Miyamoto Shrine> Gamecube> Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

Sell your grannies! Re-mortgage your houses! The best Nintendo game of E3 is here! Donkey Kong Jungle Beat has finally swung onto store shelves and is ready and waiting to give you hours of fun you never knew you could have with a pair of plastic bongos. Everyone's favourite gorilla with a red tie has returned to the much in-demand side-scrolling platformer genre, with him he brings a new way of control which is of course the DK Bongos. I would never have guessed bongos would make a platform game so much fun.

At first look Jungle Beat seems like a rather simple affair. Using the pair of bongo drums you can move Donkey Kong around the gorgeous side-scrolling environments by taping the left drum to move him left, the right drum to move him right, hitting both drums together to make him jump and clapping to create shockwaves that stun enemies, pop bubbles and so on. This may seem tricky at first after years of using a d-pad or analogue stick but a strict learning curve assures that Jungle Beat never throws you into hot water too early. The array of demo movies shown between levels also clue you in on certain techniques and make sure you rack up alot more bananas on a second play-through.

The aim of the game is to run, jump and swing through each level collecting as many bananas as possible, either by picking them up from the ground of by defeating enemies. Performing 'combos' will multiply the number of bananas you have collected during a 'combo', by 'combo' I mean performing special techniques like wall jumping and swinging from a vine without touching the ground, once you touch the ground your 'combo' is over. As the game progresses you'll learn lots of new techniques like leaping between opposing walls, flying around on a bird, defeating enemies by stunning and then punching them and so on. All the special techniques are made simple by the use of the bongo drums.

Every 'Kingdom' contains two stages each about 5 minutes long. At the end of these stages you're faced with a mini-game where you have to drum as fast as you can to rack up bonus bananas, after which you will face off with one of the four main boss types. The bananas you've collected act as your health, with you losing some when you take damage Sonic the Hedgehog style. After defeating a boss enemy the amount of bananas you've collected give you a ranking, with bronze being rewarded simply for completing the stage, silver for collecting 400 bananas, gold for 800 bananas and platinum for a seemingly impossible 1200 bananas. These rankings are then used to unlock new stages in the game.

Once I had defeated the final boss in the game a whole new set of levels were unlocked which meant I had to go back and replay alot of the earlier levels to keep unlocking new ones. This is where I really started to appreciate the thought that has gone into the design of the levels, you need to use every trick in the book to squeeze out every last banana. Jumping off walls and swinging from monkey-nests to keep combos alive, which really are the key to collecting those crucial last few bananas which will get you the ranking you need.

The bosses while limited in variety are interesting a fun to battle against. The four main boss types are Kong (a fist-fight where you dodge with a clap and punch with a drum-roll), Hog (A warthog who throws fruit at you), Roc (a bird holding an egg which you need to break) and tusk (a robotic elephant who shoots at you with his trunk-cannon). Each time you come up against these bosses they're a little bit harder and bring you a challenge to face in order to keep hold of your precious bananas.

The stages are extremely varied and present you with a very compelling game play experience, through the course of the game you will swim in the ocean through sunken ships, ride a buffalo though a snowy valley away from a giant pursuing lizard and practice your juggling combos in a dusty desert. Soon I found myself hopelessly addicted to collecting every last banana and coming out of the boss fights unscathed in order to get those gold and (gulp) platinum rankings. This is crack with bongos.

The only disappointing thing about the game perhaps is that with most games these days it's over too quick. You'll probably lengthen your experience by having to stop due to bongo-induced exhaustion but the game could easily be finished in a day. While the style of the game is very much Arcade it still appeals to the sort of person who's going to go back to these stages and collect every last banana and explore every last crevice. If you're one of these people by all means this is the game for you, if you're not then you're probably going to get a limited albeit extremely enjoyable experience from Jungle Beat.

Overall
Andy Robinson: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat is a refreshing game experience which proves that the Bongo Drum controller is definitely not a gimmick, this game is just far too much fun for that thing not to be considered a peripheral essential for any Gamecube owners collection. The only thing bringing this game down is the slightly short length, but if you've got the money or are the sort of person to revisit the levels on offer (and they are devilishly addictive) then please buy this wonderful game. It has ninja monkeys.

Review written by Andy Robinson

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