Now familiar to a whole new audience, everyone’s favourite maraca-shaking monkey made his debut in the arcades, and later appeared on Dreamcast in a notoriously rare and expensive home version that used sensors and motion detection years before the Gamecube, let alone the Wii. Eat that, Nintendo!

Samba smallThe Wii version doesn’t boast complete accuracy or fidelity to the original control scheme – it’s based on angles rather than height, so you point your Remote up instead of shaking it above your head. It’s not absolutely perfect, and can get quite frustrating on the more difficult stages, but it’s still a whole lot of fun, especially the brilliant Love mode, which repeatedly told Hannah and me that our relationship keyword was "volleyball". Then we played the volleyball minigame, which I lost, nearly ending our relationship right there. I sense foul play.

Few games sum up the Sega experience as perfectly as Samba de Amigo. Brilliant characters shine within an amazing graphical carnival that throws bright colours and bold textures around like streamers. If heat magazine reviewed the soundtrack they would no doubt call it “the most infectious soundtrack of the summer”, and with the new Wii version making new songs available for download there’s now an endless stream of sunshine from your TV, perfect for brightening up those dingy winter nights (although for that there’s also Winter NiGHTS, but more on that later!)