Quite a few terms have been thrown around in order to refer to Wii Music. Nintendo’s marketing materials call the title “a musical playground where there are no mistakes.” Game auteur Shigeru Miyamoto agrees that Wii Music is more like a “toy,” suggesting that its friendly, non-competitive nature, and its lack of scores make it “more interesting than a video game.” On another occasion, Miyamoto suggested it was “not quite a game and not quite an instrument.” The words change, but the sentiment remains the same throughout; Wii Music, the latest in Nintendo’s uniquely adorable, motion-controlled, family-friendly, instantly accessible lineup, is not a “game” in the traditional sense that gamers have come to know. This begs the question, then, time and time again, as one plays Wii Music: If this isn’t a game, why are you making us unlock all the content? Why would you make a strange and wonderful toy that’s all about freedom, and then force us to essentially “level up” in order to play with it?
Let me make one thing clear: I like Wii Music. I think it’s creative as anything, and fully recaptures the charm and wonder that the Wii initially inspired back when the system launched. Wii Music is the kind of game (or non-game) that anyone can pick up and enjoy on pure instinct alone. If you’re still somehow unaware, Wii Music is based around playing a collection of instruments, mundane and exotic, using Nintendo’s iconic brand of simplified motion controls. A piano can be played by hitting your hands downward, recorders and trumpets are played with the Wiimote’s buttons, a guitar can be strummed by using the Wiimote as a surrogate pick, and so on. Using these basic controls, up to four players at once can hammer out their own versions of forty-odd different songs, with tunes weighted primarily towards public domain and traditional folk songs — though a couple of licensed tracks from The Police, The Monkees, and from Nintendo themselves round out the list. At its heart, the widely-recognizable tunes, the zero-learning-curve controls, and the always-cheerful and encouraging interface make Wii Music the kind of “Anyone Can Play” set-piece that Nintendo values so highly these days. Wii Music is a fun toy to play with, plain and simple.
Let me make something else clear, however: I’m not giving up Rock Band for this. Wii Music has plenty going for it, but it does not deliver the tight, polished gameplay, nor the sense of challenge and accomplishment, nor the breadth of tastes or cultural relevance for the music enthusiast, of its Rock Band/Guitar Hero brethren. As an experience that prides itself on freedom, Wii Music contains no scoring or judgement criteria for your performance. The game will praise you equally well for carefully following the beat and melody of a given song, or for grabbing your Wiimote and Nunchuk by the cord and swinging them around your head until they fly off and shatter your television. The upside of this, of course, is that nobody will feel threatened or intimidated their first time through, which is quite encouraging for Wii players young and old to cut loose and have a good time. Don’t be fooled, though — Nintendo may claim there are “no mistakes” in Wii Music, but there are. If you spend a song flailing wildly on the piano, it’s going to sound like someone flailing wildly on the piano. Congratulations — you’ve discovered the freedom to suck.
This is not to say that Wii Music simply hands you a pile of instruments and says “good luck.” Exploring the software’s various features will actually reveal a wealth of musical instruction, designed around teaching you not just how to play with the software, but how to play well. Among Wii Music’s core sections is an area for “Lessons,” in which the eerie Muppet-like instructors will teach you the basics of following a 4/4 beat, playing the drums and harmony so as not to override the melody, the fundamentals of different musical styles (rock, latin, reggae, etc), and other tips for developing your own sound. These lessons are surprisingly informative, and with the instructors’ advice in mind, you’ll be able to produce quite an array of fun new versions of Wii Music’s song list. If you already have some musical training, however, not to worry — you’ll get to learn it all over again as Wii Music forces you to take these lessons in order to unlock the rest of the game.
I cannot understand why Nintendo does this, for the life of me. I’m beginning to notice a pattern in this respect, and I don’t really care for it: Nintendo gives us a fun interactive experience which is “not a game,” yet demands that we go through game-like checkpoints and task completions to actually play with it. They did it with My Pokémon Ranch — sure, you can take custom photos of your Pokémon; you just have to spend a week’s time to do it. They did it with Wii Fit — sure, you can exercise with over a dozen different yoga poses; you’ll just need to do the first few over and over again until we feel like giving you the rest. Now it’s Wii Music’s turn: Sure, you can play “Yankee Doodle” with a group of friends, so long as you agree to go through several solo-only lessons first, which you had better finish because they restart if you quit after just a few. I get it, Nintendo; I understand that you want us to fully explore all the cool stuff you took the time to include. But you don’t hand someone a toy and then spend hours demanding that we only play with it your way.
Assuming you can get past Nintendo’s needlessly strict introductory phases, Wii Music eventually opens up a wide selection of songs and instruments for its main attraction: the “Jam” mode. This is the mode described earlier, in which up to four players at once select their instruments, and play along for the duration of one of Wii Music’s many songs, waggling their way through the lead melody, the bassline, two harmony sections, or two percussion sections. This makes six roles in all, allowing the extra parts to be filled by CPU players (who will not be primadonnas) or stay silent, based on the player’s preference. These selections made, the band will jam its way through the song from start to finish, improvising and changing up the song as they see fit.
