Least played Wii games

Kotaku has balanced their most-played list with a least-played list of Wii games. Sadly, I own two of the least-played 25:

13. Samba De Amigo - 4 hours, 16 minutes
 2. M&M's Kart Racing - 2 hours, 5 minutes

Low playtime on Samba de Amigo suggests that few people had the patience to learn the controls or that they just gave up based on (unfair) negative reviews. Oddly, I could not find any screenshots of people failing the game until I searched for the Dreamcast version. Perhaps the game was commonly bought or rented by people nostalgic for the original version who didn't really intend to spend serious time with it. Maybe it was brought out for parties and not touched otherwise. Whatever the case, this entry saddens me.

M&M's Kart Racing truly stinks up the Wii's library. My copy logged about 2 hours just so that I could verify that it was as awful as it seemed. I didn't want to review it unfairly. Unlike the rhythm game, this kart racer looks and sounds terrible. Clearly the bulk of the games development budget was spent on the box art, which seems to have paid off commercially if not critically. It was well-designed to be bought by a loved one as a hated gift.

And for the most part the rest of the list probably could be categorized with one or the other of these game: high presentation games that didn't play well and terrible games with great box art. These are a virtual rogue's gallery of bargain-bin denizens. While there are plenty of terrible games with terrible box art, they just were not successful enough to rack up 50,000 total hours of playtime. Even the worst of the worst that don't quite rate 2 hours per registered user would need to have been put into over 25,000 different Wii systems since their release. That's a pretty impressive number of unit sales.

Given my positive experience with Samba de Amigo, I'd be willing to try out a few of the less-iffy seeming games on this list:

25. Donkey Kong Barrel Blast - 5 hours, 1 minute
22. Cooking Mama World Kitchen - 4 hours, 41 minutes
21. Blast Works: Build Trade Destroy - 4 hours, 40 minutes
20. We Love Golf! - 4 hours, 39 minutes
17. Top Spin 3 - 4 hours, 35 minutes
11. Wild Earth: African Safari - 4 hours, 12 minutes

But only if:

24. The Price is Right - 5 hours

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games

My cousin had a Commodore 64 which was the highlight of visiting his house as a child. While we played a number of great games in those days (Bruce Lee, Spy Hunter, Microsoft Flight Simulator, etc.), I most looked forward to playing Summer Games by Epyx. It (and it's various sequels) had three obvious advantages:

1. Geared toward multi-player. (Bruce Lee was an awesome game, but it's boring to watch after a while.)
   
2. Accessible controls. (Mash buttons or wiggle joystick.)
   
3. Considerable layers of what we now call polish. (How cool was it to have opening ceremonies with digital doves flying over the torch?!)
   

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games follows the formula of the Epyx classics with three licenses as opposed to zero. Which means instead of stick-figure athletes, players control characters from the Sonic or Mario universes (or a Mii). And instead of a generic Summer Games, the characters compete at actual Beijing Olympics venues. The experience is a surreal, as charming as you might expect, but somehow not very epic. Rather than national (or Epyx) anthems during the medal ceremonies, we get sound bits from the characters exalting or lamenting their own performance. It's repetitive and a bit creepy.

For the most part, the events work the way you would expect using the Wiimote and Nunchuck. Lots of events involve shaking to build and maintain speed including all the track and field and swimming competitions. Despite the fact some events rely on nearly identical mechanics, each feels fairly unique. For instance, the 100m race starts with timing the start followed by shaking to gain speed and the long jump starts with shaking followed by timing the jump. To a bystander, these are virtual mirror image actions, but to the player they feel distinct. High jump, javelin, pole vault, and triple jump play around with the same core mechanic. I can't explain it, but slight variations combined with altered visuals keep these events somewhat fresh.

Other events use fairly unique mechanics. Swimming requires breathing and well-timed turns. Distance races do a pretty good job of simulating pacing and timing the final kick. Relays and hurdles add timed hand-offs and jumps to the formula. Hammer toss requires the Wiimote to be twirled rather than shook to build speed. Skeet and archery add deeper themes to the basic IR shooting mechanic found in Wii Play. Table Tennis borrows heavily from Wii Sports Tennis. Fencing takes advantage of the one-dimensional sport to create a bare-bones fighting game. Gymnastics events and rowing focus on precision button pressing and motions. Then there are Dream Events that add video-game wackiness to standard events.

Each character has unique attributes and are divided into Power, Speed, Skill and All-around categories. Each also uses preferred swimming style from crawl to dog paddle to running underwater requiring different motions to propel them. Apparently the stats for Miis are assigned on the basis of height and weight combinations. For individual events character selection can be a good source of handicap: let a less-skilled player take Sonic in 100m and chose Bowser for instance.

