Samba de Amigo Gets New Adventures on Nintendo Switch, Apple Arcade - Hardcore Gamer

hardcoregamer.com:

After a two decade-long absence for an original adventure, Samba de Amigo is back and poised to have its greatest success ever as a franchise. The original Dreamcast game had a pack with maracas, while the Wii re-release feature Wii Remote playback. The Switch incarnation called Party Central features JoyCon controls coming as close as possible to the maraca controls of the DC game by allowing the player to move the JoyCon to match the screen command. However, one thing that really shocked me with this game was just how well everything works with a twin-stick control setup.

The game supports two players at the same time or up to four players online, with 20 player party mode also available for a mini-tournament. The game features a vibrant art style across the board, with backgrounds and environments having a lot of life and the game’s UI being among the most colorful on the market. There are over 40 songs available in each game with the Apple Arcade version getting Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory” among others. Playing the game a lot rewards you with goodies like costumes and accessories for Amigo. There are also a lot of fun mini-games within the main game to keep things active – whether it’s a high-five run with fans where you match the hand placement much like matching the beat positions or a slow, then turbo-fast run through a portion of the song, it’s a blast.

The twin-stick approach to the controls when using a controller works really nicely and allows for each hand one would use for a JoyCon now or a maraca back in the day to correspond to similar movements with sticks. It’s a very natural-feeling setup and one that allowed me to do better in this game than any other rhyhm game that I’ve played. It’s always a genre