Jam Today - On Your DS

You can’t keep a good idea down, and right now the idea is to play guitar in a ‘Rawk!’ manner on any available piece of hardware. Next up is Nintendo’s ‘surgent DS, which Ubisoft has blessed with a slice of software called Jam Sessions.

According to the company it’s not simply a way to play some licks on your brain training tool, it is in fact, “a groundbreaking music title exclusively for the Nintendo DS system in which players actually strum a guitar via the Touch Screen to make music.”

So, how does it work then? “Players will rock out, or smoothly strum, on the lower screen of the Nintendo DS system, producing an authentic sound digitally remastered from an actual acoustic guitar”, we are told. Sweet, we’re gonna rock out… hold on a TV-throwing moment, Ubisoft, you can’t actually rock-out using an acoustic guitar– even if it’s a Martin DCX1E! You can folk out maybe…

…but we digress, the details continue, telling us about three of the modes available, “Performance Mode, allowing users to sing and play along both yesterday and today’s hottest artists; Free-Play Mode, where people can play anything they chose; and Tutorial Mode where novice musicians will learn to play guitar without paying for lessons.”

But don’t fall for it, like we nearly did, you do actually have to pay for the software, of course.

And there’s more, “One of the most compelling features is the ability to record what you play and play it back, therefore making Jam Sessions virtual notepad for players to write, play and save their original music anytime, anywhere.”

Some say 'compelling', some say, 'bloody obvious'... whatever, all-in-all it looks "Cool" for currently strummingly-challenged DS owners.

We are loving all this rock news, EA’s Rock Band, Red Octane’s Guitar Hero II, Mindscape's Rock Manager and even Codemasters’ Rockstar Ate My Hamster; and we’re sure to love Jam Sessions too as soon as we get a copy at its release – which is apparently, “this Summer”.