Nintendo's Wii Music is unlike Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero. Instead of jamming on plastic guitars and drums, you hold the Wii remote and nunchuk and pretend to play one of 60 different instruments. There's no points to score or bosses to defeat. It's just you and your friends rocking out. At first, it seemed pointless, but after hearing what Material Girl sounds like with a sitar, this musical experiment may just capture the imaginations of gamers everywhere. For how long, though, remains to be seen.
Wii Music is all about recreating popular songs using a variety of instruments, the goal to produce an entirely new creation. First, you choose a song, and the soundtrack includes such hits as Every Breath You Take, Jingle Bell Rock, Over the Waves, the Super Mario Bros. theme as well as a track from Animal Crossing's K.K. Slider entitled K.K. Blues.
From there, you select one of six different categories of instruments: bass, chord, melody, harmony and two percussion sections. There's the piano, electric guitar, clarinet and tambourine, then some unconventional choices, such as a DJ turntable, a beat boxer and a cowbell, because as we know, every song needs more cowbell.
After choosing a venue, Nintendo puts musical notes on the bottom right corner of the screen to help keep you in rhythm, but you won't receive a penalty for sounding bad. On the contrary, you're free to do as horribly as you want. The idea is to turn a song upside down and make something the world has never heard before. If that means a reggae version of the Russian Troika with a beat boxer and accordion, so be it.
After rocking out, you can always swap instruments as well as save your music video and send them to friends via WiiConnect 24. What's really cool is, after the other person receives it, he or she can tweak your video and send it back. Perhaps they feel it needed different instruments or just wanted to mess things up. Whatever the reason, it gives you more opportunities to hear different variations of the same songs.
Articles from other writers (even ours) slam Wii Music as being shallow, but according to Nintendo, it's anything but. Although the company won't comment on most of its additional features, it mentioned a conducting game and other modes to play, which should make the game deeper than expected.
At the same time, we're not sure how long it'll hold our interests. Nintendo intends to introduce people to instruments. For that, it deserves praise for creating a fun musical toy, but the absence of levels, points and other goals makes it at this point the type of game that's worth playing in short bursts. At least we don't have long to wait. Wii Music debuts October 20 and we'll review it ASAP to let you know whether it's worth the $49.99.
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