Samba De Amigo: Wii vs Dreamcast shake-off

How can we show you? Byrecording ourselves playing the 'Strike a Pose' minigame on both the Dreamcast and Wii versions of the game and letting you decide for yourself which one works.

The idea in 'Strike a Pose' is to match your arm positions to the picture on the screen as many times as you can within a time limit. But it's hard to score heavily when it won't register double-low right. Take a look:

Above: Sorry we didn't have a sombrero to hand

As you can see, all three GR team members reached double figures on the Dreamcast version, which uses ultra-sonic sensors dangling from the maracas to accurately judge distance and position. Sure, it's not quite perfect and there were a few minor hiccups, but it's incredibly solid compared to the Wii game, where the best we managed in the time was 5 poses. Verdict? Dreamcast wins.

Perhaps the problem is that the Wii's calibration screen (which we used for each player) doesn't really calibrate anything at all. Instead it makes you hold the controllers how it wants you to hold them and then says 'OK you did it'. That is not calibration. Calibration would ask you to hold the wii-mote and nunchuk 'low', save that position, then 'high' and save that.


Above: The offending 'calibration' screen

So... if you really want some Samba fun, get the Dreamcast version. It's more expensive, but at least it works.

30 Sep, 2008


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Justin Towell

Justin was a GamesRadar staffer for 10 years but is now a freelancer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.