Iwai, a Japanese multimedia artist who was involved with the creation of another music maker, Sim Tunes, has created, almost single-handedly, one of the most unique uses of the Nintendo DS since its release in late 2004. Basically, you are presented with an assortment of fish. Choose a set of these fish and you are free to create whatever music and sound that you can with them.

Take the cartridge out of the shiny blue limited edition packaging (some of the best packaging I've seen in a long time, and including free ear bud headphones to boot) and plug it into the console and you'll find a product more akin to a musical toy than any game. There are no fancy start-up sequences, no over the top movies, just a plain menu screen. Clicking on 'Audience' mode will bring up a random selection of one of the fish, which will play you a tune. You are free to participate in this mode, but it will play regardless of whether you are assisting it or not.

'Performance' mode is the real meat of the game. There are 10 different fish that you can click on to use. Some of them require nothing but the touch screen, but others utilise the microphone as well. A few of the fish are disappointing and have little to offer, and certainly offer no real basis for creating music, the most notable example of this being Nanocarp, wherein a bunch of fish aimlessly potter about the screen and make noise when hit by ripples in the water, created with a poke of the stylus. However, even the most lacking of fish has something to pull it from the depths of utter failure; Nanocarp, again being pulled up for example, has microphone functionality and will create numerous shapes upon different sounds being inputted. Other fish are superb for music making potential, such as Luminaria and its field of arrows that are used to guide four creatures of varying sound to different parts of a board with a varying musical scale depending where it is crossed by the creatures. Special mentions must go to both Rec-Rec and Volvoice, both wholly independent on the microphone. While Rec-Rec can only record around 5 seconds worth of audio, it has four different channels, which means it can be used as a limited sampler with potential for developing ideas for music tracks. Volvoice is the creature that will melt doubters' hearts when looking at the game – record 7 seconds worth of voice and click the various icons to gain different versions of it, with differing pitch, speed, etc.

Some efforts don't seem to have any musical merit upon first glance, but after delving further it's clear that they do – Tracey (a mode where you literally trace patterns that the fish follow) is one that springs to mind. Tracey has been panned in many reviews that I've seen, but once you work with the fish you slowly begin to discover patterns that work well. Beatnes is, after Volvoice, the most accessible mode and allows you to press different parts of long, spiny fish to hear different sound effects over classic old NES songs, including the 'super' theme from Mario Bros. and, if I'm not mistaken, Kid Icarus. The great thing about this mode is that, no matter what you press and when, the sound effects have a 99% chance of fitting in. The only mode that has any real target to it is Hanenbow, a mode that features pink aquatic critters shooting out of a leaf and hitting other leaves – turn all the leaves red at once and a flower will appear.