Year: 2002 | Publisher: Sega | Developer: Sonic Team| Original format: PlayStation | Version played: PlayStation
When Sega discontinued the Dreamcast in 2001 and officially became a third party publisher, it’s fair to say it rocked my world. I couldn’t remember a time before Sega produced their own consoles and at the relatively young age of 19, I naively assumed they would do so forever. The move to third party publishing was swift and prolific, and in a matter of months their biggest games began to appear across all three major consoles; PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube.
At first it felt surreal to see Sega games on these rival systems, and yet at other times it also felt like a natural fit. The cool nightclub appeal of Rez made perfect sense on PS2, while Super Monkey Ball, in a parallel dimension, could easily have come from Miyamoto rather than Nagoshi. By 2003, when the F-Zero GX loading screen boasted Sega and Nintendo logos in equal prominence, it felt less like the end of an era and more like the start of a bold new one.
As weird as it was to see Sega games release on Dreamcast’s contemporaries, the weirdest leap of all is the one that extended back into the previous generation. In September 2002, and only in Japan, Sega released their one and only game for the original PlayStation… A console so long running, it was a rival to both Dreamcast and Saturn. If you’d told me in 1998 that not only Sega but also Sonic Team would release an exclusive game for the PSOne, I would have slapped you across the face with a PAL copy of Burning Rangers and told you to come to your senses! And yet it happened…
Originally released as a NAOMI-powered arcade game in 2000, Shakatto Tambourine! was Sonic Team’s follow-up to the breakout success of Samba De Amigo, swapping plastic maracas for a motion sensitive tambourine controller while largely retaining the same rhythm-action gameplay. Two further revisions were released over the next year, suggesting the game was reasonably popular, but none of these exact versions made it onto home consoles. Instead, for the PSOne port, Sega teamed with popular idol group Mini-Moni to put out a special version featuring the band’s songs and singers, presumably in an attempt to de-risk the expensive production, which necessitated an expensive tambourine controller and sensor mat, very similar to the one that made Samba De Amigo possible on Dreamcast.
The very same licensing move that made this late PSOne release viable in 2002 is almost certainly the same one that made it impossible to release outside Japan. While Samba De Amigo featured mega hits from the likes of A-ha and, er, Chumbawumba, MiniMoni: Shakatto Tambourine! Dapyon! was free of a single song that would have troubled the UK Top 40. Perhaps today, when global kids grow up watching their favourite K-Pop bands on YouTube, it could have fared better, but in 2002 when the internet was still primitive and nerd culture had a natural ceiling, there was just no chance this one would make it West.
Yet while Mini-Moni were totally unknown here, it’s fair to say they were massive in Japan, and have more of a videogame connection than you might think. Formed in 2000, the group was a spin-off from the wildly popular Morning Musume, who you may know for contributing a song to cult Nintendo DS rhythm-action title Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! In fact, that same song also appears on this release, which splits its track list evenly between Mini-Moni and Morning Musume. Additionally, both groups’ songs were produced by Tsunku, another familiar name from the world of rhythm-action, who came up with the idea for, and composed the music to, Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series.
As much as I love those games, I can’t honestly say that I’d ever pop on an album from either of these groups and listen to the music in isolation. It all feels very much aimed at Japanese schoolgirls. Which is totally fine, of course, but I’m a 40-year-old English man, so it’s not exactly in my wheelhouse. Having said that, their tunes are undeniably catchy – there’s one about a strawberry pie I’ll admit to singing to my baby daughter now and then – and, most importantly, they’re perfectly suited to this game’s energetic tambourine-shaking gameplay.
Intermission… MiniMoni: Shakatto Tambourine is the only game Sega ever developed for PSOne but, technically, it’s not the only one they published. Compile’s classic jellybean puzzle sequel Puyo Puyo Sun originally released on PSOne in 1997, but following Sega’s acquisition of the Puyo Puyo IP in ‘98, they re-released the game in 2003, re-badged with a Sega logo on the box.
If you’ve played Samba De Amigo, or similar peripheral based music games like Namco’s Taiko No Tatsujin or Donkey Konga, then you know what to expect here. On the easiest difficulty level you have three rings on screen and a series of red balls that start at the centre of the screen and travel outwards toward one of the rings. When they reach their destination you’ll need to move your tambourine controller to the matching position and use your other hand to smack the big button on the side of the plastic peripheral in time to the beat. A successful smack keeps your score going up and will annoy your neighbours, thanks to the jingle of the metal “zills” built into the controller. (Yes, I did have to go to Wikipedia to find out what they’re called.)
It’s all simple, accessible stuff, that’s obviously designed so players of any age can play the game, and while it’s enjoyable enough on easy mode, I’m thankful that the action gets a bit more involved at higher difficulty levels. Crank up to medium or hard and the number of positions you’ll need to move your hand to will increase from three to six, and your actions will double too. As well as smacking the tambourine when you see a red ball, you’ll also need to shake it whenever you see a blue one. This not only gives you a bit more to think about, it inevitably raises the challenge too, and at its hardest it takes equal measures of skill, dexterity and practice to nail the rhythm.
So I’m pleased to say that Shakatto Tambourine! is a genuinely good rhythm-action game and one that on a technical level is ever so slightly better than Samba De Amigo simply because alternating between shakes and slaps gives you that little bit more to do. After a bit of practice, and on the highest difficulty levels, I really felt like my movements matched the rhythm and energy of the songs. If you were squinting, you might even say it looked like dancing!
But can I honestly say I prefer Shakatto Tambourine to Sonic Team’s more famous rhythm game? Not really. Samba had an instant appeal with its catchy familiar pop songs and friendly monkey hero. Not to mention that maracas are objectively cooler than tambourines. Don’t argue.
In the canon of classic Sega games, I can’t truthfully say that this one is an essential play. It’s much more of a curiosity piece really. But if you have a taste for early 2000s J-pop and enjoy physically active music games then you can have a lot of fun with this, and now is the time to do so! While Samba De Amigo, complete with maracas, will set you back a couple of hundred quid these days, Shakatto Tambourine! remains so obscure and unknown that it can be picked up for a mere fraction of the price. Why not give it a fair shake?
FOUR LITTLE THINGS ABOUT MINIMONI: SHAKATTO TAMBOURINE! THAT I RATHER LIKED
1. Earn an A-rank in any stage and the background will be washed out by an astonishing rainbow-coloured sun to give you that real in-the-zone feeling. Drop down to a B-rank and the regular background will return.
2. This little mascot character appears on the main menu and crops up in some of the stages too. He’s probably deeply important to the Mini-Moni lore but I just think he’s cute.
3. It wouldn’t be a Sega arcade conversion without a few mini-games. The fly swatting one works pretty well with the tambourine’s motion controls, as does this high-speed game of noughts & crosses.
4. Get an A-rank in each of the songs and you’ll unlock a gallery of promotional Mini-Moni photos that I guarantee you’ll look at once and only once.
Finally, how about some music from MiniMoni: Shakatto Tambourine!…
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