The Wii redux of Samba has everything the original game had and more: More songs, more modes, new mini-games, multiplayer options, better visuals (Amigo's trippy Technicolor dance party will sear your eyeballs right out of your head) and the ability to buy new tunes online via the Nintendo WiFi Connection.

But what it desperately lacks is tight controls. The original Dreamcast game came with a set of awesome electronic maracas, plus a sensor bar that you set up around your TV so the game could detect how high you were holding the shakers. It was a little cumbersome, but it generally worked well.

With the Wii version of Samba, I assumed the controls would be even better than in the original, thanks to the Wii Remote's nifty motion-sensing technology. In fact, they're notably worse.

No matter how many times I calibrated the controls, and despite switching from the Wiimote-plus-Nunchuk scheme to the superior two Wiimotes option, I kept missing notes that I was clearly nailing, and kept finding it unreasonably difficult to pull off simple combos accurately. Argh!

The game can still be fun, particularly at the more forgiving difficulty settings. And the joyous Hustle mode, which stresses dancing over shaking, doesn't suffer as badly from the accuracy issues.

But the sloppy controls mean this next-gen Samba is missing some of the magic of the original, and that's truly unfortunate. Unless you happen to be my downstairs neighbour, in which case you'll sleep well tonight.