On the other hand…

Yes! Listen here. Daft Punk FTW!

-Jacob

The Nintendo DS has loads of titles in its library. Much like the Nintendo Wii, many of them are what is widely known as “filler”. Titles that are produced solely for the intend of making money. Of course, the intention of every game producer is to make at least enough money to pay the bills. But with titles like Petz: Dogz, Petz: Catz, Petz: Horzez etc., it quickly becomes clear that many titles are produced only with one thing in mind: Making a quick buck.

That doesn’t mean the DS doesn’t have some great titles, it most certainly does. But some of the real gems come in the strangest forms, and some are never really recognized for being exactly that: A little shining gem.

Maestro! Jump in Music (henceforth “Maestro!”) could be described as just another music games. The world sure needs one more of those, right? I mean, apart from numerous Guitar Heroes, Rock Band, DJ Hero, Singstar, Dance Dance Revolution etc., we certainly need more (that was sarcasm, in case you didn’t notice).

Now, I actually like music and I like music games. But by god, have they not released enough of the same and same old formula? Indeed they have, so does Maestro! bring anything new to the table?

For starters, Maestro!, as the name implies, incorporate the wonderful world of classical music. Sure, that has been done before, but not too often. Where Maestro! start to become really interesting is when we look at the actual gameplay.

The story is simple: The bird Presto lives next door to the spider Staccato. Not exactly friends, but they seem to get along. In comes the beautiful bird Bella, who both Presto and Staccato takes a fancy to. Presto wins and steals her heart (kinda unfair advantage he had, being a bird too, but hey). But Staccato is having none of that! And so he sees to it that the world goes mute. Now it’s up to Presto to save the sound and notes of the world.

How is this done then? Presto walks along strings set at different levels. In sync with the music comes notes that must be played by moving the stylus up or down over the string, much like you would play a guitar. Pulling down over a string can send Presto up a level, while the opposite will send him down. At first it seemed illogical, but in reality it is much logical, since that’s how you would do it in real life.

As Presto moves along, he collects objects, making chiclets follow him. You need at least enough to get a B+ grade to advance levels. Get many notes right and you’ll do fine, but miss a lot and you have to try again.

Luckily, the game is forgiving and you can try out a level before actually playing it. This can be worthwhile if you don’t already know the tune you are going to play.

That is, however, not all there is to the game. Soon you will have to learn new techniques for playing music. Each technique is carefully introduced with a tutorial you have to complete. There will be other birds entering the screen and you must click on them with the stylus at the correct moment. As they are moving, that’s not always easy, and of course you have to keep strumming the lines for notes.

Sometimes there will be several notes on top of each other, meaning you will have to strum them like a harp. There are times when you have to click an object and have to keep the stylus on the object as it moves, and then there are the “black holes” you have to rotate the stylus on. My favorite are the “mandolin” strings on which you have to strum up and down quickly.

The actualy gameplay is hard to describe, so here is the trailer for the game that demonstrates it quite well:

The game has 24 levels spread over 6 worlds. Each world ends with a music showdown with Staccato as your opponent. Seeing as these are the games’ “boss levels”, I would have believed them to be harder than the actual levels, but in reality, the boss levels are the easiest levels.

The normal levels can be played at different difficulty levels. On level “easy” it’s not too hard to advance in the game, although some of the later levels certainly taxes your stylus dexterity.

Now, all this would amount to absolutely nothing, if the music wasn’t well done. No matter how well done the game mechanic is, a music game with crap music would suck. So how does Maestro! sound?

I am happy to report that it sounds absolutely fabulous. I was totally gobsmacked at how amazing the music was done. Sure, it’s all “remixes” of popular and well known tunes, but by god, the music is awesome. Being composed by the obvious talented group Yubaba Smith & Fortune, the entire soundscape of the game oozes charm, joy and happiness. From the wonderful title theme that had me tapping my foot and whistling along in seconds, to the actual in-game tunes which are all respectfully (and quite faithfully) recreated versions of beloved tunes. The complete tracklist is as follows:

Green Grove: a colourful and flowery universe, full of exotic animals and lush vegetation. Rhythmic bass and afro beats inspire the music selection here.

