If you're a PS2 owner who has seen the ads and reviews for GameCube's Donkey Konga and wished that you could play it on your system, then you (a) have relatively odd (yet excellent) taste in games, and (b) are one of the few PS2 owners who is jealous of GameCube owners.

Nevertheless, you needn't let envy rule your life anymore. Namco, the developer of Konga, has released Taiko Drum Master for PS2, the game that inspired Nintendo's drumming monkey simulation. Of course, in Japan (where it is known as Taiko no Tatsujin) the game has been around for a couple of years. There are already several arcade and PS2 incarnations of the game over there, but this is the first U.S. release.

Taiko plays much like any other music game. The challenge comes from inputting prompted commands on the controller in time to the music. Some music games (change that "some" to "lots of" if you're talking about Japanese games as well) come with specialized controllers to re-create the arcade experience. With Konga it was a pair of conga drums (although Konga never hit arcades). Then there are games like Dreamcast's Samba de Amigo and its maracas, and the popular Dance Dance Revolution series with its dance pad. Taiko includes a miniature (and this should be obvious) taiko drum controller. For those of you not up on your foreign musical instruments, a taiko is a large, traditional Japanese drum.

No, those aren't living pieces of string cheese dancing in the corner there -- they're drumsticks.

Takes a Licking

The taiko controller is made of fairly sturdy plastic with a rubberized skin on the top, where you hit it with the included plastic drumsticks. Since it's made to be repeatedly whacked, the controller stands up to a lot of abuse, although I wouldn't recommend switching to real wooden drumsticks. I did notice, that despite the rubberized grips on the taiko's stand, that the controller tends to move around quite a bit as you play. You might need to brace the drum or place it on some sort of non-stick mat lest it begin slowly sliding around the tabletop during the game.

If you've played any recent music game, you know what to expect from the gameplay. As you watch the symbols scroll from the right of the screen to the left, you must bang the drum with the proper timing to score. Mainly, it's a matter of hitting either the head or the rim of the drum, with the occasional drum roll tossed in to mix things up. The taiko controller is actually quite responsive, and since you need to give it a good whack to register the hit, it really gives you the feeling of playing a real drum. Of course, you can also use a standard controller to play, but what's the point? I found myself scoring much higher using a Dual Shock 2, but the game ceases to be fun without the drum.