The DK Bongo controllers really don't have a lot of buttons. Left bongo, right bongo, both bongos, and clapping your hands. Yet somehow movement is beautiful. Press the left bongo to move left, the right one to move right, and both of them together to jump into the air. Of course, you don't just hold down the right bongo to run, you have to keep to tapping the bongo as if you determining the speed of his feet hitting the ground with your hand hitting the bongo.

Clapping is a whole other thing though as it serves for a couple of purposes. When you clap, a red circle and a green circle expand from your position. As shown in the picture, the red extends to about where you see, but the green goes probably twice as much, if not more. So when you clap, you expand these colored circles. Anything inside the green circle is stunned. So any enemy nearby within this giant distance is flipped upside down. Anything within the red area is grabbing distance. Have an enemy that close, he'll grab onto him, and then you hit your bongos to kick him. Have a banana nearby? Your tie extends out and feeds it to your mouth for you. It's really quite cool.

This is pureply a platforming game and its style is just incredible. You aren't just watching a game, the game presents itself in this grand arcade style that just keeps you compelled and excited. It's never boring, it's always got funny little things up its sleeve to keep you interested, and the graphics are just phenominal. DK usually has a iittle close-up version of himself in the lower left corner of the screen, where you can see his hair. Did I say hair? I Meant every single one of his tiny little hairs.

The bongos add another entire level of fun to the game. When you jump on top of large enemies, the screen zooms in Viewtiful Joe style, and you pound alternatively on both bongos as hard and fast as you can to have DK smash the enemy with both of his fists. The kind of feeling you get from "actually pounding on the enemy with your own fists" is nothing compared to tapping a little A Button as fast as you can.

The banana bonus! Hit your bongos as fast as you can to claim lots of free points.

Every level is split up into a simple "two stagse and then a boss" pattern. With 16 levels total, thats quite a few stages, but they really do go by pretty quickly, making it a pretty short game could easily beat in a matter of days. But looks are very, very deceiving. By your first time through most of the levels, you'll probably have finished every level with around 500 beats or so. So you're forced to go back through the levels to earn as many medals as you can, since 500 will only get you some silver medals. Getting 800 beats earns you a gold medal, so your determination to better drives you to not suck as much anymore, since a lot of your first attempts at the game are from trial and error of getting use to the bongos (that's not a bad thing) By the time you earn gold medals, you've figured out that you can get a whole other set of platinum metals pulling in at least 1200 beats in a level. At this point in time, your jaw drops as you think, "how and I ever going to get that many for every level?" Then you start to figure stuff like this out: If you run through three bananas, that counts as three beats. 1 + 1 + 1. But if you get close enough to the bananas and then clap to collect them, it counts as 6. 1 + 2 + 3. But by about this time, you've stumbled apon the combo system.

The combo system works like this: every time you do something new, you get a combo multiplier added. These combos will add on everytime you do something you haven't done before, and stay with you until you touch the floor. Once you touch the ground, all of the beats you've been obtaining this whole time rack up your total. If you get hit before you touch the ground, however, any beats you've been gaining during that time is lost. Of course, if you have a combo of 12, any banana you collect is one banana, but 12. The way to tell how many combos you have is really awesome. For each one, a little colored fairy floats around you in a circle, and the game lets you know with some big text which combo you're on. By the time you're on 8 or 9, you have this rainbow of fairies floating around you like Saturn's rings.

A boss battle in which DK must take out his opponent boxing style.

This game really wins in its gameplay depth. When you first start playing, you enjoy the game just because you get through the levels. It's not how many beats you have by the end, or how well you did, but just the pleasure that you get from just playing through a level gets you hooked. From there you're determined to do better, get all the medals and then that's it right? Not really. What ends up happening is you discover this game is not about quick pleasures of beating levels, but understanding that each level is made exactly as it is for your to string together the longest sets of combos. It's almost like a puzzle because you'll find yourself looking at an area, but instead of just fighting through it, you know there's a precise way of killing enemies and continuing a combo to give you the maximum number of beats possible. There's nothing more rewarding then pulling off a 16xCombo because you never got hurt, or touched the ground for an entire level, and then see all your hundreds of beats rack up.

One of the most overlooked aspects of the game (and I may be the first to notice) is the music. The music in this game is one of the qualities of this game that pushes the limit. It's like a stamp of quality ontop of everything else. This is something that this game didn't have to do, but did it anyways - which showcases how brilliant the game truly is. Ok, ok, I'll explain it:

Everything is on the beat and in key. That's all there is to it. Everything that happens in this game is on the beat. I have never seen any video game be able to have it set so that when you walk by a small monkey jamberee (at whatever point in the level or part of the song you're in) they somehow begin playing on the beat. One's doing a bass drum, one's got a trumpet, and so forth. When you walk into a room with a large enemy, instead of the music turning on "the boss music," the sound of the backround music (whatever part it may be in) continues playing wherever it was at the time, but in a minor key. In fact, every time you get a combo, a new instrument is added to the music. A flute, a whistle, a saxophone, some drums... it's just simply amazing. Not to mention that the main menu pulses to the music in quarter notes and half notes. It's a quality like this that just sets this game over the top.

DK launches himself off of a giant dandelion to collect some bananas.

This game is nothing short from amazing, and it made my top ten list of all time favorite video games without a fight. It is so good, and the bongos aren't just a gimmick, they're a major part of the fun in this game. Don't turn away, you're missing an opportunity to play one of the most original games available right now. Play it now, this game's a freaking legend.

Verdict: Highest Recommendation.