Nintendo Media Summit: Jam Session impressions (DS)

One of the many quirky little games on display at last week's Nintendo Media Summit was Ubisoft's Jam Sessions for the DS. The title is described as a "music experience" that turns the DS into a guitar that musicians of any level can use to improve their skills. It also allows for players to create their own songs by strumming the touchscreen and selecting chords with the d-pad, or play along with popular songs for practice. It even allows for you to save anything you play, a nice little touch for when you really rock it out.

It's kind of hard to call Jam Sessions a game -- in fact, it's impossible. That's not saying it's a bad thing though; it displays Nintendo's push to expand the software line-up on the DS beyond the core gaming market. It just makes it harder to approach the title from a preview perspective. There's no story to talk about, no real graphics to talk about, no real gameplay, yet it still remains a fascinating piece of software.

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I have a complete lack of musical skill and guitar experience (Guitar Hero notwithstanding, of course), so I let the experts show off what Jam Sessions could do. I watched the on-hand developer giving a presentation and, in his capable hands, it was amazing. He had it hooked up to a speaker set and was playing songs on it that sounded almost exactly like he was playing a real guitar. It was uncanny. For people not quite at that level (raise your hand) there are also "a lot" of popular songs available in-game that you can play along with. He then showed off the interface, which seemed really clean and simple: the top screen has the available chords to pick from while the bottom screen has a bar for you to strum with the stylus. You can also use special effects like chorus, reverb, low/high pass and others to customize the sounds, allowing for a pretty robust experience.

Jam Sessions seemed like an interesting piece of software for the guitar-minded DS owners out there. It's so niche and so esoteric though, I'm not sure how wide of an appeal it will have. Could this interface be similar to whatever Activision's got in mind for that rumored Guitar Hero DS? Jam Sessions will be released next month.