Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
To explain Major Minor's Majestic March would be like explaining quantum physics, it's not that it can't be done but that listening to it sounds absurd. Here is goes anyway. You live in March Town where the most prestigious occupation is being the drum major of a marching band. You play as Major Minor, who comes from a lineage of great drum majors. Being the reluctant type, you lead a band because that is what is expected of you. As the adventure continues, you being to feel the march and lead a band and spread the joys of marching.

What's Hot
As far as wacky ideas finding a home on the Nintendo Wii, Major Minor has got to be one of the craziest titles to hit the system. This level of crazy should be expected from the creator of PaRappa the Rapper, Masaya Matsuura. Like his past games, the game revolves around rhythm and proper timing. Team him back up with Rodney Alan Greenblat and you have the dreamteam back together. It's quirky, it's kooky and it is something people familiar with these types of games will be interested in checking out.

The best part of the game is the storybook visual touch. Truth be told, the game doesn't look too different from PaRappa the Rapper, which is a very high compliment. Everything in Major Minor's world comes alive with charm and flair that is hard to capture on a video game. It might seem like the game is childlike, and to an extent it caters towards that crowd, but there is also a trendy sophistication adult gamers can appreciate. It's like seeing a wonderfully captivating animated movie and taking time to admire the work that went into detail and how successfully it conveys telling the story.



What's Not
Major Minor falls prey to the trap many Wii games fall into. The concept is brilliantly simple and the gameplay painfully reflects that. Shallow is a word that begins to describe how the gameplay falls short on so many levels. The tutorial you play won't even prepare you for some of the frequent occurrences like changing tempos or what to do when you are held up at a roadblock. Marching up and down to the rhythm might give you a few jollies and make you smile with how silly you look, however, that will only last so long when you realize that this is the only thing you do for the entire game.

Part of the game is to build a majestic marching band. To bring more players into the fold, you need to wave your baton (Wii-mote) in an animal's direction and they will be recruited into the band. They all have different ideal tempos, depending on the song, and keeping your waving at a consistent pace will make most members of the band happy. The wave motion to bring more members into your band isn't sensitive at all. You'll miss out on adding more members to the band because the Wii-mote won't register a movement. For a game this simple, it is largely disappointing that the controls are this unresponsive.

Final Word
The cool thing about the creators behind PaRappa is that they marched to their own drum. Now they created a game about marching and it appears the beat was broken. The gameplay is too simple to hold a captive audience for a long time. Redeeming the game somewhat is the wonderfully colorful visuals and entirely original vibe. Still, no matter how fresh the face of the game is, there are some profound deficiencies with lasting appeal.