* Ludwig Van Beethoven – Symphony No. 5
* Antonin Dvorak – Symphony No.9, From the New World
* Madness – Our House
* Traditional Japanese song – Sakura Sakura

Purple Sonata: what better music for a 17th Century palace with statues and marbling-a-go-go, than a classical sound, as baroque as you like, that has stood the test of time?

* Jean Sebastien Bach – Little Fugue in G Minor
* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – A Little Night Music
* Perren, Mizell et al.– ABC
* Traditional French song – Vent Frais, Vent du Matin

Yellow Allegro: sojourn under the Italian sun in Venice where only the cursed seagulls throw a shadow over the scene. The music is typical of the setting: odes to joy, and love in the form of mandolin solos.

* Eduardo Di Capua – O Sole Mio
* The Animals – The House of the Rising Sun
* Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
* Traditional English song – Greensleeves

Indigo Flow: a change of scenery and a free-dive to thousands of metres below the water’s surface! Rare air bubbles ring out and myriad species of fish resonate with sound at every touch.

* Erik Satie – Gymnopedie No.1
* Pyotr Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker
* Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – I Put a Spell on You
* Traditional Russian song – Otchi Chornye

Black out Beats: a spatial inspiration for this voyage beyond the solar system against a backdrop of starry skies and melting planets. The sounds tend towards the psychedelic: strange attractors winning out over gravity.

* Johannes Brahms – Hungarian Dances
* Edvard Grieg – Peer Gynt
* Leonard Bernstein – The Magnificent 7
* Traditional song adapted for Bizet’s Carmen – El Arreglito

Red Hot tempo: the Wild West, steam trains and gunslinging cowboys–even Charles Bronson’s reflexes would be put to the test in this Leone-inspired nightmare.

* M. Gore, D. Pitchford – Fame
* Ennio Morricone – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
* Isaac Albeniz – Asturias
* American Traditional song – When the Saints Go Marching In

Some of the tracks might seem like an odd choice, but me, I’m all for exposing people to different kinds of music. And it cannot be stressed enough that the msuic in Maestro! is very, very well done.

There have been other music games with good music and decent game mechanics, but what about the presentation? Surely the humble DS can match games like Guitar Hero and the alike? No, of course you don’t get flash HD 3D graphics. But what you get is some of the most characteristic and charming graphics I have seen out of Nintendo’s own walls. This is simply how a game should be presented. From the very colourful graphics which have lots of neat touches and charm, to the way everything transitions from menu to menu. The selection screen is an old record player on which you move the arm to select option. And yes, you can click on the actual record and scratch and play in reverse and do pretty much whatever you want. It’s fun and it only adds more smiles to the players face. It certainly did here.

Presto himself is a great character. Just look at him! He looks so happy and joyful that I can’t help but smiling when I see him. Even the bad guy of the game looks fun. There have been painstakingly much work put into doing this game’s graphics and music.

But while many producers seems to think so, a game isn’t much cop without some decent gameplay. As I addressed earlier in this review, there are loads of games without any gameplay being released. They might look and sound flashy, but their life is shortlived, due to the lack of good old-fashioned gameplay.

Maestro! has the flash, but unlike many others it also have the gameplay. It’s fresh. It’s different. It’s challenging. But most importantly, it’s works and it’s damn fun. While I am sure it would not have worked so well with crap music and presentation that is not really problem here.

Maestro! delivers a breath of fresh air to an otherwise kind of tired genre – the music games. And it does in a way that none of the big consoles can.

Even the creators logo is charming! Pastagames is also doing a iPod Touch or iPhone version, so if any of you out there doesn’t have a Nintendo DS but one of Apple’s touchscreen gadgets, you are going to get the game as well. Any other device with a touch screen and the necessary CPU power could get it too, if it’s a success. Perhaps Android phones? Whatever it would take to ensure Pastagames make enough money to continue releasing wonderful games like this.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any interest in a charming, funny, good looking and wonderfully sound game, you need to look no further. This little gem has it all. It hasn’t received much attention (why not?!), but I can wholeheartedly give it much credit and can only recommend you purchase the game. It has most european languages (english, spanish, italian, french, german, danish, norwegian, dutch, portuguese and swedish) and it is worth it’s price.

