Completion Time: 6h:20m:00s
Rating: 9/10

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Going Bananas

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First blog post of the year, it's been a while but I'm back at it. I'm super glad too, it'll be a bit of a climb to get to 100 GameCube games here as life continues to rear its ugly head. But as usual, the Completionator New Years Resolution bounties provide! I moved last October, and while I was unpacking my collection of items I came across my misplaced DK Bongos and immediately added it to my stack, knowing I'd want to use them to complete this game some time in the new year. And thankfully, it was selected to be one of the bounties so I got some bonus points for completing it to. 2026 is looking pretty good for me so far! Even if I planned to write this weeks ago and go distracted by work...

Lets potentially break another GameCube peripheral!

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King of the Jungle Beat

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So yes, as the picture above shows, I did break out my bongos and made sure to play with them. At least for a little bit, anyways. It's certainly the intended way to play, more responsive and more intuitive when you're leading Donkey Kong across the maps as well. But man, it took no time at all for my hands to start hurting. This is a game where you have to pay attention, and if you're a collection obsessed maniac as I am, then you're gonna be slapping and clapping like mad. And it definitely showed. After only two worlds I had to put the things away an swap to a controller, which made things harder for sure but kept me from developing blisters. I'm sure I wouldn't have had this problem when I was younger, but I probably would've been yelled at for making all that noise all the time. Lose-lose I suppose. But hey, at least I didn't end up breaking them like I did my Mario DDR mat.

I really wouldn't want to use the bongos to maintain altitude above lava while also reflecting projectiles. I just wouldn't

It's good that I bring up playing this when I was younger, because I definitely did... a little bit. I played up to the first boss fight in the first world and failed to beat him, I was just no good. But I also despised the controls. This was before I actually had the set with the bongos too, so I had no idea how this things was intended to be played. It just confused me, and so I eventually put it away and just refused to touch it. After I obtained my bongos years and years later, I was always tempted to go back and try the game again with an older, fresher mindset. But by that point I had the first two Donkey Konga games and was way more into showing college friends the controls with those games than anything else.

At least I never made it to the icy pig fight, I would've been really frustrated as a child!

At any rate, I have no idea what the story of this game is. I think there's some corruption spreading through the jungle at the behest of the dastardly Cactus Kong, and you're beatin' bongos to collect bananas and stop these mad beasts. As you progress, you'll gain emblems that help you unlock other worlds, each one based on a fruit. There are 16 in total, with each set of 4 having different levels that lead up to a variation on one of 4 bosses. There's the line of martial arts kongs, such as Karate Kong and Sumo Kong, the avian line of "Roc" bosses, the angry electric "Hog" line, and a set of manufactured elephant cannon... things. These get strange fast, yeah. And the further you go, they start to ramp up the attacks these sets of bosses have so that you have to vary in your techniques to defeat them. Well, except the elephant. They just kinda add another one of him and call it a day. And don't forget: your bananas that you collect in any given world will also act as your health bar when fighting that world's boss, so even if you aren't heading for completion, you're gonna want to get a ton.

Double the elephants, double the fun!

You roll, jump, zip, and fly your way across many stages that range from caves to treetops to weird, floating jello masses in your hunt for as many bananas as you can muster. Those bananas add to your points, which in turn determine what emblems you get when the stage is over, after all. And you're gonna want as many emblems as possible to unlock additional worlds later on. The best way to get points from bananas is through combos, which will increase your modifier. But the controls when you aren't using the bongos is a pain to be sure. Firstly, to grab large collections of bananas or stun big groups of enemies all at once, you've gotta clap your hands together. Or, on controller, flick the c-stick. But if you have to do it while also running left or right by hitting the A and B buttons (no, you don't use the analog stick to move), then you might find yourself hitting the stick at just the wrong moment and busting your combo. This is even worse when battling mini-boss animals like pigs, cause they throw coconuts. For these, you need to clap (c-stick) before the coconut hits you, then it'll bounce in the air and you need to jump and hit it in the direction of the pig's tree to hurt him. Three times and he'll fall out of the tree and you can pounce on him. But again, all this is happening amidst other chaos and keeping the controls memorized, even in the late game, can be a nightmare. This coconut mechanic also appears against those elephants I mentioned, but that's a bit easier because there isn't as much to worry about, combos included.

Though seeing that combo hit triple digits is very satisfying

Seriously, what is this Jello Zone?

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Completing the Game

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There are 4 worlds that shoot out of barrels labelled D, K, J, and B. There is also a dark moon barrel consisting of two zones, the boss battle against Cactus Kong, and the final true battle against Ghastly Kong. Your ultimate goal here is to get the number of emblems required for that final boss fight (51), which is gonna require getting bronze, silver, and gold emblems on every other world up to that point, including the Cactus Kong fight. This is easier said than done, with some of the levels really relying specifically on combos to get you to that magic banana mark that'll get you your golden emblem. And did I mention before that this can get difficult with the standard GameCube controller? Oh, I did? Good, cause it's true!

Hell yeah, now that's a gold medal

Once you're able to get all of those emblems under your belt, its time to take on Ghastly Kong! The level is outlined mostly the same as Cactus Kong's area, with the exception of the fact that Ghastly Kong is way more active than Cactus ever was. He's more likely to knock you out of the sky for sure when you're flying overhead, so you need to be quick with those punches and dodges so you can fling him into the wall and get one over on him. But aside from that, the fight is exactly the same. I was actually slightly disappointed, as everything sort of led up to this fight and it wasn't hard at all. I got gold emblem status on the first attempt for crying out loud! I had way more trouble with some of those latter fruit kingdoms, however at least we can safely say that Ghastly's been defeated and we can celebrate in the woods!

I mostly just stun-locked him by jumping towards his head every time he threw me off

Look at Sumo Kong, arriving late to the party as usual

If you're up to the challenge, there is another aspect of completion you can try and tackle. You see, there is a secret 4th emblem, the platinum emblem, that can be achieved on each world. This does nothing for you, as the game already has no unlockables outside of the normal game progression, this is just a way to boast to the world that you're a true barrel master. So, the real question is: did I get all the platinum emblems? Hell no! I'm nowhere near good enough for that, I was able to get platinum on a single world, Watermelon Kingdom, and I left it at that. This harkens back to my talking points in the previous Melee write-up, where I didn't go after all the Milestone messages. 100% completion, when not explicitly tracked by the game, kinda looks different for everybody. And since nothing actually comes with these special emblems, I didn't go after them. I'm more than happy enough to say I've 100% completed "Donkey Kong Jungle Beat" without those, even if others might contest that! The game is still tons of fun, way moreso than I remember, and I'm glad I revisited it as part of this series so that I could redeem it in its eyes. Younger me was just unwilling to accept the strangeness of the controls, I suppose.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 51/652