E3 2008: Nintendo's Music Game for Klutzes

If you're one of those people who wants to play Rock Band but can't quite get the rhythm, even on Easy, then you are going to love Wii Music.

Unveiled during Nintendo's press conference, Wii Music is the music game for the coordination-challenged. While most other music games require a certain amount of precision and timing in order to succeed, Wii Music strips all of that away. To play one of the more than 50 instruments in the game, you simply mimic the appropriate real-world motion.

Shigeru Miyamoto himself demonstrated how to play the saxophone: just bring the Wii Remote up to your mouth and hit the keys in the timing of your choosing. For violin, extend the Nunchuk out with one hand to replicate the neck of the violin, then saw back and forth with the Remote for the bow action.

The Wii matches your movement to notes that would be appropriate for the song you're trying to play, making it literally impossible for you to fail. That doesn't necessarily mean you're guaranteed to make beautiful music, however. Some of the notes Miyamoto played during his demonstration definitely sounded a bit off, but given that he was, for all intents and purposes, air saxing, the music he produced was remarkably good.

Wii Music also has a separate, more intensive drumming mode, that uses the Balance Board as a foot pedal to go with the drumsticks of the Remote and Nunchuk. You can just drum away, or use it as a tutorial and actually learn how to drum. Definitely point this mode out to the children of people you dislike.

Making music is certainly a huge part of the appeal of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but so is the score, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from advancing through more and more difficult levels. Wii Music doesn't present those kind of challenges, but it removes the feeling of frustration that less skilled players get when they fail over and over. Is that enough to make it a runaway hit? Quite probably, yes.

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This is more a karoake game rather than a full on rhythm game, at least that's what it sounds like. I see this being quite popular in the land of the rising sun, but perhaps only moderately here.

Yet they still can't make a music composing piece of software for my DS.... *sigh*

Like N-Sef said, it's most likely gonna seel like hotcakes in Japan, but not so well here.

A game where it is impossible to fail?

I think my teenage sister will somehow manage to lose spectacularly . She's the type of person who can't hit full speed on the straight. The person that misses at 2ft range with the shotgun. She failed Slow Ride on Easy. She'll find a way to fail this.

I doubt that Western audiences will really want to buy a game with no challenge involved whatsoever.

they should make a music game where you just press a button and it plays a song, then if you press a different button it plays the next song.

This thing will go just as fast as Wii Fit, no matter how crappy the game actually is. Look at a little title on the Wii like Carnival Games. Its game mechanics are horrible, really its just another mini game collection with bad tech demos and it has sold more than Metroid Prime 3, (its got over a million copies and counting). Nintendo is aiming to "expand its demographic" or in lay man's terms, earn lots of money, and thats exactly what Rock Band with the balls ripped off will do. According to Nintendo's perception of the casual, Challenge is something to be feared, not embraced because it can alienate and frustrate newcomers.