While I was listening to my favorite collaboration of classical music one night, I thought of a game that someone mentioned to me a long time ago that I haven’t had the chance to play - Mad Maestro for the Playstation 2! If you haven’t heard of this game before, let me give you a little introduction on it. Mad Maestro is a game in which the player gets to conduct a classical symphony to songs like the Hungarian Dance No. 5, Swan Lake, and Night on Bald Mountain. Now you might not know any of those songs by name, but I bet if you heard them you would say, “Oh yea! I’ve heard that one before!” The game, as you would correctly assume, is rhythm based and requires the player to press a certain button at the right time, but there is also another element to it that makes it different.  Each button combination is pressure sensitive. This means that there are times when you would have to press a button hard or lightly in order to pull off the correct conduction of the orchestra. This was probably one of the most interesting things that I read about this game because it ties in well with classical music. When the conductor wants the orchestra to play pianissimo then he/she would make light movements, and when he/she wants the orchestra to play fortissimo he would wave his baton like crazy!

This game was released in Japan first and then later released in the United States with the help of Fresh Games, a label put together by Eidos Interactive. The reviews on it were fair, but I can see that it has a lot of potential. Imagine playing this game on the Wii with the accurate senor bar and Wiimote? Or how about playing it on the Playstation 3 and seeing the music flowing in Blu-ray! Better yet, playing it on the Xbox 360 where DLC comes out each week with difference classical music to play on Xbox Live or against your buddies? The possibilities are limitless. 

I think this game would be a great addition to the next generation of rhythm based games. Unless there is already a Playstation 3 Japanese sequel to it, in which case I have to get that! I hope it comes with a baton.

Game On!