Haha, more platformers. Up front: I didn’t like this game. Rare for this blog, but this is one I couldn’t bear to spend money on, but when I saw a friend had it I was eager to borrow it. In the Donkey Kong fandom this game is quite maligned, and I had to find out for myself whether it was truly a stain on DKC’s legacy or a genuinely fun game that in hindsight had a misguided direction. Spoiler: stain.

Now, to be fair, the game as originally intended involved exclusive use of the bongos, a unique control scheme that could have made for a fun experience, I’ll grant. But aside from fundamental design issues, the NPC release hugely nerfed mechanics and changed things around, for the worse I feel. It’s the only NPC game that made significant changes to content, but the changes suck. The clap is much weaker, and directional, and its functionality has been split between two inputs. A new health system replaces the purely beat/point-driven scoring system, again splitting the focus and diluting the point. I guess the addition of barrel cannons is fine, because it’s purely cosmetic, replacing some weird plants or something. DK coins were added, or something that looks a bit like them, bringing with them an utterly unnecessary limited lives mechanic that is both irritating in modern games and tacked on in this case where it wasn’t before.

Using a more traditional platformer control scheme just makes you long for responsive gameplay to go with it, but the physics remain from the much less direct bongo control method. The combo system is innovative and interesting, but perhaps I just couldn’t master it because I just found it more frustrating than not, when I had a few actions built up but the game’s floatiness and unresponsiveness caused it to fall flat.

The most grating thing about Jungle Beat to DK fans is its very intentional disregard of past elements of the series. An infamous interview at the time described the other Kongs and characters as “not fresh”, stripping it back to simply the characters DK and “the banana”. At the time irrational internet Rare hate was at its height, so DK fans were extra defensive and critical of the perceived direction that NCL was taking with the series that had seen such classics. So not only were many mechanics thrown out the window, DK’s personality was brutalised, leaving him with seemingly only selfish motivations, and anything we liked about the series history was either thrown out or replaced with a thinly-veiled expy (the new animal buddies are shameless ripoffs of existing buddies).

Fortunately this hateful attitude, for whatever reason, was eventually overturned with Retro’s excellent Donkey Kong Country Returns and upcoming Tropical Freeze. So we can look back on Jungle Beat now without depression for the future. But when I did, I found a lackluster game. Perhaps the comparison was unfair on Jungle Beat, but I simply didn’t have fun playing it. The boss fights were either repetitive or unfair QTEs, DK’s presentation was unlikeable, and when I found I couldn’t play all the levels in the NPC version without getting perfect runs of all previous ones, which was a real kick in the nards.

Of course, I should calm down. There were actually good points. The environments were often interesting and varied. I feel like the mechanics could have been fun with more patience, practice, and in their original form. The narrative was nonexistent but piecing one together yourself can be interesting with the new enemies and characters. Oh the sound was pretty awful. Oops, good stuff: um, some good set pieces, and the beating stuff up thing was involving in a visceral way.

I also don’t care for score attack mechanics, especially not when the simple act of gameplay seems a chore to me. The game’s built around getting a multiplier (satisfying when you can build one up), and getting as many bananas and hits before you land on the ground. You do maneuvers and stuff to stay up or bouncing around. The most fun parts were when you could pull off a good string in a part of the level designed around it. But mess it up and you have to start the set of three levels again. The health/lives mechanic also undermines this score run structure.

Is it any wonder we were worried about DK’s future when we see his face in this game, showing off, grinning hideously as he violently crushes a bizarre series of wildlife? No context, no familiarity to latch onto… The implied narrative was too vague to tie together this series of unconnected environments, entered through a basic menu. DK smacks a few dudes and then beats his chest, and it’s over. And what do we have left? A number. Too small. Do it again. Well, no, I won’t.

I’m glad I played this though, so I can plausibly refute any claim that it was in any way a good idea. Afterwards I watched a speedrun, and that actually was kind of cool. Mastery of the mechanics and optimal paths makes it smoother to watch, but I’d never get there playing myself. The clean break in the franchise also leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Games such as Jungle Climber and even Returns later incorporated some basic minor elements from this game, such as sounds, poses, or Returns’ post-boss beatings. Incoporating other things such as the characters here into later games would also help rehabilitate its image to me, and I would welcome that, but the basic fact is I didn’t enjoy playing it. I can’t recommend the NPC version due to its changes, and shelling out for the original, with bongos, would at this point be a pricey proposition. In fact, my advice would be to watch the speedruns of user piepusher11 on Youtube, to get the experience of how the game is meant to be played (he does exploit one or two glitches to skip bits, though). It was an interesting experiment in game design, but offensive to DK fandom and to my perspective not much fun to play.

Also too many names were untranslated from the Japanese. I hate that.