interview with Shigeru Miyamoto in which he talks about Wii Music, the educational nature of software and bridging the gap between casual and hardcore gamers, among other subjects.
Asked what he wants to be remembered for when he retires, Miyamoto offers the following statement:
“I would be happiest if people look back some day and say this is somebody who was continually creating new styles of play and was bringing new ideas to games and was a pioneer up until his dying day.”
Well said, Shigs. The rest of the interview is a fascinating read too - with some interesting observations on the potential future of Wii, and of its controller and how the Wii MotionPlus could change the type of games we see on Wii. There’s also a single-page critique of Wii Music, which is generally very positive, suggesting it is “crafted beautifully for the masses”. Whether the masses realises this is open to debate, but hopefully it will become the word-of-mouth success it so deserves to be.
 
 
 
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