We all had high hopes for My First Songs, with fifteen of the most legendary nursery rhymes of all time finally together in one package. Bangkok-based developer RingZero Game Studio brings us this hotly-anticipated karaoke title just in time for your tax refund shopping spree — alas, My First Songs is not quite a Yankee Doodle dandy. The track list is hampered by a bare-bones feature set and a surprisingly harsh level of difficulty for a title aimed at small children.
If there's one thing My First Songs excels at, it's the audiovisual department. The game boasts a pleasing, colourful art style with cute characters and farm animals. Menus are simple, uncluttered, and easy to navigate with either the button controls or the touch screen; instead of a boring list of songs to choose from, the track listing menu is a lovely farm with unique, recognisable icons for each tune. Rather than a fairly generic music video of people singing like we get in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, each tune in My First Songs features unique animation sequences directly representing its lyrics.
The songs themselves are a blast for the target audience, too — it's an unfortunately short collection, but here's the full track listing:
- Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
- The Farmer in the Dell
- B-I-N-G-O
- Old MacDonald
- Three Blind Mice
- Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
- This Old Man
- Alphabet Song
- Hickory Dickory Dock
- Mulberry Bush
- Itsy Bitsy Spider
- Yankee Doodle
- Michael Finnegan
- She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain
- Mary Had a Little Lamb
If this list isn't chockablock with nursery rhymes from your youth, you must have had an unfulfilling childhood. One thing you'll notice when you take a gander at the list is how many children's songs revolve around farms; singing some of the tunes for the first time in years, adult players will gape in horror at many of these songs' morbid lyrics. An excerpt from "This Old Man":
This old man, he played seven
He played knick-knack up in heaven
...
This old man, he played eight
He played knick-knack on my gate
...
This old man, he played nine
He played knick-knack on my spine
Is this old man meant to be the Grim Reaper? The Angel of Death? What exactly does playing "knick-knack" on one's spinal cord entail? Let's take a look at a verse from "Michael Finnegan":
There was an old man named Michael Finnegan
He grew fat and then grew thin again
Then he died and had to begin again
The concepts of mortality and the afterlife are constant themes throughout My First Songs, in direct contrast to the cutesy presentation. Then of course, there's always "Three Blind Mice":
Three blind mice, three blind mice
See how they run, see how they run
They all ran after the farmer's wife
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife
Cutting off the tails of adorable mice is gruesome enough, but the extra detail that it's a carving knife in particular makes the line especially grisly. Many of these songs are much longer than we remember them from our childhoods, with extra verses thrown in everywhere; some of them even have melodies when many of us thought they were only ever nursery rhymes without song. It's like the first time you learn that the full version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" has four verses; they've always been there, but no one ever sings them. RingZero Games clearly put time and effort into the recordings, as each one features high production values with kids singing in unison.
Once we get past the friendly presentation, My First Songs starts to get messy. Load times are excruciating, especially for a game as simple as this one. Many of the songs are presented at a much higher tempo than most people are used to, which is fine on its own, but while most karaoke games present the lyrics a few lines in advance with at least two lines on screen at once, My First Songs only shows the line currently being sung; it doesn't give any advance notice. The line won't pop up onto the screen until the moment it starts. If you don't have the song memorised, you'll have a tough time keeping up with it. Between the lyrics' lack of advance notice, the tempo's unrelentingly quick pace, and the often unfamiliar, drawn-out iterations of the songs, My First Songs is a treacherous mountain to come 'round.
Considering its difficulty for an adult reviewer, My First Songs would be downright murderous for the toddler audience the game is aimed at. During songs, there's a musical note onscreen whose facial expression will let you know how well you're doing. When the note is grimacing over half the time, young children are bound to get upset. My First Songs uses the GamePad's built-in microphone to register your voice, and the intended pitch of each word is indicated by rising and falling lines on screen, like the vocal tracks in most other karaoke games. Yet there's no indicator telling you what pitch you're currently singing at — your only point of reference is the angry musical note telling you you're doing it wrong. Some of the pitch suggestions seem counter-intuitive, at odds even with the game's own vocal track. When you're meant to hit a particularly low note, often the game will tell you to hit a high one instead.
