Majesco's New Nintendo Games @ E3 2008: Major Minor's Majestic March

Jul. 24 2:10 PM by Alicia Ashby

The Lowdown: As Major Minor, you must use the band leader's baton to gather up your marching band and keep them all playing in time. Do well and you'll get a massive band behind you, but do poorly and players will drop out. March in seven locations full of hazards to guide your band around, while you try to layer up to 15 different instruments into over 30 classic marching band songs in the game. You can collect different band members every time you play to change the sound of the songs.

The Hype: NanaOn-Sha and Rodney Alan Greenblat pretty much created the rhythm game genre as we know it with the bleeding-edge PlayStation title Parappa the Rapper. There's no reason to believe their Wii collaboration won't be a smashing success.

The Snark: This is the only game I played at E3 where the hands-on time left me disappointed. The baton-based gameplay mechanic feels really weird and tires out your arm faster than Wii Sports Boxing. It was one of the last games I saw, so maybe I didn't get to spend enough time with it, but what I did play wasn't much fun.

Anyway, some wonderful screens wait behind the cut.