Gamertell

Title: Daigasso! Band Brothers
Price: $48.90
System(s): Nintendo DS
Release Date: December, 1, 2004
Publisher (Developer): Nintendo (Nintendo)
ESRB Rating: N/A. CERO Free (All Ages)
Pros: There’s a great variety of JPop, anime, World, classical and video game music to play. The controls are easy to adapt to. There’s single cart multiplayer for 2-8 people. The song editor is fun. Loads of replay value.
Cons: The sound quality sounds dated, you’ll need a guide to get started for making songs
Overall Score: 8/10

Since Daigasso! Band Brothers DX was recently released in Japan (on June 26, 2008), I figured it would be a good time to take a look back at the original Daigasso! Band Brothers.

The game is a cross between a music simulator and a music game, where people could play music with the face buttons. Pressing the wrong button, or failing to make a note sharp or flat with the shoulder buttons at higher difficulty levels, will cause the wrong note to be played. The goal is to successfully complete a song while keeping time with the beat and pressing correct buttons.

While Daigasso! Band Brothers has been praised for its wide selection of songs, multiplayer and ability to create songs to play and share, it was criticized for the song quality. Instead of MP3 quality music, it has MIDI music for each song. Despite this shortcoming, the music in Daigasso still manages to sound good and it doesn’t diminish the fun of playing.

Playing Music
Playing music in Daigasso is fairly intuitive. At the beginning of the song, notes are assigned to the up, down, left, right, x, y, a and b buttons. Each line is divided into four segments, and a flashing light to the right of each line keeps the beat. You can see the line you are on, as well as two lines ahead so you can anticipate upcoming patterns or notes.

The “story” mode of the game is known as Recording Ticket, and unlocks higher difficulty levels. The first mode is Beginner, and has one level. In it, you just have to push any button in time with icons scrolling on the top screen. The second is Amateur, where all the face buttons are used to play songs, and it has five levels that must be beat. After that is Professional, which also has five levels. The final difficulty level, Gold, requires using the shoulder buttons to make notes sharp or flat, and has one level to complete.

Making Music
Daigasso allows players to add new songs in the game, provided they know how to read music. There is a song creation function. If you transcribe sheet music into the DS, the game will automatically turn that into a song that is playable in the game. You can add parts for any of the instruments available in the game (having up to eight available for each song), and can then play that song either alone, or with friends.

Of course this does involve knowing Japanese, or having access to a guide, since there is a small amount of text involved in the editor. Luckily, users have created guides on Gamefaqs, so there’s nothing to stop anyone with internet access from creating their own songs.

Sharing Music
One of my favorite aspects of Daigasso is the multiplayer included. With a single cartridge, eight players can join together to play a song. The person with the game cartridge gets to select which song to play (all of them, including player created songs, are options). Then everyone decides which instrument they will handle.

You don’t need to worry about failing when you’re all playing together. No matter what happens, the song will progress and go one. Once it is completed, each player receives a score saying how well he or she did, and the best player is the “winner”. Then you can decide whether or not to play another song.

If you don’t have Wi-Fi access, then get this rather than Daigasso DX
People may be tempted to go for the latest release in the Daigasso series. If you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection to access with your DS or a wide variety of sheet music, then the original Daigasso Band Brothers might be a better choice for you. It comes with a greater variety of included music, and there’s also an add-on Best Selection cartridge which can be purchased and inserted in the GBA slot. Daigasso DX comes with more classical music pieces, and relies on a Wi-Fi connection for downloading the 200 additional songs.

Daigasso is a fun music game and simulator for the DS, and is definitely worth investing in. It has lots of replay value, single-card multiplayer and is also fairly import friendly.

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Last week Important Importables talked about fun, Japanese gadgets for summer.

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