Have you ever been to a cousin’s or a friend’s and seen a dusty, old pair of plastic bongos sitting on their shelf? Well those belong to a GameCube game called Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, which was released on December 16th, 2004.

The game was met with mixed reviews when it was first released do to it being different from the rest and having a completely different control set-up. The aforementioned “plastic bongos” were actually the controller this time around and had some pretty neat functionality. If you were to continuously slap left on the bongos, Donkey Kong would run to the left. The same would also happen with the right side. If you were to slap both at the same time however, Donkey Kong would jump. I think the coolest part about it was that it had a built-in microphone so whenever you clapped, DK would smack the ground, knocking over the enemies in his path.

It’s a super cool gameplay mechanic that is pretty hard to learn and even to master. I think the main problems with this game was that all of the levels and worlds felt very similar and that they don’t stick out much. The microphone also isn’t very responsive at times when you really need it. If playing with bongos doesn’t sound appealing to you, there is also regular GameCube controller support but where’s the fun in that? All jokes aside, I think this game is definitely good, but not something that just anyone can pick up and play.

I give this game a 7/10.