Samba de Former Director
Play.tm's interview of Samba de Amigo (the first one) director Shun Nakamura reveals the depressingly cynical genesis of the game. With something as joyful as Samba, you'd expect the director to be motivated by love of Latin music and cartoon monkeys (and the universe), but as Nakamura puts it: "To tell you the truth, I'm not really a huge music fan. However I do like soccer, so I'd often hear Latin music/chants while viewing matches and thought it could work well in a rhythm game." As he describes it, Samba was born from an interest not only in soccer-related rhythm, but a directive from Sega to diversify the Dreamcast's library, and a need for accessible titles. Nakamura continues not to be a fan of non-Samba music games.
Nakamura isn't in charge of the new Samba Wii game, though developer Gearbox consults with him regularly. In this case, it seems that the new developers, who begged for the project, may actually like the game more than the original director.
