It’s unfortunate that Nintendo’s Daigasso Band Bros series of games have never been released outside of Japan. These are games where multiple players can join in on and actually control/play the instruments on countless songs.
Nintendo recently released the sequel, Daigasso Band Bros DX, which lets you download and remix up to 100 licensed songs. Over 3,000 songs are now up on the game’s Japan-only download service. While I’m sure it was challenging enough to get licensing agency JASRAC to sign off on this in Japan, it would probably be a total nightmare to clear here in the United States.
Gamecyte has given us reason to hold onto our hopes of a US version. They tell us that Nintendo is currently researching the overseas licensing situation.
“No matter what kind of music, if we tried to do this in other countries it would be very difficult,†said Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in a recent interview. “Therefore, we are currently researching what would be required and what allowed in each region and individual country. If we find an agreeable answer, we certainly want to develop.â€
Iwata says that they might solve the licensing problem by looking into working with a single foreign label for an overseas version.
“If we could somehow put together a good deal with one particular music label, it would somewhat reduce the number of choices available [to players], but I believe we could create a game that still offers a variety of possibilities.â€
Of course, this is far from confirmation, but we’ll remain hopeful.
Published: Nov 7, 2008 01:46 pm