Control wise it will be a nightmare to develop. They might have to inject some new pointing poses into the game to recalibrate the controls mid tune. Best of luck Gearbox you'll need it.

Why no Sonic Team on this one? Odd very odd.

This is something I'd like answered, what is the highest G the accelerometers can take before it just maxes out... because (as I keep moaning on about) in theory if you know where the Wii Remote is, and lift it, it should know exactly where it is relative to that start position, assuming the maximum G it can take is above that of a human being, being able to move an object manually... whats that 5Gs?

I think this is workable if you look at the direction of a flick, which the remote and nunchuck can both do - upwards, outwards, downwards.

They have said one player will be remote + nunchuk - here is hoping for four player

I'm a fan of the physicallity, translating the movement to a flick would be just about passable... I never played the DC one much due to a shoulder injury... its passable these days, so it'd be nice to have another shake at it...

properly implimenting a height thing would be good, but I guess, too fiddly... there would be some serious maths to compensate for lateral and unexpected movement, unless you mapped each shake to an area before each song.

By serious maths you mean double integrations and trig. Hardly rocket science.

The problem in implementing full height recognition will be coping with drift in the accelerometers. Lets face it none of us know enough about the hardware to know whether it's up to the job or not. If it is then I'll be pleasantly surprised. I mean it only has to estimate which one of three heights the controller is at. The tech may be precise enough to do that reliably over a 5 minute tune.

SERIOUS maths....

I could play with the Wii Remote on my Bluetooth capable computer, I wonder if anyone has a dance ribbon simulator yet?

Or a hand trails thing. In fact this laptop has a tilt sensor... I suppose throwing that around to experiment with maximum G would be inappropriate.

I've just realised how inappropriate the phrase "hardly rocket science" is when talking about double integrations and trig. That pretty much IS rocket science.

There must be some laptop shizzle you can play with this stuff on. Sadly my works Dell doesn't have Blue Tooth (budget )

Dual wield:

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/866/866500p1.html

quick read of various impressions tells me they are using the tilt of the controllers to tell which height you are, i.e. tilting down for down etc etc etc... not read enough to tell me if its toggled or a live stream as it were.

I had a few minutes playing this recently.

Initially the controls seemed horribly broken compared to real maracas, then we realised it was set up to have the remote in your left hand and nunchuk in your right.

After some calibration and swapping these around, it started working well. As previously disclosed, it uses the tilt of each device to determine up/middle/down positions, and once calibrated it becomes second nature - you don't have to think about it.

The remote + nunchuk set up is a bit ropey as the cable really isn't long enough, I didn't get chance to dual-wield but that would definitely fix it. Overall it is very impressive. The response time was a little quicker than the old DC maracas too.

In terms of the quality of the port, the original announcer samples are all in there which is very cool, the menus and so on are completely rewritten and very nice, and the game is a combination of all the elements from the original and ver 2000. So you have love-love, hustle mode, and the harder difficulties are no longer hidden. The version we saw had perhaps 20 songs, mostly from the original games, with a couple of additions (Papa Loves Mambo is one I remember). No word on download songs, and no Sega tunes present in the version I saw (unlockable presumably).

It looks great too, a noticeable upgrade over the DC originals, and the Mii integration is as nice as the screenshots suggest.

Should be great!

What it really, REALLY needs though is a shaker/maraca attachment for the remote. The version I saw had no vibration and not even a shake sound through the remote speaker. Add some of these features and it will be perfect.

Sounds like you've played the same code I did. I found it surprisingly responsive actually though it did struggle on Hard mode, particularly when you're trying to hit one high and one low. It didn't occur to me that it was because the controllers were tethered but I guess you're right.

Maraca attachments seem to have been confirmed:

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1&sku=808567

Excellent, excellent.

Seems dual wield is the way to go as well.

Its almost as if someone has actually sat down and thought about it!

Major props to gearbox if they have independently pulled that off! More Sega than Sega themselves?

Ulala(!!!) and soundtrack:

http://kotaku.com/5039700/you-seem-to-have-got-ulala-in-my-samba-de-amigo-plus-final-tracklist-details

The maraca boxset has disappeared though, no information on maraca attachments on Sega's website either.

http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2008/06/28/rumor-not-final-box-totally-gives-away-samba-maracas/

Who knows

The Might internet hath spoketh:

http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2008/08/21/amazon-dates-prices-maraca-attachments-for-samba-de-amigo/

Hail, for it knows and sees all.

Phew.

They've gone for remote + nunchuk rather than remote + remote though, which means in theory I'd need four sets of those.