Nintendo Wednesdays #3-DK Bongos

I mainly wrote my blog posts because I was starting to gather a pretty good collection of Nintendo games and things and I simply loved taking pictures and showing people things I had that they might have never seen or even heard of before. Starting with this third post, I changed the name to Nintendo Wednesdays because I didn't like the name "Luigi's Nintendo Awesomeness." I thought it sounded childish and really wasn't catchy at all. I was still in the search of a cool, new title, and I guess that is what I came up with for that week's post.

You've played rhythm-based music games standing on a mat, with plastic guitar and drum controllers, and maybe even with no controller at all on Dance Central. Have you though, ever played with these? 

These are the DK Bongos for Nintendo's Game Cube!

A look at music games now.

The market for music games is falling. Activision's Guitar Hero franchise got the axe not too long ago and MTV Games is trying to sell the Rock Band property. This was mostly caused by the over-abundance of these games and the requirement of expensive peripherals. For a while though, these kinds of games were all the rage and lots of people were playing in their homes, at parties, in school, everywhere!

The DK Bongos

 The DK Bongos were released on September 27, 2004. More than an entire year before Activision released their first Guitar Hero and the music game period of games started. This wasn't something new though, as these kind of games had been popular in Japan for years prior.

Over the lifetime of the bongos only 3 games that were compatible with them were made. Its a shame because they are one of the most fun and coolest-looking peripherals Nintendo's ever released. The 3 games released were Donkey Konga, Donkey Konga 2, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. There was a third Konga, but it was never released in the US. Also, the Wii game Donkey Kong Barrel Blast was originally supposed to be compatible with the bongos when it was in development for the Game Cube. The Wii arrived and development was shifted to the Wii and bongo controls were scraped completely.

All 3 American DK Bongo games.

Donkey Konga and Donkey Konga 2

Think of these games like Guitar Hero with the bongos and you'll understand how they play. You try to match different colored circles that appear on-screen with an action on the bongos all while staying in rhythm with the music. Simple enough right? Yes, but if you aren't very well coordinated you are probably going to have a hard time playing. There are different difficulty settings to play on starting with 'Chimp' (which is pretty easy) and ending with 'Gorilla' (which, unless you have a lot of practice, will destroy you and your brain).

Each game has about 30 music tracks to play along to. I'm not to familiar with popular music, so I have never heard most of these songs. The ones I have are the Pokemon song from the anime, remixed Mario and Zelda themes, and songs like La Bamba, Louie Louie, We Will Rock You and Oye Como Va. The only reason I know the last 4 are because we played them at one point or another in the stands at football games in band. If it wasn't for that I would only know the songs coming from other games.

The white, spiked circle means clap and the long red 
(top right) and purple (bottom right)
 mean hit your bongo like crazy and make your arms sore!

Hit the left drum on yellow, the right on red.
Purple means to hit both at the same time.

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

Unlike Konga, Jungle beat is a standard platformer. Well, as standard as you can get running and jumping with bongos and not a controller. Jumping and running aren't the only things that you can do in the game though. While on your banana-collecting adventure you will beat up badies, run from snowballs, ride bull things and much more! You control DK by hitting the left and right drums to move and jump and clap to get beat-gathering combos. While you can finish a level by simply reaching the end, the main goal is to collect as many beats as possible by grabbing bananas and defeating foes. The only other thing I can think of to say for this game is that you have to try playing it. Its incredibly fun and you won't want to put down your bongos.

At the end of a level you hit the bongos as fast as possible to get extra bananas. Warning: Your arms will yell at you if you do it too fast!

Monkey swinging, banana-collecting, platforming fun.

FUN FACTS

• In Japan the bongos are known as TaruConga
• 'Taru' is the Japanese word for barrel and 'Con' is a suffix used by Namco when naming their peripherals.
• The games are compatible with the regular Game Cube controller, but are a lot more fun with the bongos.
• Donkey Kong Jungle beat got an updated remake for the Wii. New Play Control! Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is cheaply available if you don't want to hunt down a copy of the Game Cube game.
• Donkey Kong Barrel Blast was originally a DK Bongo game, but that got scraped when development of the game was transferred to Wii from Game Cube
• A 3th Donkey Konga was released in Japan, but never in the US.
• These bongos and Donkey Konga (shown in above pictures) were given to me by Corey Cruz! Thanks!
• There is a not-so hidden hint at next week's topic in the two first pictures.