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I wasted some money here....

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 28
Date: November 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

WTF is this i want classic donkey kong not this it. It doesent work with gc controller either.

looks good untill you play it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 30
Date: August 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I went to gamestop and they have the demo of the game and when i was playing it i just go tired of the game it's the same thing happing all the the time!!!!!! Don't waste your money on this junk!!!!!!!!!!!!! note:(i'm an nintendo fan!!!!!!!)

A slight disappointment from DK

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 24 / 32
Date: October 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm no music game aficionado - and I have not weaned myself on DDR - but I can tell you this is a Nintendo product that, while exhibiting the polish and lustre characteristic of their games, is sorely lacking in extended play value. I suppose that replay value has never been the selling point in the formulation of novelty peripherals, back to the days of the Power Glove and Power Pad; but Donkey Konga's deficiencies were not irremediable, and the minute you start taking this game seriously enough to delve into its intricacies and unlock all its goodies, you'll find it a fool's errand.

The biggest problem I have lies with the implementation of the controller. Looking at the Kongas, it seems that there are two buttons per drum head: one near the bottom rim, and one in the center, which would allow for a reasonable approximation of hand drum playing. If these extra two buttons *do* exist on the face of the controller, they are not used. I could not think of a better way to fashion an 'expert' mode than the addition of two buttons into the mix, allowing for some really diverse rhythms and gameplay. Nintendo's ludicrous expert mode demands that you memorize each song in the normal mode; they give you the rhythm without indications of a left, right, center hit, or clap. Regardless of your age, this is a waste of time. Perhaps this provides the illusion of musical 'performances', but they did not do their best here.

It being Nintendo, there should be little doubt that ultimately, this game is designed for kids. At best, their games are truly for 'kids of all ages'; unfortunately, Konga does not offer enough incentive for better/older players to want to unlock its assortment of incentives. The games forces you to spend many of the coins you earn to unlock the 'expert' modes of the 31 songs, which is acceptable. But there are a few problems: one, there is no coin collection in co-op mode (Challenge), which seems counterintuitive; two, the mini-games, which are coin incentives, are terribly disappointing (the psuedo-DK Jr. vine climbing game offers a slight diversion, while the Whack-a-Mole clone has never been fun); three, when you get good enough to start posting high scores on your songs, they omit names from the high score lists, opting for dates. Little inexplicable oversights like these attenuate the thin gameplay further.

The song selection is sufficient, but not at all inspired. You're given alterna-rock standards like The Mighty Mighty Bosstone's 'The Impression That I Get,' Blink 182's 'All the Small Things,' and Devo's 'Whip It'; a few saccharine, glossy remakes of old pop hits; a few classics in the vein of 'Dancin' in the Street' and 'Oye Como Va'; and the occasional oddball (Willie Nelson's 'On the Road Again,' which really works). Truly, some of Nintendo's original music is the most fun: 'Para Los Rumberos,' a latin-inflected original, and the takes on the Zelda and Mario themes are terrific to play. Kids will love the Pokemon and Kirby themes; 'Campfire Medley,' 'Diddie's Ditties,' (both medleys of "timeless" children's songs) and 'Bingo,' however, are outright embarrassing. They're not any more appealing to 5 year-olds than 25 year-olds. Nintendo's rap send-off is an ersatz 'old school' number about 'D-K: Don-key Kong,' done with discomfiting Run DMC panache, while the inclusion of Crystal Method's 'Busy Child' confirms that the song committee is officially living in 1998.

Lastly, could a 'freestyle' mode have been that difficult to program? The orchestral four-player mode is a good time, but a mode that allowed for creativity and some ingenious mode of on-the-fly scoring, given the game's simplicity, does not seem like a stretch. The programmers obviously had an easy time with this one, and the lack of riveting or even attractive options will wear out your initial enthusiasm for banging away on the plastic drums.

Most gamers realize that an average Nintendo product is still going to be streamlined fun. This is an entertaining game to have around at parties or get-togethers, but for the price of two controllers and the game, I expected more (and a more challenging experience). If you have any sense of rhythm, you will fly through DK's challenges. In my limited experience, the venerated 'Samba de Amigo' for Dreamcast has set a standard for peripheral-driven music games that has not been met since.

It's good, for a while, but not worth 50 bucks

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 16
Date: October 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

In an attempt to react to the lastest rythem based games that the competing consoles have, Nintendo decided to come out with a Drum game. So how is it? Well at first, I got to admit, it was a little fun, but then, after about 15 minutes, I was bored out of my mind, there is no point to this game, the best thing you can unlock are the games, and they're kinda lame and the controls for it are very clunky for games that might of been good(the DK jr. vine climbing game). They also let you buy new konga sounds, some of them are hillarious like the laser sound, some are annoying, like the sick sound(I'm not joking they actually put people trying to sound like they're sneezing) and then, there's the extremely annoying like the zelda bongos or the donkey konga sounds(worst sounding instruments ever).

The music in this game is, well, older 90's songs and...children's songs. While I can understand why they put this in there being that younger audiences might play this game, but they should have left it out because, while some of the older songs are old, gamers like me don't want to play some rhythem based game with Bingo, and the Happy Birthday song. If you really think about it, how many of those songs actually used a drum? The rest of the music, is old stuff with none of the actual singers, which is kinda sad because some of the singers aren't as good. Ever see those Kids Bops commercials? That's about the quality your getting.

