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Show HN: Konga Beat – A custom track editor for Donkey Konga 2 and 3

(www.kongabeat.com)
113 points CIARobotFish | 2 comments | 13 Nov 24 16:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.523s | source

Howdy HN!

For those who don't know, back in the early 2000s, Nintendo and Namco developed a series of music rhythm games for the GameCube featuring Donkey Kong called Donkey Konga: https://www.mariowiki.com/Donkey_Konga_(series)

The Donkey Konga games borrowed heavily from Taiko no Tatsujin (another music rhythm game by Namco). However, instead of taiko drums, the player would use DK Bongos to jam along with music from different eras and genres.

Long story short, I figured out how to add custom tracks to some of the Donkey Konga games (Donkey Konga 2 and 3) but found the entire process cumbersome, so I decided to make a dedicated editor. It was a lot of fun to make, and I hope others get some enjoyment out of it too!

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AdmiralAsshat ◴[13 Nov 24 18:06 UTC] No.42128434[source]▶
Nice to see someone doing something to try to get some additional leverage out of the DK bongo drums. They're one of my favorite stupid/unnecessary videogame controller peripherals. They felt like such a missed opportunity, especially in the US. We only got three games that actually supported them, and despite my effort of actually tracking down a second pair of bongos so that my siblings and I could do multiplayer, we discovered that Donkey Konga's multiplayer mode was crap. We then got Donkey Konga 2, which was more of the same but with a worse setlist, and Donkey Konga 3 was never released stateside.

The sole redeeming feature of it was Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, which at least used the controller in a novel way to make an exciting platformer.

replies(3): >>42128626 #>>42129161 #>>42133060 #
1. Affric ◴[14 Nov 24 04:02 UTC] No.42133060[source]▶
Donkey Konga is a huge missed opportunity.

Guitar Hero/Rock Band are probably best in show for the genre.

Weird that they were so huge for such a short time. Probably the death of popular instrumented music.

replies(1): >>42133974 #
2. CSMastermind ◴[14 Nov 24 07:52 UTC] No.42133974[source]▶
I think it was more that companies way over invested in the concept and saturated the market combined with licensing fees making a lot of the games unprofitable.