To succeed, you need to enunciate each individual syllable clearly. Unless your mouth is right up against the microphone, you'll barely be able to hear your voice over the voices of the pre-recorded children in the audio mix. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; many people are embarrassed to hear recordings of their own voice, and the low volume lets them sing without inhibition. Once you get the hang of it, you can rack up points, but if you're singing the song like you normally would with your playdate friends, you'll miss everything. Not that the points matter. There's no way to fail a song, and the points are completely arbitrary; at the end of each performance you're presented with your score, but none of them are ever saved. Once you move on to another tune, you'll never see that score again. All the songs are unlocked from the beginning, which is great for families who just want to head straight to their favourite nursery rhyme, but it means there's absolutely zero progression in the game.
My First Songs can be played either on the TV or the GamePad alone. The GamePad controls are fine, but you'll get flustered when you reach the "(clap)-(clap)-N-G-O!" part of "B-I-N-G-O" and you suddenly have to drop the controller so you can clap. A second player can play with a Wii U microphone, sold separately. The GamePad's camera also takes a handful of pictures during each song and presents them to you along with your score at the end; like everything else in My First Songs, these photos aren't saved, so they're only there to look through at the end of each tune. For some reason, colours in the photos are incredibly washed out and the pictures are in a strange stretched-out aspect ratio that makes everyone look chubby. As you're browsing your photos at the end of a song, you can go back to the track select screen, or another tune will automatically load after a countdown. If you've ever streamed a television show on Netflix, it's the same idea: while you're contemplating whether you want to play another or not, the game makes the decision for you. It's a deviously clever way of getting you to play more.
Conclusion
You select a nursery rhyme, you sing it, and then you choose another. There are no extra modes, no progression, none of your data is saved, and the points don't matter. The animation is pretty and the choice of children's songs is excellent, but the number of tracks is like a spider: itsy bitsy. The compositions are much faster than what many of us grew up singing, and all the extra lyrics we skipped as kids are hard to keep up with. This smouldering difficulty could be off-putting to the game's target toddler demographic, but at least there's no way to fail a level. No beating around the mulberry bush with this one: My First Songs is nothing more than a glorified karaoke machine.
Comments 39
Did you lose a bet with the staff to have to review this?
This will teach annoying kids to stop singing when they have no talent. I salute the dev team for that.
Looks like the third party support grew fat then thin again for Nintendo fans.....
Guys, i really like the site and Nintendo... but please stop reviewing this crappy games because in my opinion you are showing that most of Nintendo WiiU games are crap, instead of making bad publicity for the console you should make more articles on others subjects instead of showing more sucky games. Talking of great games on the virtual console of the 3DS, would really help Nintendo.
@AndyM4x
How would you know if a game is crap or not before reviewing it? don't revieweres are supposed to keep an open mind before trying anything even movie tie ins shovelware....... Its not their fault that Wii U gets shovelware
@shigulicious I don't know what you're talking about! For months I've been begging Darren, "Let me review My First Songs, it's the entire reason I got into the game critic business!"
@AndyM4x Here at Nintendo Life we pride ourselves on reviewing every single game released for Nintendo consoles. That includes My First Songs.
@AndyM4x Just wait till you see what I've got in store for you.
@Squidzilla Oh god, no! Please no, no, no, no, no!! Just no!
NOOOOOOO!!!!
No.
@AndyM4x they do talk about the great game as well. In fact they review every single one that makes it to a nintendo console. Every single one. I don't know of any other sites that do this.
I love how NL is the place to be when you seek reviews of obscure/weird/awkward/probably bad games. Thanks for saving us money, guys!
@AyeHaley I'll second that! I mean, I'd never spend my money on things like this, but it makes a great read!
I feel sorry for anyone who has to review this
I'm going to guess no children were ever involved in the testing of this game.
