LAST.DS: DOWNLOADABLE APP TURNS DS INTO STREAMING BAND BROS. RADIO RECEIVER
Speaking of franchise potential Nintendo’s sternly neglected to bring stateside: most interesting of all the apps the company’s detailed in Japan’s latest downloadable DSiWare update is Band Bros. DX Radio, a receiver that will tune into a regularly-scheduled streaming audio station pumping out a variety of music from the DS game of the same name.
First released in late 2004, Daigasso! Band Brothers was Nintendo’s first and more group-play minded take on the burgeoning music game genre, with the d-pad and buttons mapped to distinct musical notes of particular instruments that you played along with a traditional musical staff, as well as the ability to compose your own songs.
For its 2008 sequel, Nintendo gave players the opportunity to upload those original compositions to a central server, where they’d be sorted and ranked and put up for download alongside regular Nintendo-made updates so others could play along.
It’s from that set of downloadables that the radio station will pull its material — Anoop Gantayat’s andriasang blog has translated the station’s program schedule, with shows dedicated to top 10 material, new material available from the online database, whole shows dedicated to one uploader, and more traditional rock, hiphop and game music programming.
With a similar downloadable WiiWare channel that turns your TV into a Band Bros. song player (see: Portal’s ‘Still Alive’, Band Bros style), it’s obviously a franchise Nintendo’s strongly supporting in the region, and it’s unclear whether simple copyright laws are stalling its move westward. With the DSi about to get a local slate of weekly DSiWare apps, it might (hopefully) be simply that the company was waiting until all its hardware cards were in place before introducing the concept stateside.
Band Bros. DX Radio home [Nintendo]
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