Samba De Amigo Wii - Gearbox Speaks

Brothers in Arms developer Gearbox Software may not be a name that instantly springs to mind when considering which software house should be tasked with updating the Sega classic Samba de Amiga, but the company has nevertheless been awarded that opportunity and recently spoke to Kotaku about the experience as well as making some interesting comments on the performance of third party software on Nintendo’s machine.

Here’s a small portion of the interview where the excellently named Randy Pitchford speaks about Wii Samba:

”We're huge Samba fans. Huge Dreamcast fans," Pitchford tells me. "We totally told SEGA they had to let us do it. People want a Samba Wii game." SEGA consented, and Gearbox dove in trying to squeeze the max potential out of the Wii-mote. Sure, Nintendo is making tons of money with the Wii. Third party devs haven't been as rewarded for Wii innovation. Case in point: Capcom's Zack and Wiki, which posted embarrassingly poor sales figures. Pitchford does point out that SEGA has hit with Mario and Sonic at the Olympics; though, that game does feature Mario. Still, Pitchford is optimistic.

"Third parties are doing alright with the Wii if they spend the right amount of money and time," he says. "People bought the Wii for the promise of the Wii Remote."

While, the Dreamcast version of Samba de Amigo has specially designed maraca peripherals, Gearbox has the challenge of turning the Wii-mote into, well, maraca peripherals. Here's the challenge: The Wii-mote itself is high tech, while the Nunchuk Wii peripheral is not. Sure, it does have a three-axis accelerometer, but still isn't the same level of technology that's in the Wii Remote. What's more, the Wii-mote doesn't always know where it is in space. It knows it's been moved, but positioning it can be tricky. So getting the Wii-mote and the Nunchuk to input the same? Or what about making it so players can use two Wii-motes instead of a Wii Remote and a Nunchuk? Not easy! "It's possible," Pitchford explains. "You just need a lot of smart people who can do a lot of math." Attitudes like that (and only attitudes like that) will keep the Wii out of the third party hobo gutter.