Wii Music, due this fall for Wii, is about instant gratification. Whereas Activision's Guitar Hero series challenges you to score points despite ever increasing difficulty, Nintendo's upcoming music game has no challenges, other than try your best, and if that's not enough, you're still awesome. It's like taking music lessons with a teacher that always says you're special and without a nagging parent complaining about how terrible you are. We're still wondering, however, if that's a good thing.

Now even you can be a master of instruments. Click to see more images from the game...

We can't help but balk at such a game. Our whole lives are about competition in sports, school and especially video games, where the only goal is to win, so the thought of a game that encourages the creation of music without forcing us to defeat a boss seems alien, but at the same time, we understand what Nintendo wants to do. Much like its Wii Sports, Play and Fit games, it hopes to attract a casual audience that doesn't want to get pummeled by the computer or shot in the head by a player in another country. All Wii Music asks you to do is to imitate your favorite instrument and attempt to follow a beat, and if you do that's great, and if you don't, that's all right too.

All you need is a remote and/or nunchuk. From there, you select one of 50 plus instruments, including guitar, drums, saxophone, piano and even a sitar. From there, you pick a song (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, the Super Mario Bros. theme, etc.) and get jammin'. To play guitar, for example, you hold the nunchuk as you would the neck and then strum with the remote, changing pitch with the A and B buttons. Drums, however, require a different approach, as you use the controllers to smack the imaginary pads and cymbals, all the while operating the foot pedal by tapping the Wii Balance Board with your feet (you can play without it). Saxophone is even crazier, tasking you with bringing the remote to your lips and moving it up and down for high and low notes, respectively.

Bring three friends into the mix and you'll form your own band and jam to a plethora of music as well as watch crude music videos starring your Mii characters. Sure, most of your creations will sound like noise, but after a while, you should latch onto the beat and come up with multiple variations of the same song. Trust us, you haven't lived till you've heard Super Mario Bros. played with a sitar.

To that end, we're still not sure how we feel about this game. When we first played, our group produced a horrible rendition of Twinkle that had us ready to pimp slap Nintendo for creating Wii Music. But then we rocked out to Super Mario Bros. and had a blast on drums, so it's too early to tell whether this game will have the same impact as its counterparts. That being said, we suppose a world without death, spawn points and high scores isn't all bad, and we look forward to seeing more from this neat interactive orchestra.

Related Links

Wii Music Game Guide