Why there's not much air to beat out of Donkey Konga's bongo drums
Donkey Konga (2004)
Donkey Konga (2004)
Time passes all too quickly. I was just looking back on a pretty miserable 2020, the bad old lockdown days. I have to say, it's pretty impressive that my family and I were stuck under the same roof for several months and we never ended up killing each other.
Now, it’s true to say that I didn't have it as bad as others; there were four of us living in the house and we all generally kept to ourselves anyway - until strangely hostile lunchtimes and dinnertimes came around. No wonder I moved out as soon as I could.
Apart from that, I got my first taste of working from home, and I have done my best to hang on to this privilege ever since. I would have preferred an indefinite furlough until my retirement age of course, but I suppose a bit of work from home means I can only turn into half a couch-potato.
And it’s important to have a bit of structure at home, because it kept me adhered to some sort of weekly routine. Otherwise I would have spent more and more time conked out in bed, until I eventually metamorphed into an enormous, barely mobile, Kafka-esque slug.
When you’re on the work from home buzz, it’s important to squeeze some exercise into your packed schedule as well. In the lockdown days, my daily step count went right down, which you and I both know to be a disaster. And I wasn't going out there to run or walk - the government kept mentioning something about social distancing, not that it stopped other fools from going out there and potentially breathing the virus all over me.
Back at my parents' house, I used to have an exercise bike and a treadmill out in the shed. I know, I was surprised I had them as well. It could get pretty dark and miserable out there, though, so I flirted with the idea of lugging one of the exercise apparatuses indoors so I could use it in, say, my room.
But I never did, and what’s more, I already knew that that would have shattered the lockdown harmony and get the family all hating each other because, if you didn't know, parents can hear any noise coming out of your room amplified by 100 times the decibels.
Hence, even with parents as deaf as mine, exercise machines in my bedroom simply couldn't work. The moment my squeaky treadmill would crank into gear and I'd start bouncing my size 10s off it, my parents would be on me at once, incessantly shouting up the stairs. They never hear your (even-louder) call back either, meaning it wouldn't be long before they'd be rushing in to stop me like they're the Secret Service.
It was this parental selective hearing that finished Donkey Konga for me. This is one of those GameCube games that I vividly recall buying, even as far back as 2004. And more than that, I really remember wondering what the hell I was even doing, going up to the counter with that ridiculous big box and the DK Bongos contained within. It wasn't as if I was gonna be able to use those ridiculous plastic DK Bongos for anything else.
I'm not sure if I need to clarify this, but Donkey Konga is a rhythm game. Remember in the mid 2000s how Guitar Hero took the world by absolute storm? Well, Donkey Konga is nothing like that. For starters, Guitar Hero has you holding a plastic Gibson electric guitar, which is embarrassing but in an oddly pleasant way. It looks a lot cooler than these big brown bongos, let’s say. Guitar playing requires a little bit more finesse than hammering down on some bongos, know what I mean?
But also, Guitar Hero and Rock Band proved a lot more popular because they had some all-time classics in there, as well as a few mad tunes that you mightn't have heard of at the time, like the notoriously difficult Through the Fire and Flames. But the trouble with Donkey Konga, rather like Wii Music, the tracklist is severely antiquated.
I'd love to just paste the whole list of songs here, because believe me, they would speak for themselves. But suffice to say, All The Small Things is probably the newest track on there, and if you've ever wanted to drum and clap along to Happy Birthday, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and, ah, Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G-Minor… then here's your chance.
That's where it all hairy - the clapping. As hairy as a gorilla, even. In the first place, clapping along to a song isn't all that fun. It's okay when the tempo is slow, but try mashing your hands together like a lunatic to 99 Red Balloons, and you'll see it gets very tiresome, very fast. Secondly, you really wouldn't believe how loudly even a single hand clap travels through a house. Beware - your walls might be a lot thinner than you think.
That's my abiding memory of Donkey Konga - finally dispensing with some of my teenage self-consciousness, booting up the game in a moment of both weakness and madness, and giving the game a chance by clapping along to Earth, Wind and Fire, only to be shouted at and told to keep the noise down.
To cut down on the clapping, I resorted to just tapping the DK Bongos' faux-metal ring, which was close enough to the microphone that registers your clapping. Tapping instead of clapping - still stupid, but a lot less stupid than giving yourself a round of applause while Donkey Kong gurns and makes silly faces onscreen.
I never played the Multiplayer mode in this game, obviously. Well, I didn't have a car at the time, so how would I even transport something like that to a friend’s house without being seen? And those Bongos, they’re not exactly something you bust out at a social gathering either. How could I ever live that one down?
That was the end of Donkey Konga in my house, although not the last time I'd be reminded of it. In fact, I probably lay eyes on those DK Bongos every day of my life. I don’t know why, because they are bloody worthless. So much so that the retro game shop I did some work for refused to take them in anymore.
To be fair, they also refused Guitar Hero guitars and the Super Scope. The reason for this was space, of course, but also their sheer abundance, and also they probably didn’t want to carry too much mortifying stock on their shelves. Donkey Konga was followed up by two sequels, which I’ll never play which have long since fallen into obscurity - and I mean obscure, even by my standards. Lockdown? Work from home? I wouldn’t even play this game in solitary confinement.
22 August 2025