Wii Demo Roundup - 03/14/11

A new week means a new demo in Wii Ware land. This week, it's time to make some music in the Mix Superstar demo.

Mix Superstar
Rated E for Everyone, 1 player/arranger, Wii remote only, $5.00

Courtesy mixsuperstar.com

In 5 words: needs mouse and keyboard, music

This week's Wii Ware demo is a blast from the past for me. I used to make music using Sonic Foundry's ACID tools (now owned by Sony) and Mix Superstar is very similar, but for the Wii. The concept is that you take pre-made royalty-free sound loops and arrange and modify them to make your own music. The demo has a nice variety of loops for you to use, and also includes a couple of songs built in. The demo is limited to 10 minutes, effectively circumventing the analog hole.

Using a keyboard and mouse to arrange music using ACID is somewhat difficult. Using the Wii remote to lay down audio tracks is worse. This type of software really needs a mouse and keyboard just to make things bearable. Still, at only $5.00, Mix Superstar is fairly impressive (most loop-based software is much more expensive than that). You can even expand your loop library through the Loop Shop and share your mixes online at mixsuperstar.com. If you've never tried loop-based music software, you can start here with the demo, I guess, but I would recommend ACID Xpress for Windows instead. I can hardly recommend Mix Superstar, primarily due to the cumbersome controls and Wii Ware's horrible DRM.

Fancy yourself a mix superstar? Share your music in the comments! Here's a song I made a few years back...

--Demo Gamer