The only reason I dislike this version of the game is the lack of a save feature. Sure, it’s incredibly replayable, but that just made it more and more frustrating to lose my high scores whenever I achieved them. (Yeah I could use save states, and I did for a bit, but that’s just not my thing for… reasons). Other than that, the few songs in here are iconic and its presentation fits the game boy’s screen like a glove. Might try out a mod to get saves if I can’t find a version that I like better… but as for the game as it released, I just can’t enjoy it with that one big flaw.

Definitely takes a hit after playing the latter games in the series. There’s just nothing significant to the Tour mode aside from playing through all of the songs. Speaking of which, not the greatest selection; a lot of dated throwaways, some painfully obvious classic picks (not always a bad thing), and only a few standouts that I’d choose to play for fun. Of course, this is a little better on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions but there’s no way I’m buying instruments for those consoles.

The presentation in general is lacking too. I’m not sure if this is exclusive to the Wii version, but the background FMVs were noticeably low quality regardless of the display I used. The mo-capped animations are cool though at least. The audio mixing was also very weird, specially going into overdrive. Half of the experience is enjoying the music you’re playing and I think the intrusive effects break the immersion instead of increasing it.

Anyway, the point of it all is the gameplay, which is fun even if rudimentary. For all its flaws, I can’t dislike the game when it gets the job done… just feels pretty good to get a high score or nail a difficult run of notes.