14 DAY TRIAL // Rock Band and Guitar Hero rock, and this is one thing no one can argue about – sales and popularity, doubled by the interest of major pro-grade audio gear, speak for themselves. And since the virtual music seems like one very good field to be active in, it was a question of "when" and "how" rather than of "if" until major gaming name Nintendo treaded this path. And so the Wii Music has been announced, allegedly a very fun way to play and enjoy music at the same time.
If no preview of what was going on inside the Wii Music world had been released, maybe a lot of people would have been quite excited about the oncoming gaming gadget. Unfortunately, enough data has surfaced so we can actually sigh.
Wii Music isn't ugly and neither is it dumb. But it's for kinds and for kids only; or for people who feel like they desperately need to act very, very ridiculous. Why is that, you might ask. Well, in the first place it's about the "music" thing: the tracks Nintendo have so far presented in their video are for kindergarten level and there is nothing serious about them. Even the "rock" parts are rather silly and sound like a childish version of old Metallica, played on anything else but the real instruments. The complete trackilst for Wii Music hasn't been revealed, but it looks like it could contain pretty much any great rock hit: if they make it sound silly, it's useless.
Then comes the playability issue: Rock Band and, even more, Guitar Hero, demand that you actually learn how to move your fingers in a predefined order and at a certain speed. Wii Music has nothing of this: no special button sequence, no notes and pretty much, nothing special. Some might even guess that you start the game (music session, sorry), move your wiimote around and the music plays. And since you do nothing out of the ordinary, it's easy to understand why the songs sound like they do.
Third, it's the music itself. Bringing forth a new music-game gadget and trying to make it big with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" or "Yankee Doodle" is definitely off the track. Get Guns'n'Roses' "Paradise City", remember their video with the band playing in front of 50,000 people, and then compare it with the Yankee Doodle stuff. Not a hard choice to make, is it? Finally, it's the whole atmosphere in the virtual world. Compare the awesome feeling one gets on the stage of Guitar Hero with the green digital pastures in Wii Music; and putting the very characters of these two worlds one next to the other makes a hilarious picture.
It looks like the rockers in Guitar Hero or Rock Band would beat senseless the geeky musicians in Wii Music, while making better music and greater shows, too. Now, it would be absolutely cool to have a contest between a hardcore gang from Guitar Hero and the tuba/xylophone/trumpet team in Wii Music, don't you think?
We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is 
.