Unfortunately, the designers made a series of missteps that sabotage their own masterly event design. Most of the events are locked from the beginning with no immediate indication of how to unlock them. When you get a bunch of players together, the natural first step is to try out the single event mode to see what might be fun. But the best events are locked from the start and the events that are available tend to be the shaking the Wiimote variety. The only way to unlock new events once your group gets bored or carpal-tunnel is to sit down by yourself and play through all the circuits in Circuit mode.

Mario and Sonic really comes into its own in circuit mode, which should be the default playing option. (Single event appears to be the default, since it's the first option on the main menu.) Circuits work something like decathlons with different mixes of events. Points are awarded in each event according to finish and at the end of the circuit the player with the most points wins. To prevent run-away wins, each player has a bonus coin which can be used to double points for a top-three finish. If you take the option, but don't finish in the top three you get nothing.* Do you take an all-around character to do well in all events or pick a specialized character and go for broke on your best event? Nothing increases the excitement of a contest than taking a big risk to secure a come-from-behind win.

Did I mention unlocking events is painful? Shaking the controllers to beat a couple of friends equals fun. Shaking the controllers to convince the computer to let you play more interesting contests equal pain in the wrists. About half the events involve running, which requires moving the Wiimote as fast as possible. Since the Wii's controllers are accelerometer based, tight drum rolls represent the best chance of winning. And this sort of shaking starts to hurt after a while. The worst events are high jump and pole vault because they repeat over and over until all participants fail three times. It's realistic but until you know how high to set the bar winning involves ratcheting up slowly which means lots of shaking. And all of this is so that I can earn the right to play events that don't cause my arms to fall off.

Once you unlock the events, the experience begins to level out. Initially success seems possible through indiscriminate waggle, but as with Summer Games there are definite skills to learn. A variety of missions provide individual challenges for those who crave it. For multiplayer sessions, circuits can be customized so that you never need to run 100m again. All sorts of actions unlock various trophies and medals. Theoretically the game offers online leader boards, though in practice they have been thoroughly hacked. (A perfect skeet shooting score in less than a second? Yeah, right.) For the younger audience there are a handful of mini-games which are fairly pointless and easy. Finally, all the Dream Events are reasonably entertaining on their own. (So why does Sega force us to unlock them all?)

On the whole, I think the title does a good job serving the fans of the three licenses and has the potential to entertain open-minded gamers. But Sega seems to go out of their way to make the experience frustrating. Why should I have to work so hard to earn the right to play the best events? Games like Samba de Amigo or Super Monkey Ball have history on their side—previous iterations use unlockable content as a carrot. But Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games is a cross between sports and party games. Sega's model ought to have been Wii Sports or Wii Play, which use locking to direct players through modes in a sensible order. Neither requires you to be good at an event before moving on. Mastery of the game tends to be the best carrot for sports games and interactions for party games. Locking, especially requiring players to win playing solo, defeats the purpose entirely.

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* The Bonus Coin works something like the doubling cube in Backgammon. For those not familiar with the doubling cube, it doubles the value of a game during match play. The opponent may refuse the cube, which causes them to lose the game at the undoubled value. Or they may accept the cube, which allows the game to continue and gives the accepting player the sole ability to double the game again. In essence, it provides an extra layer of decision in games that otherwise might become boring decisive victories.

Samba de Amigo

To start with, the controls are great. Early reviewers were either: a) bad at the game, b) confused or c) lazy. Don't worry about the controls. (More on this later.)

Do you remember the final scene in Beetlejuice where Winona Ryder sings Jump in the Line while floating in front of a stairwell? If that seemed at all fun, go out and a get a copy of Samba de Amigo because it is fun. Actually, it's completely addicting.

The Wii version is a remake of the Sega Dreamcast game, which is in turn an adaptation of an arcade game. The basic gameplay remains the same: shake electric maracas in rhythm to the music. Each side of your HUD (for lack of a better term) has three targets: high, medium and low. Timing balls emerge from the center of the HUD and head towards the targets. If you shake your controller, which may or may not resemble a maraca, at the right position and the right time, you earn points. There are a few extra moves: rolls, poses, dance moves, crossover, and wide hits. The more hits you string together and the more accurately timed your hits, the faster your score goes up and the faster an energy bar fills. If you stay in the groove long enough, your energy bar fills all the way and you achieve a higher rank (from a low of E to a high of A). Missing hits reverses the process. You don't really need to understand the scoring to play: just stay in the groove.

Initially, you will probably want to spend some time with Career mode, which starts easy and ramps up fairly smoothly. It also unlocks a few songs, which isn't completely necessary since most of the 44 songs are unlocked from the beginning. But when a friend comes over and wants to play "Mambo Number 5" waiting can be a drag. There are also some maraca and dance sounds to unlock, but they don't add all that much to the game.

When you do have friends over, there are six different modes to try out. Each of the modes also work with one player, but aren't as much fun. Most of your time will probably be in Quick Play, which allows you to play one song after another for as long as you can shake the controller. While waiting for a turn, players can finally look at the crazy dancing stuff you quickly learn to tune out while playing. In addition to the cast of wacky characters (Elvis, calaca guitarists, luchadors, bongo playing teddy bears, and so on), you'll see Mii representations of the players shaking away. And of course the actual players shaking away provide entertainment too.

