Show HN: Konga Beat – A custom track editor for Donkey Konga 2 and 3 • Hacker News Board

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

#1

Post by CIARobotFish » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 4:39 PM UTC

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!

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

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

#2

Post by dole » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

Suggestion to put a screenshot or two on the main kongabeat page, there's seemingly no screenshots unless you exit to the itch.io site and was curious about the UI. Nice work!

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

#3

Post by simlevesque » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

GameCube hacks are becoming really popular. There's the newly released FlippyDrive which allows booting games from a sd card without soldering or removing the disk drive.

I'm a huge Mario Kart: Double Dash! fan and there's many fan made tracks and fan made roms which includes more tracks and kart.

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

#4

Post by AdmiralAsshat » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

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.

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

#5

Post by jchw » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

simlevesque wrote: post #3

GameCube hacks are becoming really popular. There's the newly released FlippyDrive which allows booting games from a sd card without soldering or removing the disk drive. I'm a huge Mario Kart: Double Dash! fan and there's many fan made tracks and fan made roms which includes more tracks and kart.

On that note, Picoboot is also amazing. I've set up Picoboot on multiple GameCubes and even a Triforce (an arcade machine platform which has a DOL-001 mainboard strapped into it.) It does require a bit of soldering, and if you want to power the Pico properly instead of abusing the 3.3V pins, that requires a bit more care. But, it's not very many pins to solder, so as long as you are careful not to burn anything it's actually quite approachable for beginners.

(I never bothered with powering any of them from 5V so far and it has been fine so I'm guessing it's usually OK. I have plenty of backup Picos in case one of them gets blown up.)

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

#6

Post by bravura » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

I didn't know I wanted this until I read the Show HN description. Suggest to update the description on the site for people who don't know what Donkey Konga is.

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

#7

Post by asb » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 6:30 PM UTC

If you're playing on the Steam Deck, mapping 'touch' on the left and right trackpads to the left and right bongo, and a touch on either joystick (they have capacitive touch) as a clap works rather well.

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

#8

Post by dole » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 6:30 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

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,…

Interesting there's no tracklist on wikipedia for DK3 but if it's any consolation, it was very heavily J-Pop and I think maybe 5-8 at most of the tracks were notable or recognizable by a typical westerner, but then again I'm not a massive videogame OST fan so it may have been missed on me. I remember the minigames were pretty cool but all menus were in Japanese and tough to navigate.

Edit, ah there's a tracklist on the mariowiki link. Ah well, this quote on the page: "You can import it from our partners at Lik-Sang." Lik-Sang, now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...

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

#9

Post by wicket » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 6:41 PM UTC

Nice idea and something I would have otherwise liked to have tried out (I actually have two pairs of DK bongos) but its Windows only and it seems to be closed source. I searched high and low but I couldn't find a link to the source code or even the software licence. :(

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

#10

Post by arijun » Wed, Nov 13, 2024, 7:00 PM UTC

For those wondering what Donkey Konga is, videogamedunkey has an entertaining video on it and DK Jungle Beat which used the same controller:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKjYYsZzyGA