Tag Archives: wii music

Nintendo dev boss Shigeru Miyamoto has explained the thinking behind Wii Music, saying it’s a more freeform offering than other rhythm-action games on the market.

“This description could potentially get really long, but in most of the music games we’ve seen up until now, there are fixed notes, and you have to hit those notes with fixed timing,” he told 1UP.

“But the approach that we’ve taken with Wii Music is something closer to playing real instruments. But enjoying the act of performing music by yourself isn’t enough; you can get bored of just pretending to play an instrument. But when you start adding other elements, such as being able to change an arrangement, being able to change an instrument, being able to ad lib – all the combinations of those elements make for a limitless number of possibilities in musical creativity.

“So we think Wii Music is, in essence, a very different type of product that will feature an incredible amount of replayability.”

He added: “Since Wii Music always allows the user to play the correct notes, that frees up the developers to make a game that focuses on a freestyle sort of play; if you’re an amateur musician, the fear of playing incorrectly is gone. Among the 50 songs in Wii Music – which are established classics – the variety of arrangements that you can create is limitless, and that’s very exciting.

“So, two people could play the very same song, but the results could be completely different. Personally, I think that’s a really interesting part of Wii Music.”

There’s a full interview through there. Well worth a read.

Speaking at tonight’s Nintendo roundtable, dev boss Shigeru Miyamoto apparently clipped a German journo’s wings by saying that Wii Music was a “toy” and “more interesting than a videogame.”

More on MTV. You can get a full report of the roundtable here.

After the break. See people dancing and shaking in time to music you can’t really hear properly.

It’s late, OK?

By Mike Bowden

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You can get hands-on impressions of Wii Music – the big “thing” from Nintendo’s E3 conference last night – on IGN and Gamespot

There are three movies of the game here, chopped up from IGN’s feed of the event.

Playing a virtual saxophone never looked so… um…

Wii Music has just been shown for the first time in the Nintendo E3 conference.

Miyamoto demoed the game by playing the sax on a Wiimote.

Another guy played the drums. A virtual piano, guitar and violin were also shown.

The drummer guy used the Balance Board as drum pedals.

A band of Nintendo execs played the Mario music at the end of the showing. It wasn’t the best thing in the world, if we’re being honest.

[UPDATE]: Official Press Release says:

“Create a musical masterpiece with up to four players. Anyone can play the huge selection of instruments in Wii Music with simple motions—like strumming and drumming.

“Wii Music includes many other modes besides the main band jams, including several musical games and an enhanced video playback mode for recorded jams.”

Full release oafter the break.

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Sorry, we’re a bit late with this. This Time interview with Shigeru Miyamoto says the Nintendo dev boss “is now working on a music game. It’s due later this year, even if it takes a few Bowser-like outbursts to pull off.”

The game is most likely the previously announced Wii Music, which has already been confirmed for a 2008 release. Still, nice to kno he hasn’t forgotten about it, eh?

No, we don’t know what it is. Internet people are suggesting it could be something along the lines of the orchestra conducting Miyamoto did at E3 a few years ago, but then it could be some kind of MP3 filing system for your fridge: WE’RE JUST NOT SURE. Whatever, Wii Music has been listed as a 2008 release for the machine in Japan. And that’s pretty much that.