"Rumpa Pum Pum"

Introduction

"Donkey Konga" is a rhythm game. The player must rely on his or her sense of timing in order to achieve success. Timing isn't the only concern, however... the game also requires a quick mind and quicker hands.

Control

As all games, this game relies on a tight, responsive, intuitive control setup. It delivers. There are basically three buttons on the packed-in bongo drums. There's a start button (used to pause the game and select menu items) and a button on top of each bongo (used to play music and cycle through menus). The buttons on top of the bongos are covered by a white, cushion-like material designed to resemble the top of a real bongo drum. Situated between the bongos is a small microphone used to detect the player's hand-claps. This microphone's task is to measure nearby sound waves and react if a certain volume is measured. For this reason, the microphone may mistake loud speech or even movement for the clapping of hands. Luckily, the game includes a configuration screen which enables you to set the microphone's sensitivity.

Gameplay

The gameplay is a very simple tried-and-true "monkey see, monkey do" system. To clarify, you are challenged with the task of carrying out one of four tasks as ordered by the specific symbol scrolling through a stationary crosshair situated at the far left of your game screen. You will bang the left bongo, the right bongo, both bongos, or clap... all along to a piece of music blaring out from the background.

There are many instances in the "chimp" (medium) and "gorilla" (hard) difficulty levels in which players may have a difficult time discerning how, exactly, the seemingly random assortment of symbols flying past constitutes a beat. Practice will make sense of it all. In some cases, the symbols are all on the backbeat, which may be hard for some non-musically inclined players to grasp at first. In other words, there is a challenge curve. Keep at it and the game may make a better musician of you. On the other hand, if you have a spouse, roommate, parent or sibling who enjoys sleep, it may make a corpse of you.

The symbols are occasionally crammed so close together that you have to be freakishly fast-handed to succeed in hammering out the beat. It can be done... you just have to be able and willing to learn technique. It's not pattycake.

If you've whipped through all of the difficulty modes and you're still itching for a bongo beat-down, you can play the game in "Jam" mode. You'll only get blank barrels here... you'll have to supply the correct response yourself. In other words, you'll need to have memorized the beat from the regular mode.

If you've gotten high scores on everything and you still crave a challenge, simply have someone periodically enter the room while you're trying to play and make inquiries on such matters as dinner and the remaining sum of toilet paper available in the house.

Graphics

"Appropriate" is the nicest word I can come up with. The interface graphics are very well designed... they're simple, immediately distinguishable from one another, and self-descriptive of their meaning. The yellow symbol is shaded on the right side, indicating that the player should strike the left bongo. The red symbol is darkened on the left side, indicating that the right bongo is the mark. The purple symbol is a full circle, and the "clap" symbol is the universal sign for "boom."

Outside of the gameplay interface, things get a bit sketchy. There are extraneous graphics which are in every way extraneous... they are literally clutter at the bottom of the screen. There really may as well be a banner saying "There's Plenty A-Goin' On Down Here!" Plenty indeed... you will be treated to the visual pleasure of some random jungle animal (Will it be an elephant? A rhinoceros? The suspense, my friends, it cuts deep!) and you'll also get maybe Diddy Kong or Cranky Kong... as well as a bunch of peeled bananas with feet (Go figure). The members of this inexplicable yet inarguably happening party will all be dancing at a framerate high enough to make an Atari 2600 jealous... but nothing else.

On the bright side, you will be privileged to see a nicely done army of balloons rise up from balloon limbo every time you are called upon to carry out a drumroll.

Sound

Here's the star of this show. The game features a nicely workable selection of musical pieces for your bongo-banging pleasure. The selection ranges from bizarre remixes of children's classics such as "Bingo" and a medley of songs including "She'll be Comin' 'Round the Mountain" and "Yankee Doodle."

Also included are some classic rock pieces such as "Right Here, Right Now" and the odd yet catchy "Rock Lobster." Some of these pieces are remixed and re-recorded in a pop-tastic fashion which some players may be roughly described as "obnoxious" by some players. "I Think I Love You" comes immediately to this writer's mind. More modern rock pieces such as "All the Small Things" and "The Impression that I Get" round out the "current sound" selection.

There is, predictably, some video game music present. For instance, a medley of tunes from the original "Super Mario Bros" game has made the cut as well as a particularly saucy rendition of the "Legend of Zelda" theme. Kirby's "Right Back At Ya" and the Pokemon Theme showed up presumably uninvited.

I've left some of the more unexpected (and best) tunes out in the name of leaving a bit of a surprise.

Summary

The game is very effective as a rhythm game. The gameplay is simple, straight-forward and unladened by complicated gameplay concepts. It's all about smacking and clapping. The graphics are crisp, though often lackluster, and the sound library is pleasantly plump. The game is very good for what it is, but the presentation is a bit unenthusiastic.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/04