"Everybody's Dancing in the Street and doing the Loco-Motion."

It was bound to happen. Other gaming platforms have had dance/party games and now Nintendo has followed suit. Last year, Nintendo released a rhythm game that had a familiar character in it, Donkey Kong. The end result is a solid game, but not without some flaws. Still, Donkey Konga is a fun innovative effort from Nintendo, one that shows off Nintendo's true creativity.

The basic gameplay is simple. You listen to different songs and follow along with the beat. The major difference is that instead of a controller, you use a pair of Bongo drums that were specifically designed for this game. It's really simple to follow along. If you have a yellow icon you hit the left drum. If you see a red icon you hit the right drum. If a pink icon comes onto the screen you hit both drums at once. The last icon that you will see is a white or light blue icon that comes onto the screen. This icon requires you to clap. All of these moves are designed to follow along with the specific beat to any of the games songs.

There is of course no story to this game. You simply play the different songs in order to earn coins and unlock more stuff. The graphics are not exactly that great. First off, none of the characters look like there are in 3D, even though there are supposed to. Donkey Kong simply sits in the top left hand corner, and plays his drum however you play yours. As for Diddy Kong, all he does is dance in the bottom of the screen and do the same motions over and over. How about that elephant? All he does is sit in the bottom left hand corner and raise his snout every so often. As for the backgrounds, they are pretty basic. You basically get a jungle themed background with the occasional group of balloons that fly by.

The music however is where this game rocks. There are some kid's songs in there such as the "Itsy Bitsy Spider". There are grown up songs such as "Dancing in the Street" and "Loco-Motion". For those Nintendo fanatics out there, Mario and Zelda themes are here as well, but with some small tweaks that surprisingly work well. All of the music sounds perfect, with no problems that I can find at all.

Of course with a rhythm game there is lots of replay value. I have played this game for countless hours and still haven't unlocked everything. This game will keep you busy for many months. However, once you do start to unlock all of the extras you will start to notice that they really aren't worth it. First of all, the hidden character/drum sounds are cool if you use the Mario or Zelda themes. Any of the other ones aren't that great and can be annoying. Unlocking a "harder" mode is fine, but hard mode itself is tough enough. Seriously, the hidden "harder" is a good extra, but it's too hard and not that fun. Aside form that, everything else is pretty cool. I must say that it will take a LONG time to unlock everything this game has to offer so have fun!

Of course, not all is perfect with this game. First, the game can get boring after a while. That's in large part to the same backgrounds and the same four controls. The other problem is that your hands hurt after a while, but that's in large part to the excessive clapping that you will do. I do think that this is the type of game that every Gamecube owner should own. It's not perfect, but it's a new innovative game from Nintendo, so it must be tried. Also the Bongo drums that come with the game will come in handy when new rhythm games come out in the next couple of months. One will be a 3D Donkey Kong platform game called Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat. Nintendo also plans to release Donkey Konga 2 & 3 as well. So buy Donkey Konga as a warm up for the new rhythm games that will come out soon.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/27/05, Updated 09/15/06