Wii Music

Wii Music is a 2008 music video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii. The game was released in Japan and North America in October 2008, and in Europe and Australia in the following month. Wii Music is part of both Nintendo's Touch! Generations brand and the Wii series.

Wii Music focuses on creating arrangements of existing songs by controlling the members of an on-screen band. In order to do so, players choose from a selection of musical instruments that are played by mimicking the required actions using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Unlike other music games, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, players are not scored on their performance and are encouraged to experiment with different ways to play various songs. The game has been advertised by Nintendo as a means to "bring the joy and creativity of musicianship to [one's] home without expensive music lessons."

Wii Music is one of the original titles announced for the Wii console, first publicly playable at E3 2006, and then later re-introduced in greater detail at E3 2008. Upon release, Wii Music received mixed reviews according to aggregate scores with common criticism directed at its simple gameplay, imprecise motion controls and its predominantly public-domain soundtrack. As such, it is regarded as the black sheep of the Wii series and is also one of the least commercially successful entries, selling 2.65 million copies worldwide as of March 2009.

Wii Music gameplay focuses on playing and arranging songs through improvisation using various instruments. Similar to how Wii Sports simulates playing sports by mimicking the required gestures using the motion sensitive Wii Remote, Wii Music simulates playing music by mimicking the actions associated with the different instruments. Like all games in the Wii series, the players control Mii characters created using the console's Mii Channel.

The game offers a selection of sixty-six playable instruments, including the violin, drum, cowbell, flute, clarinet, saxophone, harmonica, piano, guitar, trumpet, harp, shamisen, maracas, sitar and marimba, as well as unconventional instruments such as dog and cat sounds, pseudo doo-wop vocals (singer), karate shouts (blackbelt), cheerleader cheers, and 8-bit sounds.

To play each of the instruments, the player mimics the required motions with the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk. Because of the varying techniques required to play different instruments, the instruments in Wii Music are divided into "groups" to which certain movements or button presses play single notes. For example, instruments such as keyboards and percussion require the player to swing the controllers as if striking drums; and some string instruments such as the violin and the guitar are played by moving the Wii Remote as if drawing a bow or strumming the strings, while the Nunchuk is held as if gripping the instrument's neck and fingerboard. The Wii Balance Board can also be utilized in playing the various drum kits, emulating the foot-operated pedals. All instruments have extra playing options, where additional button-presses or restricted movements have different effects on the sound. Softer notes can be played with slower Wii Remote movement, and holding various buttons can create damping, muting, chords, tremolo, arpeggio, and glissando.

The game's main feature, Jam Mode, features 50 songs that consist of a combination of classical and traditional songs, seven Nintendo songs, and 15 licensed songs. Before playing the selected song, the players each choose any of the available instruments and then perform as one of six different members of a band; the six available sections are melody, harmony, chord, bass, and two percussion parts. Unoccupied sections are played by computer-controlled "Tute" characters or can be dropped altogether.

Unlike other music games such as Rock Band or Guitar Hero where players are scored based on playing certain notes at specific times, Jam Mode lacks a scoring system and does not objectively penalize for missing or playing "incorrect" notes nor do players have any control over the pitch of the notes played. Instead, the internal music track for each section of all songs is specially programmed to respond to all possible player actions: the game will attempt to make any notes played be harmonious to the song, including those played outside the original melody. Consequently, players are encouraged to practice and experiment with different ways to play songs using any arrangement of instruments, either choosing to stick close to the guide or diverge from it and create unique compositions. The quality of the new arrangement is up to the player's judgement. Players can also do what is called an "Overdub" session in which the same song is played again controlling a different musician or instrument; this allows the players to play over the music recorded in previous playthroughs and allows a single player to play all parts of a band. Players can then save their overall performance as a music video for later playback, or share it with other players via WiiConnect24.