The freedom allowed by Wii Music, as mentioned, lies in the players’ ability to play what they want, when they want. It’s a simple matter to plunk out “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” by simply manipulating your instrument du jour on the quarter notes, but the game encourages improvisation, allowing you to change up the tempo, drop your notes before or after the beat, or even add new notes entirely. While band members don’t have complete control over their output — there’s no manual pitch selection, for example — Wii Music does its best to keep the melody sounding like it belongs, and for the most part it actually sounds good. Tapping out a few more notes will add a little twist here and there to the overall song, providing the self-expression that Nintendo is touting, and making for a genuinely enjoyable experience. As mentioned, of course, this is best done without going overboard; if all of your band members are feeling especially creative, then the percussion will be impossible to follow, the bass will fail to establish a decent rhythm, the harmony won’t match the melody, and the melody won’t match anything resembling a song. With some cooperation and moderation, however, it’s remarkably easy to play through a song with a rather enjoyable sound.
Once a song is complete, Wii Music allows you to play through it a second time, redubbing any of the six roles. In this way, a solo player can actually hand-play all six parts, creating their own mix through revision and experimentation, and allowing all six parts to be player-created for a truly organic product. Solo players can thus enjoy the good kind of playing with themselves, and record their own Dave Grohl-esque demo sessions.
After the player is completely satisfied with a performance, Wii Music prompts them to save it as a Wii Music Video, complete with custom album jacket. The video is kept in memory, where it can be relived or shared with any registered Wii Friends. For once, Wii Music does not require friend codes, allowing you to send your songs to anybody who’s already your Wii Friend via the Message Board, assuming they own the software. Thank you.
Beyond the lessons and the jam mode, Wii Music comes with one other section, for “Games.” Containing three mini-games, these portions of Wii Music actually do have scores and ratings, and play like one might expect music-themed Wii mini-games to, as seen in other Wii titles like Raving Rabbids or WarioWare. Among the games are Pitch Perfect, a quiz format which challenges players to determine which notes are higher, which instruments are playing wrong, and more, and Handbell Harmony, a surprisingly familar “shake the Wiimote as the icons pass the indicator” routine with a uniquely Nintendo social twist. My favorite, however, is Mii Maestro, which transforms the Wiimote into a very natural form: a conductor’s baton. Waving the Wiimote in time to one of five classical tunes, the player leads a full orchestra of musicians. Slowing or speeding the pace of one’s waves will see the entire orchestra shift to adagio or allegro, while the force of one’s waving determines their intensity. It’s in this mode that the truly amusing and adorable Mii integration goes on display — if you’re anything like me, your Wii is populated by an eclectic collection of strange and wonderful Miis, and their orchestral roles make for a hilarious experience. Playing through Vivaldi with FDR unleashing a masterful violin solo, while Dr. Steel watches from the first row of the audience, is the kind of thing you can only get on the Wii.
Finally, there’s the feature that Wii Fit owners get to experience: The Balance Board-powered drum kit. We got a look at this back at E3, but based on the actual implementation in the final product, players are either going to be sorely disappointed or greatly relieved. During our initial view of the game at Nintendo’s E3 presentation, we watched as a young man struck an on-screen drum set with the Wiimote and Nunchuk, and we believed that one’s actual position would determine the drums being played. This is not the case. You can play the drums behind your head if you’re so inclined; the position of your hands completely doesn’t matter. The drums, instead, are selected by holding down different buttons on the Wiimote and Nunchuk — B or Z for snare, A or C for cymbal, and so on. Some of you are probably pleased to hear this; I know I was worried that improper position detection would lead to the wrong drums being hit, whereas this method allows for much better precision.
On the other hand, you may be very disappointed to hear that if you’ve developed some great positional muscle memory from, say, Rock Band, you’re hosed. You’ll have to re-learn drumming, all over again, the Wii Music way, learning when to hold down buttons and when to release them. Wii Music actually comes with a series of drum lessons, whose techniques and fundamentals are explained so thoroughly as to be a perfect guide — perhaps making it even more accessible than Rock Band’s drum trainer. But, for those of us who are used to drumming games that don’t depend on button presses, it’s rather confusing, since the visuals only show off the drums via their physical positions — a simple button-pattern would make things much easier, i.e. “A, B, A, no button, A, B,” and so forth. Still, if you can learn these techniques, you can actually use the Balance Board one-to-one drummer in a Jam, allowing total control over the percussion section in any song.
In the end, there are a number of things to ask yourself when you consider purchasing Wii Music. How fond are you of public domain music? Can you see yourself dedicating the time and effort to learn the nuances of Wii Music’s controlled improvisation to create and share some truly interesting tunes? Are you still amused by personalized Miis and their antics? Do you promise never to use the “Dog Suit” instrument? Wii Music may well be the right non-game for you. Like Wii Sports before it, Wii Music will be instantly enjoyable the first time anybody picks it up and starts to mess with it, but its lasting appeal is questionable. If you’re looking for the hardcore digital music experience, you want to get Rock Band. But if your library needs a new party game for the non-gamers in your life, and you’re looking for some all-inclusive social fun, Wii Music is there for you. Just be ready to dedicate some solo time to it before you invite your friends over, so they can actually play when they arrive.
Wii Music is available now for the Nintendo Wii.
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