Wii Music: Innovation or Disappointment?

With last month’s release of Wii Music, Nintendo concludes its “Big Four” group of nontraditional games (Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit being the previous three). Unfortunately for the Big N, its foray into the music game genre has been receiving less than stellar reviews, averaging a score of 60, according to Metacritic. Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s resident developer guru, has come out in support of his game. Which, he admits, may not really be a “game” at all, but rather something approaching a “musical arrangement engine.” It would appear that with Wii Music, Nintendo’s dogged pursuit of nongamers has finally resulted in a misstep, in spite of Miyamoto’s firm defense of his creation.

In Wii Music, gamers (musical arrangement engineers?) can choose from a list of over 60 instruments to play in over 50 songs. The song list is a combination of public domain music (e.g. “Happy Birthday”), Nintendo themes (e.g. the Mario Bros. theme), and a few licensed pop songs (e.g. “Every Breath You Take” by The Police). Once you’ve chosen an instrument, you essentially mimic the motions of playing that instrument with your Wiimote and nunchuk, and, voila!,  you’re making Wii music.

Unfortunately, all of Wii Music’s music is presented in not-particularly-stellar sounding MIDI format. I defy you to hear one of the choral performances in the conductor minigame without conjuring images of the opera scene from Final Fantasy 3 (the US one, pictured). With both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour out there rocking fans with full master recordings, it’s difficult to see Wii Music as a “musician’s” music game.

So what is the point, then? According to Miyamoto, he wanted to create an experience that differed from the other music games out there. While talking to a group of reporters after being honored at the ESA’s 11th annual Nite to Unite event, Miyamoto said that Guitar Hero and Rock Band “let players be the best cover band they could possibly be.” With Wii Music, the developer sought to give players a feel for what playing music is really like as opposed to training them to hit a particular color at a particular time. As a musician of 13 years myself, this is certainly an admirable goal; I’m all for getting people excited about playing music.

As a lifelong gamer, though, I’m disappointed in the direction Nintendo has taken itself. The company I grew up loving has seemingly thrown its fan base out the window in pursuit of “nongamers.” There was a time when 1st-party Nintendo games were unbeatable, the pinnacle of gaming quality. Personally, my Wii got packed away when I moved into a new apartment, and I’ve yet to find a reason to unpack it.

Am I being too cynical? Maybe I’m unfairly expecting more-of-the-same from gaming companies instead of recognizing true innovation? Share your thoughts!