Samba De Amigo: Party Central preview – super monkeying about

Yet it’s not Ulala stepping onto the dance floor this summer but Sega’s far less iconic, maraca-shaking monkey Samba. If it hadn’t leaked beforehand, the announcement of a new Samba De Amigo at the February Nintendo Direct would’ve been a shock considering it was never mentioned on Sega’s list of dormant IPs it was thinking of reviving.

The series started out as an arcade game in 1999 and then a Dreamcast title, but aside from a 2008 Wii port there hasn’t been a single new entry since. As such, even after a short play session with it, we’re unsure whether Samba De Amigo: Party Central has enough to attract an audience beyond nostalgic fans.

From the announcement trailer alone, it’s obvious that Sega is prioritising appealing to a newer generation. Aside from the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers serving as maracas, Samba has otherwise shed his Latin America inspired aesthetic, trading his sombrero for a modern, flashier outfit and dancing in neon-lit environments rather than a samba street party. It almost has the same energy as your dad coming with you to a nightclub to prove he’s still ‘with it.’

This discarding of the original game’s aesthetic is matched by the song list. While the Dreamcast game featured its fair share of then current pop songs, it primarily consisted of Latin music, yet those are very much the minority in Party Central. The song list is mostly an eclectic mix of rock and pop, ranging from Guns N’ Roses to Kesha, with just a handful of tracks from the original game peppered throughout. It’s by no means a bad selection, though, and is bound to elicit nostalgia from anyone who’s been a teenager in the last three or so decades.

It being a Sega title also means there’s a small handful of vocal tracks from Sonic The Hedgehog games, including the main theme song of Sonic Frontiers. Fans of that franchise will get a kick out of these ones playing on a Sonic Adventure 2 inspired dance stage, as the blue blur himself busts a move. Even if it does leave you wondering why Sega hasn’t made a dedicated Sonic rhythm action game yet.

We had a short amount of time to play any songs we wanted by ourselves, followed by a multiplayer session with another journalist. When prompted with the choice between using the motion controls or just pressing the buttons, we picked the former, for the most authentic experience. Samba De Amigo’s entire premise is that you’re shaking maracas to the beat of the song, holding the controllers up above you, to your side, or below you, depending on the direction of the beat markers that emit from the centre.

It took us only a couple of songs before we swapped to buttons. The motion controls are by no means awful, and they’re fairly responsive, but we kept pointing the Joy-Cons down and shaking, only for the game to act as if we weren’t pointing down and not counting our shakes. In fact, it was the downward markers we had the most trouble with and in an effort to overcompensate, we somehow fooled the game into thinking we were pointing up.

It doesn’t help that there’s no in-game indicator of where the Joy-Cons are positioned. Or at least where the game thinks they’re positioned. The on-screen markers only react when you shake the controller but when we pointed them down, there was no telling if the game agreed until it was too late.

There’s a heavy emphasis on multiplayer since there really doesn’t seem to be anything for a solo player to do besides rack up high scores and unlock cosmetics (which will definitely take a long time given how many there are, including the not entirely abandoned sombrero), with no campaign or goofy story mode to speak of.

There’s online multiplayer too, including something called World Party that has up to 20 people playing at once, but we weren’t allowed to test this mode out.

Sega has already announced there will be post-launch DLC, although it has yet to clarify if it’s paid DLC or how much of it the publisher has planned. While Party Central could easily enjoy a constant stream of licensed music and guest tracks from other Sega games, any post-launch longevity will be determined by how popular the game is initally.

We apologise if our somewhat despondent tone clashes with the game’s vibrant and loud aura, but that’s only because we’re not enthusiastic about Party Central’s chances of thriving. It’s competent at what it does and seems perfect for in-person party sessions, but will that be enough?

We’re not sure the Samba De Amigo fanbase alone is large enough to sustain it and perhaps the best thing it has going for it is that Ubisoft doesn’t have a new Just Dance coming out this summer.

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Release Date: Summer 2023