Namco has enjoyed a considerable amount of success with TAIKO: Drum Master in Japan through its many arcade and home releases, but this is the first time the series has arrived outside its native home. Luckily, Namco has released TAIKO: Drum Master a little over a full month following the release of Donkey Konga; the two games are so incredibly similar in concept and look that finding gamers, regardless of difference in platform, to pick up two games with expensive controller peripherals might have been difficult. Donkey Konga has the recognizable characters and Nintendo actually caring about its marketing, though.

The similarities between TAIKO: Drum Master and Donkey Konga are significant, and most of that similarity falls in the actual gameplay interface. Each game has wacky, cracked-out characters bouncing above and below a rolling line that displays the icons representing the different drum actions. The only change here is that you're smacking a single taiko drum with sexual-looking drumsticks versus rapidly hitting two smaller drums. TAIKO: Drum Master's interface, however, is much slicker and aesthetically appealing, with high-resolution 2D graphics populating the screen, instead of poorly animated re-used renders from the Donkey Kong Country era.

Namco has included a far better peripheral with TAIKO: Drum Master compared to Donkey Konga, but they don't take advantage of it nearly as well here. Despite the drum recognizing the player hitting its left or right sides, there are no gameplay icons taking advantage of this fact. There are icons that are supposed to represent the player hitting both sides of the drum, either in the center or on the side, but become negated because the game allows players to hit only one side of the drum. At first, this misgiving seemed like it would ruin any chance for TAIKO: Drum Master to include any sort of difficulty curve (which is non-existent in Donkey Konga), but thankfully, that's not true. Between Hard and the unlockable Oni difficulty settings, there is plenty of replay value in the game. Just try to beat the Ridge Racer track on your first try on Oni. Hell, try to beat it on your 20th!

Additionally, whatever music licensing company Namco utilized for TAIKO: Drum Master should be the standard for the rest of the music/rhythm game genre; the covers here are absolutely fantastic. Several of rock and punk covers sound note-to-note like their originals, with singers who even manage a decent replication. Gamers are actually interacting with the music in TAIKO: Drum Master, making the respectable covers all the more important and respected. As far as interactive music games go, barring Dance Dance Revolution, TAIKO: Drum Master includes the best line-up of music since Sega's Samba de Amigo on the Dreamcast.

We've become so used to our annual Dance Dance Revolution installments that the possibility of two brand-new music game franchises, forgetting quality, is exciting in itself. Happily for gamers, TAIKO: Drum Master is a great new entry into the music/rhythm genre. Let's hope enough gamers catch on, so we aren't forced to only pick up the Japanese expansion packs for some new tracks.