For the rest of my life, no matter if Gizmodo is as good as it gets, I’ll always have my creamy peach skin and my beautiful blue eyes – plus I’ll be able to look back and say, “Nintendo sent me bongo drums.” I told them I don’t review video games, but they convinced me that I wouldn’t be reviewing a game; I’d be reviewing electric drums. That was good enough for me.
Short impressions after the jump.
Now I like me some goofy games, for sure. If you need some guide to calibrate my dorkiness, I have a Dance Dance Revolution home pad, okay? I have no shame.
But god help me if I didn’t cringe a bit as I started playing Donkey Konga. It’s not because it wasn’t fun, but the music is just… horrible J-Pop techno crap is way, way better to have blasting our of your speakers than Row, Row, Row Your Boat, as strange as that might seem. I know that Nintendo, despite all claims otherwise, is definitely more oriented towards kids than the other two big game companies, but man, it was the first time I’d felt stupid playing games in a long time.
Fortunately, only the first easy stage is saddled with those nursery tunes, so soon I was able to switch over to some more tolerable songs, including remixes of favorite Nintendo-Brand Game Themes, like odes to Zelda and Mario.
It’s a lot of fun, too. Not only do the drums respond to – wait for it – drumming, but there’s a little microphone inside that is used to pick out claps. It’s deceptively simple, but the difficulty ramps up fast. Get two people rolling at one time with two sets of drums in the multiplayer modes and things get even crazier.
It sort of peters out quickly, though. It certainly doesn’t have that ‘just one more’ quality of a lot of other games, but as a momentary diversion for you or your kids, it’s fun.
What I’m really waiting on, though, is the side-scrolling Donkey Konga: Jungle Beat platform game that’s coming out next year.
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