Samba de Amigo just isn’t quite the same without maracas controllers

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By Antonio G. Di Benedetto, a writer covering tech deals and The Verge’s Deals newsletter, buying guides, and gift guides. Previously, he spent 15 years in the photography industry.

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The halcyon days of plastic instrument controllers may be long gone, but there hasn’t been a moment in recent memory where I yearned for it more than while playing Samba de Amigo: Party Central on the Nintendo Switch. The new music rhythm game from Sega launching August 29th ($39.99 standard edition / $49.99 deluxe edition) successfully resurrects the long-dormant quirky darling of the Dreamcast. But as fun as it is, I just can’t shake a strange feeling that something is missing — wait, I know exactly what it’s missing. It’s missing the joyous shake of real maracas in your hands.

Back when the first Samba de Amigo came out in 2000 on the Sega Dreamcast (after debuting in arcades in 1999), it was meant to be played with purpose-built maracas controllers. You stood above a sensor bar with two bright red wired maracas, dialed in your height so the sensors could best triangulate the positioning of the maracas, and shook them to the beat in high, mid, and low positions to match the on-screen prompts as balls reached a corresponding colored circle indicating when and where to shake — along with the occasional striking of a pose.

I know exactly what’s missing here — because I am old

Now, in 2023, with Samba de Amigo: Party Central, you just use a Joy-Con controller in each hand, and those high, mid, and low positions no longer rely on an external sensor bar but instead the built-in accelerometers and tilt angle. It’s simple and it works fine, but it