We'll forgive you for instantly dismissing Major Minor's Majestic March as a load of rubbish. After all, there have been more colourful, childish games released on the Wii than there have been Cliff Richard concerts, and, much like Sir Cliff's gigs, the vast majority are pretty forgettable. However, when you consider that Major Minor is being put together by the creator, development team and artist responsible for cult classic PaRappa The Rapper, it becomes clear that this one could be worth keeping an eye on.
The game tells the story of Mike Minor, a young... um, animal of some sort (is he a bear? A dog? The debate has been heated here at ONM Towers) who has been left a magical baton by his Great Great Grandmother Gladiola. This baton affords Mike the power to magically give an instrument to anyone he points at. It's up to you to march through your home village of March Town and use the baton to round up your fellow citizens in order to create the greatest marching band of all time. As you do.
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As Major Minor walks through the streets of March Town, you have to set a tempo by waving the Remote up and down like a baton to a rhythm you're comfortable with. It's important to find a tempo that's suitable because different characters you enlist will have different reactions to the rhythm you're marching to. If you've set the tempo too slowly, some might get bored and leave your band to do better things. On the other hand, wave your baton like a madman and your band members won't be able to keep up, which will inevitably cause them to drop out of the band.
Band On The Fun There are 25 different songs to play in the game, but the interesting thing is how each song builds as you add more band members. When you start off, all you've obviously got is one bear/dog lad walking about with a magic baton, but after you point your baton at a couple of bystanders and give them a different instrument each, you start to hear a basic tune forming.
Every subsequent townsperson you enlist will then add a further level of depth to the tune until you're playing with a full, loud and varied band consisting of many different instruments, creating a magnificent sound that would make the London Symphony Orchestra fume with jealousy in their dandy little suits.
At various points in each stage you'll pass sections where, if you have enough members in your band, you'll enter what's known as Drill Mode. Here you're given a series of motions to make with the Remote (like shaking it from left to right or rotating it) to make Major Minor perform some fancy tricks and get you some bonus points. This is the bit we're worried about to be honest because it's usually moments like these where the controls mess up because games fail to see the limitations of a Remote without Wii MotionPlus attached, but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt until we get our hands on the finished game.
As you and your marching band stroll through the town there are a number of power-ups you can pick up along the way that affect the situation. For example, if any of your band members aren't feeling so happy with the performance, you can toss them a jellybean and they'll forget all about it for a while (if only life were so simple). They're not all good though - some power-ups (or power-downs, if you want) will make your band members upset or even cause some to walk away altogether. Then there's the sneaky Egg Plant Fox, who'll try to mingle in as part of the band and then mess up the tempo to confuse everyone.
Major Minor has a unique look and a similarly original concept. Fingers crossed it'll be good enough to have gamers marching down to the shops for a copy.
