When Nintendo first exposed new tactics to release a Japanese music-based game to feature Donkey Kong, the outcome didn’t look to good. The cartoon-like bongo drums that came bundled seemed somewhat far-fetched. However, those who felt apprehensive were soon proven wrong. Donkey Konga turned out to be a huge success in Japan. Now with a Japanese sequel on the way and the game’s first debut in America, what can we expect?

While unique, the concept of Donkey Konga resembles other music titles (i.e. Dance Dance Revolution, EyeToy: Groove, Amplitude Etc.). As flashy objects sporadically fly past the screen, you must accurately hit the object with the best precision possible. However, for Donkey Konga, you must hit each timed note according to the bongo drums. There are four different types of musical notes such as Yellow, Red, Pink and a barrel. It’s up to you to decipher which note is needed at the right time. Rather it be pounding both bongos simultaneously, individually or clapping to the beat, each note represents an action that you must perform in order to earn points and/or increase the score ratio.

Donkey Konga has plenty of unlockables throughout gameplay, however in order to obtain these special treasures you must play in ‘Street Performance’ mode in order to earn enough coins. Although learning the basics isn’t quite hard, it’s memorizing the songs that will get you the most coins. When playing with the difficulty set to easy, you won’t have the opportunity to earn as much coins as you would in the advanced difficulty classes. When you hit a note there are three different judgments such as Great, OK and Bad. If you hit the note on Great you will earn two to three coins, however if you only partially hit the note, then it will result in only one coin. As the more musical notes appear, you will have more opportunities to increase the amount of coins you have. When you have the difficulty level set to easy, then less notes will appear, however when it’s set to Hard then the likelihood of earning more coins will increase.

Although most unlockables may be useless, it adds to the already shortened replay value. Various items you can obtain include mini-games, alternate drum sound-effects, and songs (songs will be available in easy and medium mode, however in order to play them on hard mode, you must purchase them).

Mini-games are usually the best thing to play for. Although they may be meant to take you away from the monotony of the game, they are simply boring and I felt as if they were “thrown” together to make a quick fix.

In the “100M Vine Climb” mini-game you must climb upward and collect as much fruit as possible before time runs out. I really felt as if this mini-game was almost unplayable. The controls were very, very unresponsive. Rather it be you drumming lightly, or pounding the bongo drums against the wall, it’s nearly impossible to climb upward. However, Donkey Kong has no problem sliding down. Either I got a bad set of bongo drums, or this mini game needed some fine tuning. While “100M Vine Climb” is frustratingly unplayable, the other two aren’t as bad, but yet aren’t very fun either.

The “Bash K. Rool” mini-game is identical to Chucky Cheese hit “Whack-A-Mole”; the game where you must quickly hit the target as it emerges itself in and out of a hole (a là turtlehead). This mini-game had very responsive controls, however after I played it once, I had little ambition to play it again.

While slightly flawed, the “Banana Juggle” mini-game is simply the best. Your goal is to juggle as much bananas as possible before time runs out. Clapping will signal Diddy to pass you another banana, while pounding on each drum will represent which hand to pass it to. By vigorously pounding each drum, this mini-game can be very simplistic and easy. When the real game begins, and you look past all of the mini-games, how does it measure up?

I was somewhat bewildered by the overall simplicity of this game. My first impressions were “Is that it?”. After learning the basics within 10 minutes of gameplay, I was searching throughout all of the different modes, and looking through the manual to find something, maybe even a story mode, little did I know, the screenshots that gave hints for a story mode where nothing but a terrible three minute un-animated introductory. Not only was the story bad, but the way it was told was much worst. In a Reading Rainbow type of manner, the game showed some pictures, with words. I was mislead into thinking that Donkey Konga had a storyline, but new developer Namco must have gotten lazy.

Every game-like peripheral has ways to cheat. For EyeToy [PS2] you can wave your hand in front of the camera and easily cheat your way towards the high score. For Donkey Konga, there are more than enough ways to cheat your way to victory. As mentioned earlier, the Red, Yellow and Pink musical notes must be deciphered between in order to collect points, however there are ways around it. The pink note requires you to hit both drums simultaneously, however to keep confusion at a minimal, you can hit both drums for Red and Yellow notes as well. So instead of hitting each individual drum, you can simply hit them both to increase the chance of getting more coins. The bongos simply can’t tell the difference, which makes Clapping and hitting the only actions to perform. The microphone (built-in to your bongo) has no way of determining rather you are clapping, snapping, yelling, coughing... or even farting. So when playing in a room with noisy people (perhaps laughter during a multiplayer session), it will confuse the computer if there is too much noise, which will then lead to you losing or messing up. Mercifully, they’ve added different settings, but overall, this doesn’t quite help the problem.

Music games usually don’t have to maintain high quality graphical detail in order to create an enriching experience, however... would they at least make an attempt? Although navigation through menu screens may be bland, wait until you see the onscreen sprites. They are absolutely terrifying. Of course there’s really no right or wrong for musical notes, but on the bottom and top of each level, there are random sprites. Each sprite has very blurry graphics, and abysmal animation. Although Donkey Kong (Top left corner of the screen) may be exceptional, other’s aren’t. Unless you really take the time to look, this problem becomes non-existent when musical notes are moving at a rapid paste. The notes can sometimes become mesmerizing with the constant left movement, and you may need to pause the game after every few seconds. This wasn’t too big of a problem, I just thought that it may be smarter to aim rotation in a different direction.

Although I was occupied for a minimal amount of time, the overall flaws really deteriorated my overall feelings about this game. The negative slightly out-weighed the positive in this issue. I would like to strongly advise people to try this game out before buying it, although I liked it, others may feel different. I’d say that this game is more of a fun weekend rental as appose to ‘solid purchase’ like other reviews say. What good came of this game? My rockin’ pair of bongo drums in which I can use for Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat and Odama!