One especially positive aspect of the game is that unequally skilled players can play head to head. When I play Hard and my six-year-old son plays Easy, we get scores in the same ballpark. The lyrics have been softened where appropriate. So instead of "Tequila!", the lyric is "Amigo!". (I don't want children picking up potentially unwanted vocabulary, but nothing prevents an older group from shouting the original lyric.) My arms can attest to Samba de Amigo's exercise potential and it probably doesn't hurt player's rhythm and dance skills.

At launch the game cost about a dollar a song. Now you will find it for half or a quarter that much. Master tracks featuring the original artist comprise just under half of the songs and the other half are reasonable covers. In addition, there are three downloadable song packs (3 for 500 Wii points). I haven't bought any, but they look to be high quality. Even more value can be squeezed out of the package by browsing the online leaderboards. These have not been completely hacked yet (unlike Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games) so the top scores are probably real. You can also compare to friends if you have their friend code or find your rank on the overall leaderboard. I can't really think of anything that should be added to the package.

Now let's talk controls. I have a theory about what went wrong with so many reviewers, so let's start with some observations:

1. Most reviewers had played the Dreamcast version and preferred it over the Wii version.
   
2. Most had few complaints about the Easy and Normal difficulties, but found they couldn't keep up with Hard and Super Hard.
   
3. And most had problems shifting from the high to low positions and vice versa.
   

Now the Dreamcast version had two different control schemes: hitting buttons on the normal controller and expensive maraca controllers that measured the height above a sensor bar on the floor. There's only one control scheme on Wii: tilt control (with either two Wiimotes or a Wiimote and a Nunchuck). Sega used the Wiimote's tilt control well in Super Monkey Ball and used it again in Samba de Amigo. Tilt the nose of the controller up for high note, down for low notes and level for medium notes.

Having watched videos of people playing the Dreamcast version, reviews of the Wii version and experimenting on my own, I believe most reviewers expected the controls to work identically to the Dreamcast or arcade game. And amazingly for easier difficulty levels, they do. Lifting the controller above your waist naturally tilts its nose up and dropping it below your waist registers a downward tilt. It's a touch unresponsive, but the beats are slow enough so that it's possible to keep up this way. Once you start playing songs on Hard the beats get faster and more complicated. At that point, you need to remove inefficient motions, practice and become more precise.

Understand that I'm not great at rhythms or difficult games. I played tuba in band and I'm stuck half way through Super Monkey Ball and Super Mario Galaxy. So it was with some trepidation that I started up Hard levels in Career Mode. Sure I missed some beats and maybe some of them were not my fault, but I cleared all of the Hard songs in the first or second try with the exception of "Mexican Flyer". And I've passed some of the Super Hard songs too. If you play the right way, the game is not punishingly difficult. It might even be too easy.

If you are having problems, here are a few tips:

1. Find the "Game" setting on your digital TV. It might not make a difference, but an extra millisecond or two to react to a beat can't hurt.
   
2. Use two Wiimotes rather than the Nunchuck setup. The Nunchuck reduces accuracy because of the tether and because it's difficult to find its level position.
   
3. Experiment with calibration. I've found that tilting too much in calibration makes hitting high and low beats slow, but tilting too little narrows the range for medium beats so that I don't hit them all the time.
   
4. Go back through the Normal levels in career mode trying to use your wrists more than your arms. Imagine playing Super Monkey Ball.
   
5. When you miss, don't assume the hardware is to blame. For instance, I notice that when I move too quickly I sometimes over-rotate on high beats so that the controller is starting to be upside down. That's my fault, not the controller's. Relax and try to get back in the groove.
   
6. If all else fails, consider using an alternate shaking motion. Instead of shaking vertically, a motion that can be confused with changing locations, shake to the side or make a stabbing motion. It doesn't look as much like a maraca shake, but it works.
   
7. A suggestion I can't vouch for is to buy the maraca shaped attachments. Supposedly they help find the high and low positions. Perhaps because they make the angles more obvious.
   

I've seen videos of people getting perfect scores on Super Hard using the button mashing scheme on the Dreamcast. And I've seen dedicated players struggle through the Easy difficulty with the expensive Dreamcast maracas. And I've seen people breeze through Hard levels with Wiimotes. My best explanation for the harsh reviews of Samba de Amigo for Wii is that reviewers were muddled in their memories of the previous game. If Sega is interested in re-releasing the game with Wiimotion Plus support, it probably won't make a difference. Adding a button pushing option, probably would.

Overall, there's almost nothing to lose by trying the game out. Probably the game is more fun on Easy and Normal and easier on Hard and Super Hard than you imagine. And compared to other games in the genre, Samba de Amigo would be a bargain at twice the price.