A genre mostly remembered for the cultural dominance of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, an earlier rhythm game series helped set the stage for the genre’s era of popularity.
I remember having my mind blown as a young kid when I was first exposed to peripheral controllers for video game consoles, seemingly throwing out the previous limitations of a singular controller.
Of course, peripheral controllers weren’t entirely new – I had an NES Zapper for Duck Hunt to prove as much. But it certainly seemed like the advent of a different way to control a game reached new heights around the turn of the century.
While the rhythm game genre was pioneered by a series that didn’t use a peripheral in PaRappa the Rapper, myself and many others were drawn into the concept thanks to the Dance Dance Revolution series, which was initially released in arcades before dance pads swept through homes in the early 2000’s.
This was my first exposure to a rhythm game, providing an entirely different gaming experience that I viewed as not even real gaming when I played as a kid. DDR’s popularity undoubtedly paved the way for the later rise of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series, both of which had a pronounced cultural impact and served as the peak of the rhythm game genre.
Yet in between the eras of dance pads and plastic guitar controllers, there was another short-lived rhythm game series, featuring a peripheral controller and a unique concept in a setting many likely didn’t expect.
Enter the Donkey Konga series, which garnered two releases in North America and three installments in Japan. The games, all GameCube exclusives, included a set of bongos as the peripheral controller, with players hitting one of four notes on the bongos to complete a given track.
In that sense, Donkey Konga feels like a more stripped-down, kid-friendly version of the later Guitar Hero and Rock Band games – there is a setlist that a player navigates through and aims to earn high scores with, while rewards, which are collected as coins after each song, can be used to unlock different bongo noises or additional songs.
While I was certainly a Guitar Hero freak at the height of the series’ popularity, I was exposed to Donkey Konga first, with the two installments of the series being released in September 2004 and May 2005 in North America, respectively.
Japanese players were treated to a third installment of the series as well, with the last piece to the trilogy being released in Japan in March 2005, following release dates for the first two titles in December 2003 and July 2004, respectively.
The gaming experience differs very little between Donkey Konga and Donkey Konga 2, with perhaps the games’ distinguishing feature being the very interesting soundtracks. While Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Singstar games all adhered to a certain formula or genre, the Donkey Konga series was truly all over the place when it came to the setlist – and I honestly love it when revisiting the game.
It feels like tracks on Donkey Konga games can go in one of four directions – you may have a song tied to the overall Nintendo pantheon, such as the themes to Legend of Zelda or Super Mario, while you may also encounter an old track treated as a pop standard, like Louie Louie or You Can’t Hurry Love.
The series also even more explicitly markets towards kids with a few inclusions such as Bingo and Campfire Medley, while adults and adolescents are blessed with more modern options including The Impression That I Get by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Whip It by Devo.
While I greatly enjoyed the series not long after its release, my succeeding obsession with the Guitar Hero series and loss of interest in gaming during my adolescence led me to mostly forget about the Donkey Konga games before I restarted collecting efforts with my wife at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We both have been revisiting the Donkey Konga series over the past few days, getting an apt dose of innocent nostalgia in incredibly unprecendented and turbulent times – and it’s easy to forget just how easy it is to have fun with this game.
Though it would never be mistaken for an 80-hour project with a laundry list of unlockables and achievements, both games offer a decent amount of replay value for what they are – giving players a chance to master each track on one of three difficulties while offering a substantial, but not overwhelming, selection of new bongo sounds and songs.
When looking at the format later adopted by the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series’, it’s hard not to see where Donkey Konga may have played a slight influence. I felt this to be particularly noticeable when looking at the “tour” format seen in both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, adding a loose plotline to help make the single-player mode feel more complete.
This was also a step forward from the DDR series, which similar to Donkey Konga, was all about reaching high scores and unlocking new features when it came to the single-player mode. With a dedicated story mode included in the most prominent rhythm games of its era, Guitar Hero and Rock Band were both ultimately played by single players just as often as they were played in a communal setting.
With this, it’s hard not to think of some missed potential with the series, particularly with Nintendo abandoning both the peripheral and the concept of the series once the company shifted to the Wii in 2006.
The two Donkey Konga releases represented two-thirds of the North American GameCube games to utilize the bongo peripheral, with the platformer Donkey Kong Jungle Beat utilizing the drums for an adventure in a game that was released stateside in March 2005. The title was also known for being the first game to be rated “E10+” in the United States, a newer rating in between “E for Everyone” and “T for Teen.”
While peripherals were of course a huge part of Nintendo’s success with the Wii, which included arguably the most successful video game peripheral of all-time in the Wii Fit Balance Board, the concept seemed to fall out of favor by the early 2010’s.
Motion controls have seemed to fill the void that peripherals left for many players, with only a few modern games such as Ring Fit Adventure still utilizing unconventional controllers.
Although it’s difficult to see how a series like Donkey Konga could reemerge in today’s gaming landscape, its legacy remains one that is both overlooked and underappreciated. With the dominance of rhythm games being a definitive moment in the history of gaming, a relatively innocuous game primarily marketed towards young children undoubtedly served as a building block for the genre’s cultural presence in the ensuing years.
There are certainly more riveting games to play, and it would be especially hard to argue against that after over two decades of high-budget releases since Donkey Konga hit the shelves. But when it comes to a comforting dose of nostalgia that’s just sheer fun for a little bit? It’s hard to get much better than pounding on some plastic bongos.
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