Nintendo has a bad habit of releasing console accessories that only work with one or two games. Consider the Nintendo Entertainment System Zapper, the Super NES mouse, and the Nintendo 64 microphone, for example. At risk of joining that collection is the Nintendo GameCube bongos, those two little barrel drums that can also detect hand claps. In an effort to bang a little more life out of the drums Nintendo has released another installment of the beat-bashin’ music game, Donkey Konga 2.

Features

• Includes twenty-five new songs from a variety of musical genres
  
• Rhythm action for one to four players
  
• Make music with the DK bongos (included or sold separately) or the standard GameCube controller
  
• Compete in a variety of modes including Street Performance, Challenge, and Battle
  
• Only for Nintendo GameCube
  

Makin’ Monkey Music
After an argument breaks out in Donkey Kong Country about whether the best drummer on the island is Donkey Kong, Diddy, or Dixie, Cranky Kong suggests the whole clan go on tour to settle the disagreement. The is just a setup for the actual game, of course. For the most part each game mode plays the same way. Each player gets an onscreen music staff. As a song plays various icons flow horizontally towards a target ring according to the tempo of the song. When an icon reaches the target ring the player must perform the action described by the icon. For example, a half-filled yellow circle icon is an instruction to beat the left bongo, whereas a half-filled red circle means to beat the right bongo. A completely-filled pink circle is a sign to hit both bongos at once with a drum roll (alternating left and right bongo beats), while a blue icon of a jagged circular figure is the symbol indicating it’s time to clap hands.

Each icon can also be attached to a horizontal bar which means the player should continue performing the action indicated by the previous icon; that is, a pink circle attached to a pink bar means to perform a drum roll as long as the bar is moving through the target ring. Performing the appropriate move in time with the music is the object of the game and performing correct moves in a row pulls off a combo. Learning these skills is integral to the game, as all game modes revolve around them.

With these skills in mind it’s time to select a game mode. Donkey Konga 2’s main mode is Street Performance where one or two players attempt to clear each song by hitting the correct beats at the right time. Accomplishing this earns coins which can be used to unlock new game modes and challenge levels. In this mode for every correct beat a player performs the game’s Clear Bar increases by a notch or two. In order to clear a song and win coins players must push the Clear Bar past the indicated marker. Performing combos moves the Clear Bar towards the marker faster and awards more coins if the song is cleared. With twenty-five songs, three levels of difficulty that add more and more beats to the staff, and a Beat-Mix Mode (where beats are randomized) to master, Street Performance mode has the potential to keep players busy for a while.


Donkey Konga 2
Moving along, Challenge Mode takes the action up a notch. Instead of playing through one song at a time and pocketing earned coins between tunes, Challenge Mode asks that players perform six, twelve, or all twenty-five songs in a row without stopping. This means that if a player fails to complete the eighth song in the sequence, all of the coins won during the previous seventh songs are lost. During Challenge Mode the game tracks how many beats are struck incorrectly (either off the correct time or hitting the wrong beat altogether). Miss enough beats and the mode ends. Challenge Mode is also for one or two players.