I'll say it here and now: never again will I doubt the wonderful, wonderful
people at Sega of America. Despite all my grim predictions, we got ChuČ and Samba served up
unscathed, with SoA even getting ballsy enough to release the quirky, wallet-munching Maracas
Controller. There was supposed to be this limited supply crisis or something, and I don't know
how many of anyone else has had problems getting them...but at the Babbage's where I work, we
got two: I took one and the other is still sitting on the shelf. (I've actually decided that I'm
going to marry whoever buys it.) With the mediocre sales performance of the original, I had
completely ruled out the possibility of SoA releasing the semi-sequel Samba de Amigo
Ver.2000 hereabouts. Forgive me father, for I have sinned...
The bad news is that it's only the Dreamcast version...I guess they still don't
think we're ready to monkey around in the arcades. (And they're nuts, I can picture people
lining up for the chance to try their hand at maraca-shaking goodness.) Worse yet, they don't
plan on giving it to us until summer 2K1, by which point it's going to require a name change.
But that's okay, we'll be plenty busy with PSO until then, which will almost make up for the
fact that the homelanders will have Samba 2K in plenty of time for Christmas.
