The Differences Between Jungle Beats
By BlazeHedgehog 6 Comments
So those of you who keep tabs on my Youtube channel may have noticed I uploaded some video of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat over the weekend - the Gamecube version. It's in my top ten favorite games of all time; the physical sensation of hitting the drums combined with the flow and rhythm of the game - both musically and interactively - really appeals to me in a big way. Whenever I play Jungle Beat, it instantly puts me in to a good mood.
No surprise: When I uploaded my videos, a smattering of other Jungle Beat videos appeared in the Related Videos section, and I got my first taste of the Wii version of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat.
What the hell did they do this game? Donkey Kong has lives, now? He has a health meter? Jungle Beat is a high-score-focused game; taking damage in the Gamecube Version would simply subtract from your overall score. Sure, it meant you basically never died, but it was never a game where you needed to worry about dying; it was a game where you were trying to maximize your score and maintain a rhythm. Enemies were never an obstacle you had to worry about with regards to how much health you had; they served instead as ways to bolster your score if you were doing well enough.
Of course, with the health and 1ups comes a slew of other changes: the levels are almost completely different, with tons of new obstacles and enemies. A considerable amount of the graphics were changed (some to make it look more like Donkey Kong Country). The biggest change of all seems to be the controls. If I'm not mistaken, the bongo-style controls have been removed in favor of something that steers more like a traditional platformer with the occasional bit of Wii Waggle thrown in for specific actions.
It looks like they ruined the Wii version. Apparently, even if you own the DK Bongos, you can't use them on the Wii version. What kind of joke is that? The game was developed for the Bongos, and the Wii has Gamecube Controller ports. "New Play Control" Jungle Beat looks less like a motion-control-enabled port and more like an entirely different game - changed so dramatically that it barely resembles the original version of the game. And I love the original game to death - so obviously, every change they've made for the Wii version does not really make sense, to me. The game didn't need any of this stuff and I'd say it actually detracts from the stuff I enjoy most about Jungle Beat.
Also, while I'm here, I may as well slip in and say that a prototype version of my new website is live, for those of you who care. It is EXTREMELY early, but if you want to keep up with everything I post on the internet, it's a good way to do that. I'll change the URL eventually, but I'll probably make a post here if I do that.