Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a happy memory

David Pescovitz 12:30 pm Fri Jan 9, 2009

Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Margaret Robertson looks back at Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, in which you control the action by banging on crappy electronic drums. Margaret is the former editor of Edge magazine and I am thrilled that she's now a regular columnist for Offworld. From "One More Go: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat":

One of the worst game ideas ever was embodied in Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, which is a platform game you control with a pair of cheap electric bongos.

Not, please note, a modern, newfangled, automagic platform game like Assassin’s Creed. A proper, old-fashioned 2D platformer with ledges and enemies and timed swings and all the things that make you cry out for a nice crisp d-pad and a decently sprung jump button. Or, in the absence of those, perhaps at least something with more than two buttons which you can operate without having to pretend to be a toddler who just dropped a jam sandwich off his high chair.

So why go back to Jungle Beat? For a little reassuring schadenfreude that I’m not the only person who can have bad game ideas? No. Because it’s a dazzling, dizzying delight. Bad idea; brilliant game.

One More Go: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

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