You get a wonderful game and you support what seems to be a talented bunch of people who clearly invested a lot of time and effort in giving us this game.

Thank you , Pastagames.

Score: 9 out of 10

-Jacob

You know what I like in an MP3-player? I want to connect it and just drag’n’drop my music files. And I don’t want to install any extra software. I’d also like it to be small. Easy to use. And have great sound quality.

As much as I love my old 30GB Ipod for its vast storage, the battery life was never really good, even with back-light turned off. The headphones were kinda crappy. The jog-wheel, while in theory working great, worked only adequately in real life. Erratic volume changes were frequent, unless you locked it, even when nothing was touching the damn thing! It was also kinda big lugging it around, and you certainly shouldn’t take it for a run.

Before the Ipod, I had a an iRiver 256MB MP3-player. It wasn’t very big, had no moving parts and still retained a good display and loads of tweaking. At its time, it was awesome. Seeing as it was smaller and could stand a beating, I had started using it a lot recently. The capacity was, however, somewhat lacking. And there was still a wire from the player to the ears. Of course. There has to be, right? Well, no really. When the iRiver driver refused to work in my Windows 7 install, I decided it was time to buy a new, small MP3 player. But which one?

Walking downtown and entering the local electronics store, I looked around for a bit. Ipod Nano? Cute, a bit expensive, and the darn you-must-transfer-files-with-special-software-attitude. Same went for Ipod touch. And Ipod Shuffle. Who the hell wants to install extra software, when it’s obviously not a technical necessity? Apple, apparently.

I checked out some other players too, but then my eye fell on the Sony Walkman NWZ-W202, and I knew the decision had been made. 5 minutes and 699 DKR later, I walked out of the shop, new player in head.

The Wearable walkman. That’s what Sony calls their new model NWZ-W202. And you know what? It’s true. It’s wearable. Unpacking the player, you will find the actual player, a stylish (though a matter of taste) cradle for USB-charging and transfering of songs, manuals and two extra sets of ear buds in different sizes. That’s it. No drivers! Hurrah!

As for the installation, you plug in the cradle, put the player into it (via a standard mini-USB socket, so you can use other cables for recharging/transfer – another hurrah!) and Windows just find it. And that’s it. You are ready to drag and drop MP3, AAC, WMA etc. files to the player. And yes, DRM-ridden files are supported too.

Now, the first bad thing about this player is the storage space. It’s only got 2GB in this first incarnation. But thing about it. It’s about 200 average-sized songs, and since it’s so easy to change files, that’s okay with me. I often download new music and while it would be nice to have it all in one place, all that accomplishes is the fact, that you rarely get to listen to your new music. At least I didn’t.

Anyway, I transfered about a gigabyte of songs (took about 3 mins with the fast USB 2.0 transfer), and the player was ready to rock. While it was already 90% charged when I got it, the player has a really neat “3-minute supercharge” mode. Charge it for 3 mins and you get 90 minutes of playback. I dunno how good that is for the battery, but that remains to be seen. It charges to a maximum in about 2-3 hours. A full charge gives 12 hours of playback. While it charges, there is a nice LED in the join of the two sides that flashes discretely. There is also a small “OPR.” LED on the inside of the right ear piece, that blinks every few seconds when the player is operating.

I removed the player from the cradle and “broke” it in the middle. There is a magnet in the middle, holding left and right part together. Practical? Sure, very much. But there is more to this magnet. When the left and right parts are joined at the magnet, the player automatically turns off. A small stroke of genius, since you obviously can’t listen to it with the parts joined. Take it apart, place each ear bud in your ear, click the jog-wheel, and the player starts playing.

