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Donkey Konga Import Impressions

Nintendo and Namco have teamed up to make a rhythm game, and it's out in Japan now.

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Donkey Konga is Nintendo's first foray into the world of rhythm games, but the company isn't solely responsible for this one. Nintendo has teamed up with Namco to make the game happen, and the resulting product is a lot like Namco's Japanese drumming game Taiko no Tatsujin.

In fact, the game screen is almost identical to Taiko no Tatsujin. A drum silhouette appears at the left side of the screen, and icons scroll in from the right. When the icons cross the silhouette, you take action. The game has four different actions: left drum, right drum, both drums, and clapping. Some actions are also stretched out to cover a longer area, asking you to execute that action as quickly as possible for more points. If you are in time with the song, you do well and earn points. Missing the cues eventually causes you to lose the game, though Donkey Konga seems much more lenient than most other rhythm games.

Facilitating all this drumming is the Donkey Konga controller, which consists of two drums and a built-in microphone to pick up your clapping, though it'll also pick up gentle slaps against the side of the controller, finger snapping, shouting, or any other nearby noise. The controller seems well made, at least as far as the drum heads go. The rest of the drums feel very hollow and breakable. The game has numerous modes for one to four players, though the other modes are pretty much just general variations on the same basic theme.

Of course, any music game is only really as good as its music. Donkey Konga does contain a pretty hefty song list, but most of it is a bunch of middle-of-the-road Japanese music and some redone classical tunes. La Bamba makes an appearance, as does the Donkey Kong rap that was in the N64 game Donkey Kong 64. Most of the songs in the game don't really sound like songs that would require conga drums, and furthering that out-of-place feel, most songs don't actually have you playing a legitimate conga drum part. Instead, you just sort of slap along to the basic rhythm, with occasional accents that are worked around the lyrics.

Most of Donkey Konga's songs are also incredibly easy, which should make it pretty playable for younger children. It does have some harder songs, but even those aren't terribly difficult, in the grand scheme of things.

Donkey Konga is now available in Japan. No plans to bring the game to the US have been announced at this time, but we'll bring you any updates as they become available.

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