I guess you might like this game, if you like playing the drums and you don't play in band or don't want to go through the hassels of being in a band. Other than that, if you're buying this game because your the rhythem type of person, then you might consider buying it. But I still wouldn't recommend it.
I would only recommend this to young children who want to play the drums, or a person who enjoys the drums alot.

Unused Potential is Disappointing

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: November 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The very idea of a new "beat game" which would be released by Nintendo intrigued my friends and me deeply. Therefore, we purchased this game shortly after its release. I must say that at first, it was a grand experience. While it wasn't as fulfilling or difficult as Dance Dance Revolution, it had its own flair. However, it didn't take much time for me to become disappointed in this release from Nintendo.

I have two major problems with the game. The first is the musical selection. There are only a few songs that are appropriate for playing bongos. I love The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, but "The Impression That I Get" is not my idea of a bongo-playing song. This goes for most of the songs offered by the game. Nintendo needed to put more money into having salsa and swing mixes of their songs composed and recorded for the game instead of throwing their money into royalties for other songs.

Secondly, the game lacks replay value. The very fact that you can only unlock songs that you already have, only in a harder mode is rather shallow. (Although it is at least refreshing to experience the songs on a more difficult setting.) The extra bongo sounds and mini-games are disappointing to say the least. It would have been a good investment to allow for the unlocking of completely new songs.

And so, it seems, at least to me, that Donkey Konga does not offer the depth of an excellent game. It gives a quick fix and is nice game to pick up and play for a few minutes or perhaps at a party. However, it does not provide an ongoing enough game experience to permit excellent replayability.

DON-KEY KONG-GA

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: May 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is different to many others because of its unique controller - a set of bongo drums. I originally bought this game for my mother who is a fan of Nintendo's characters and loves Bongos but this game was a little too hard for her and not fun.
The actual gameplay consists of a bar with a combination of either blue stars, yellow circles, red circles or purple circles, which stand for hitting the left drum, hitting the right drum, clapping and hitting both drums together.
The game itself features 30 songs from artists (always American, never Japanese which is VERY disappointing!) and Nintendo themes.
As the song plays, the different symbols run along the bar and you have to match the right action to get points (and coins in only one section to buy items/songs/etc.)
My mother got bored with the same repetitive motions all the time and stopped playing soon after I'd bought it for her. Even the multiplayer isn't interesting as it just features `get higher points'.
And if you want bonus games, bongo sounds, etc. you can only earn coins to buy these things in one section and you have to keep redoing the same songs to get up your coin total which can take along time when you earn around 100 coins each go and some music costs 9999.
Overall if you're a fan of Donkey Konga, I think you'll like this but it's not something to waste your money on, on a rainy day. Try Eyetoy on the PS2 instead.

Hmm....Why Nintendo Why..

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 23
Date: November 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Apparently Nintendo doesnt like money..why would you realease this garbage..where is the sequel to the beloved donkey kong 64? o well, maybe this is one of the reasons why nintendo has the worst selling system..and has probably made more money off of gameboys

Konjo Jungle

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 12
Date: December 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is ok if your into games like DDR but youll find that DDR will be more entertaining since theres more buttons or step panels for you to press unlike donkey konga with only 2 you can hit both for a third buttong but its not really a diffrence.

Gameplay = Great, Music = Mediocre

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: August 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love the bongo idea, it's actually a really fun game. However, if this game had a wider selection of songs, I'd give it a five.

If you ask me, 30 songs isn't enough. It'd be nice if one could unlock the rest, and ending up with at least 75 songs, like most music games have, i.e. DDR.

Also, I found that this game has mostly oldies tunes. I don't enjoy oldies all that much...it'd be better if we could get some newer songs in this game. Like, hits from nowadays. Yes, we can have SOME oldies songs in the game, but just a few. After all, kids and teens are most likely to be playing this game, and what do they listen to? New stuff.

So, only buy this game if you care about gameplay, and not about music, because, this isn't really a music game, with such a small selection of music.

Grate game!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: May 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Donkey Konga, a mix of music, bongos, and (no other than) Donkey Kong. I only own about 5 Gamecube games because I like PS2 better. This is a pretty fun game. You get a whole bunch of songs and drum to the beat of it. The songs are not very new but.... what the heck! Some song are "Wild Thang", "All the Small things", and some gamecube game's theams. Like Zelda and Pokemon. There are mini gaems you can buy with coins you get from drumming in "Street Mix" But, you only get about (if your good) 200 coins every time. The lowest price for a mini game is 4700 coins. How the heck are you supposed to get that with out playing for hours and hours and hours. Plus, the songs are not by the bands that play them, but by people the nentino probley hired to sing. And it`s all because of one word. Copyright! Dang copyright law. That is what gives this game minus one star. Another star down the drain becaues all the minigame and songs for different modes and the fun sounds( Insteand of the bongs soung, you can do different souds, like dogs) cost WAY TO MUCH! I am hoping Donkey Konga 2 will be better

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