I think Nintendo only put this on eShop b/c it's $9.99 so it's make those 10 yr. old Gameboy games at $7.99 look like real bargains. Really, how is this $9.99? Seems like even $1.99 would be a stretch, and then only if it functioned the way it should.
Congrats on writing a fun to read review though.
There''s a better way to spend $10 bucks here. This isn't it. E-i-e-i-no.
Nintendolife doesn't review every game, just every download game.
UUUUUGHUGH get it away from me. It's awful! DX
@JakeShaprio please have someone review missed Wii and DS game like Mario Party 8 if what you say is the case. : D
@JakeShapiro Why did no one review the Wii version of Skylanders Swap Force then?
All those songs are too mainstream for me.
@ueI
It is still impossible to cover everything, they still miss a few, particularly games that were released at retail and later were uploaded to the eshop.
I.E.
https://www.nintendolife.com/games/3ds/classic_games_overload_card_and_puzzle_edition
I have seen this game at sale in th 3DS eshop a couple of times, but when I came to NintendoLife to check if it was worth it, I was left with nothing. I hope no future game on sale suffers the same fate.
@rjejr Nintendo didn't put the game on the eshop.
@Yomerodes You're right. What I meant was download exclusives.
How is this not a 10/10? It has a great story, amazing graphics, innovative gameplay, and ba ba black sheep! Oh wait, it only has the last thing I listed.
Those kids in the image look terrified at the thought of an angry musical note sending three blind mice to execution by butcher knife.
That has got to be the creepiest cover art for a game Ive ever seen
@Squidzilla Is it a hidden object holiday finding game?
@Unca_Lz Did Christmas come early this year?!
@2Sang Please Understand.
They need to put stuff like this on Wii U to try and attract the 3DS Animal Crossing & Pokemon demographic
Hickory Dickory Dock! SOLD!
@MrV4ltor - "Nintendo didn't put the game on the eshop."
Nintendo may not have produced the game, or wanted the game, but they are the only company that can put anything on the eShop, it's a closed store and it's wholly run and operated by Nintendo. Companies give games to Nintendo, Nintendo puts them on the eShop, that's just how it works. The eShop isn't eBay.
I find it annoying when Nintendo allows shovelware like this on the Wii U. One of the highlights of the U has been it's lack of success has kept the amount of shovelware way down compared to the Wii.
On the other hand, it's kind of annoying when people get too upset about this. This looks like a bit of a rip-off with the small song list which all happen to be public domain. I have no problem with games for small children because Nintendo systems tend to draw a lot of older gamers who have kids...it bugs me when these games for small children are of poor quality.
With all that being said, I do have one question for the reviewer...it is possible the game would respond differently to children's voices rather then an adult male? ...I'm not defending a shoddy game package, but I'd be curious to know if it makes a difference.
@Action51 My girlfriend, an adult female, also tried the game. She had an even harder time than I did. Unfortunately, I did not have any children around to try this game with.
@rjejr I know, but the rest of your comment sounds like Nintendo made the decision to put it on the eshop and set the pricing, which they don't.
Shovelware like this is what caused me to leave the Wii U for Xbox.
@JakeShapiro I love how up specify your girlfriend as an adult.
@baba_944 Haha. The person asking the question referred to me as an "adult male" so I was just calling my girlfriend an "adult female" to match it!
@MrV4ltor -Yeah, ok, I see how it could be interpreted as Nintendo setting the price, which wasn't my intention as I know Nintendo supposedly lets them choose their own price.
Though I imagine those conversations going something like this:
Developer - We want our game to be $4.99.
Nintendo - $4.99 hmm, are you sure?
Dev - Ok, well maybe we want it to be $7.99.
N - hmm, $7.99, is that really what you want?
Dev - OK, $9.99.
N - $9.99 it is, since thats what you want it to be.
But I still think Nintendo only allowed this game on the eShop for $9.99 to make their games look better. At any price. Well and it's a kids game too.
@rjejr That's not how it works lol I know that the dev can set the price to anything they want and Nintendo doesn't influence them in any way. The dev probably just gets sent an email with a form to fill out where things like price and such are beeing locked down.
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