Samba de Amigo, a game first released in arcades in the 20th century but most well-known for its Dreamcast version, is over twenty years old. So now, in the year 2023, it is time for it to once again return, and once again return on a Nintendo console that has motion controls.
If you’ve never played it, you are missing out: it’s a rhythm game where you’re playing as a monkey who plays the maracas. And the Dreamcast version supported a set of rare, but incredible plastic maracas. It was also about the most 1999/2000 game imaginable, especially when you look at a tracklist that includes stuff like Tubthumping and Ricky Martin’s Cup Of Life.
While the original dropped in 1999/2000, and a fancier updated edition came out not long after in Japan (again in both arcades and on the Dreamcast), the game was later ported to the Nintendo Wii in 2008. The originals? Amazing. This Wii port, developed not by Sega, but by Gearbox and Escalation? Not so great.
That’s not stopping Sega and Nintendo from trying again though, with the announcement today of Samba de Amigo: Party Central, which is actually a brand new game in the series made specifically for the Switch.
It’s got singleplayer and local multiplayer modes, along with a “World Party” thing where you can play against a ton of players online and see who is the last one standing. There will be 40 songs included, “spanning a multitude of genres from around the world”
Samba de Amigo: Party Central will be out “this Summer”. Please do not, like me, spend half this trailer thinking it looks like a game starring NFTs.
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