Comment by AdmiralAsshat
11 days ago
Nice to see someone doing something to try to get some additional leverage out of the DK bongo drums. They're one of my favorite stupid/unnecessary videogame controller peripherals. They felt like such a missed opportunity, especially in the US. We only got three games that actually supported them, and despite my effort of actually tracking down a second pair of bongos so that my siblings and I could do multiplayer, we discovered that Donkey Konga's multiplayer mode was crap. We then got Donkey Konga 2, which was more of the same but with a worse setlist, and Donkey Konga 3 was never released stateside.
The sole redeeming feature of it was Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, which at least used the controller in a novel way to make an exciting platformer.
Interesting there's no tracklist on wikipedia for DK3 but if it's any consolation, it was very heavily J-Pop and I think maybe 5-8 at most of the tracks were notable or recognizable by a typical westerner, but then again I'm not a massive videogame OST fan so it may have been missed on me. I remember the minigames were pretty cool but all menus were in Japanese and tough to navigate.
Edit, ah there's a tracklist on the mariowiki link. Ah well, this quote on the page: "You can import it from our partners at Lik-Sang." Lik-Sang, now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...
It had the Japanese opening to Dragon Ball Z in the tracklist, which was enough to make teenage me disappointed that we didn't get it.
Having decided to look up a run of it on YouTube, however, it's probably just as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkyd_nR4DqE&list=PLNS5TsLf66...
I like to use the bongo drum controller to play super smash bros with my friends! It's a fun and goofy time!
Haha! I did the same thing. If I recall its button mapping is wonky (and maybe missing one?). It does mostly work as a regular controller so it’s possible to play games that aren’t specifically designed for it albeit in a limited fashion.
Donkey Konga is a huge missed opportunity.
Guitar Hero/Rock Band are probably best in show for the genre.
Weird that they were so huge for such a short time. Probably the death of popular instrumented music.
I think it was more that companies way over invested in the concept and saturated the market combined with licensing fees making a lot of the games unprofitable.