Piano Made Easy by Nintendo

Thanks to Activision, you’ve been able to play guitar on your Nintendo DS. And now thanks to the latest iteration of Guitar Hero for the DS Band Hero, you can even play drums and do vocals. But what about the keyboard? Don’t you ever want to have the chance to rock out Elton John-style (Boas and wacky shades, are optional of course)?

Thanks to Valcon Games, you can finally live out those secret Billy Joel fantasies…well, sort of. The makers of Horse Life Adventures and Darkest of Days is the North American publisher and distributor or Easy Piano. According to the press release, the game lets you tickle the ivories via “13-note, full-octave external keyboard peripheral” or the digital keyboard displayed on the Nintendo DS touchscreen.

There are two levels of difficulty and players “will be tutored in the correct finger movements and skills required to become a mobile virtuoso.” Hmm, sounds like fun. There are a total of ten lesson and some mini-games. To add a little spice to the recipe, Easy Piano also allows wannabe composers to create their own three minute compositions. The creation mode features a mix of instruments to flesh out your musical vision.

There’s no official word on the track listing as of yet, except that it contains some of the world’s most famous songs and that they cover a large swath of time and genres to give it that mass marketing appeal. I wonder does that mean we’ll see a little Beethoven and Bach or some Joplin. I’m always down to peck out a rudimentary version of “Für Elise” or “The Entertainer”.

Ready to learn piano the Nintendo way? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments section.