The controls are simple. There is a jog-wheel, a button to increase volume and one to decrease it. A small on/off switch for Shuffle mode on/off. And that’s all. The volume buttons are easy to access but, you aren’t going to accidentially turn the volume up or down. They react and work as they should. As for the jog-wheel, you click it to start playing and click it again to stop. Click it again, and the player will resume from exactly where you were. If you want to skip back or forward, you simply scroll the wheel backward or forward. It couldn’t be much easier. So simply and intuitive.

If you remember the concept of being wearable, you can see in the pictures what I mean. There is a cable between the left and the right ear pieces, and it goes behind the ears, down the back of your head and is in no way annoying or intruisive. Granted, if you have long and thick hair – mostly applicable to girls – you might have to tuck in under the hair, but that is a very minor problem and the girls I’ve asked to test it, have not complained.

Since the player is so wearable and light (35g), you don’t notice it at all. It almost becomes part of you, like glasses or a necklace. Sure, it might look as you are wearing two Bluetooth ear pieces, but the player is really comfortable to wear. It comes in 5 stylish colours and looks quite good (subject to taste, of course).

And boy, does it ever stay it place! I ran, jumped, biked, walked. I even tried hanging upside down. The player stayed exactly where it should – in the ears. Oh, and you can easily lie down your head on a pillow, the player will still fit snugly.

As for what the ears experience, I can safely say that the audio quality is rather good. Sony didn’t skimp on that part. Good bass, excellent mid levels and great treble. The only negative factor in the sound department is the lack of outside noises eliminator. But it’s forgiveable. Just this once.

Okay, so it all sounds good, but surely no player is perfect. There has to be some cons somewhere. And yes, there are a few I’d like to mention.

First the obvious: Lack of any display. It kinda goes with the whole concept. There is no way of seeing the name of the track you play. While a “synthesized” speech announcer (like Apple has on their new models) would have been nice, it would of course not have been perfect, loads of tracks and artist names would have ended up being incomprehensible. Still, the feature would have been nice, like you double click the jog wheel and the name of the song and the artist is announced.

There is also NO playlist support. The player just plays in sequential order (sorted alphabetically) – apart from when you use shuffle mode, obviously – and you can’t skip whole folders.

For the enthusiast, the lack of any kind of EQ settings might be a bit of a downer. I thought I would have hated it, but the sound is so good, it doesn’t bother me at all. I previously mentioned the somewhat lacklustre 2GB storage space (c’mon Sony, RAM is hella cheap) but even that doesn’t put me off.

The so-called cool “Zappin”-function is somewhat of a joke. It’s supposed to scan and find the most energetic part of a song, play a few seconds of it and when skip to the next track. This is supposed to make it fast and easy to scan songs to find the one you want to listen to. On paper this probably works great, but in real life it certainly doesn’t. It’s almost a shame Sony included it, but at least you don’t HAVE to use it. Luckily.

At first, the Sony NWZ-W202 looks like a total design disaster. But it is obvious that much care and consideration has gone into the actual physical design of it. It feels (and sounds!) much better than its first impression. So if your main focus is on comfort, ease of use and sound quality, the W202 is a sure-fire hit. At about 700 DKR (about €100) it’s not cheap in terms of storage, but you get an excellent product that is not just good for audio enthusiasts and casual users, it’s also a godsend for people who use their MP3 player while doing any sort of sport or exercise.

This is the Sony I know and love. Craftmanship, innovation and quality. Please transfer those qualities to your PS3 department!

Score: 9 out of 10

-Jacob

Promotional video of the W202

I can’t believe how utterly nerdy and geeky this is. Yet it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen and I loudly applaud the accomplishment. Truly magic.

If, on the other hand, you want your music more “organic”, there is this one to wacth instead.

-Jacob

Beatport is a great place to find the latest techno, trance, house, minimal, drum & bass and many other genres within electronic music. The interface is pretty awesome, being almost entirely made of Flash, but still managing to be fast and responsive.

You get large previews of all songs, decent pricing (€1-2 per track, usually) and you can buy it in different qualities. Oh and yes, downloaded files are DRM-free!

Wholeheartedly recommended.

-Jacob

Lo and behold, another great trancer upped to YouTube by me.

Enjoy it

-Jacob

And here is my latest upload to YouTube:

-Jacob