The Lowdown: Wii Music is that game Shigeru MIyamoto played at Nintendo's E3 press conference two years ago. The main mode is an up-to-four-player "band jam" mode that lets you play parts of a song with various instruments, improvising freely, while recording your "performance" as represented by your Miis. Then you can send the video to any other Wii Music user over WiiConnect 24. The game also features orchestra conducting, handbell playing, music quizzes, and a Balance Board mode that lets you play simulated drums.

The Hype: Wii Music is a game for people who don't want to play something like Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, that is really about rapidly matching colors/buttons roughly in time with the beat. Instead, it's about making music, something current rhythm games don't support well.

The Snark: Every demo of the game and its fact sheet information leave me with the impression that this game basically plays itself. You move the Wii Remote or Nunchuk and the game strives to make it sound good based on your motions. You can only really fail in band jam mode.

Press kit screens behind the cut.

Wii Music screens on GamePro.com

More articles about Wii Music

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klarthailerion

Many "traditional" gamers will undoubtedly bring the hate on this one, but I think it will be very entertaining. The simple controls will turn off a small subset of people, but this could be a truly "family" game where 3 year olds could actually play and have fun with their grandparents.

Rock Band and Guitar Hero do not give you that ability. I say bring it on.

Benly

My question is whether their "safeties" to prevent bad-sounding music will also prevent the game's use to generate music that's out of genre with the intended uses.

feanaro

It definitely has potential; but after reading IGN's Hand-On, I think that really need to work on making it a bit less simple.

Lynxara

Generating out-of-genre music is very easy. I just got off the floor where I was part of a Bagpipe/Steel Drums/Shamisen version of the Super Mario Bros. theme. I also have to say that it's a lot harder to play the band ensemble songs well than you might think. Even with music correction, it's really easy to completely screw up a melody.

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