Otherwise all games, controllers and other small accessories are despatched in bubble envelopes as standard. Along with Masanori Sato, prominent Super Mario franchise illustrator Yoichi Kotabe served as graphic support. The left bongo plays Mario's jump sound effect and clapping plays the sound effect of Mario jumping over an obstacle. The automatic camera also allowed Koizumi to avoid camera problems he found in previous 3D games that he had worked on. The player controls Donkey Kong through various side-scrolling levels as he collects bananas, swings on vines, chains combos, rides animals, and defeats enemies and bosses.

Players earn coins by accurately beating their drums, which they can spend on new sound schemes that replace the conga noises (such as dog barks or sounds from past Nintendo games) or expert challenges.The DK Bongo is a special controller that was designed to be used with the rhythm-based Donkey Konga series.

During gameplay, the player controls Donkey Kong, whose goal is to hit scrolling notes, known as beats. A combo is displayed if the player hits two or more consecutive beats, but it vanishes if the player misses a beat.Koizumi and Shimizu were presented the DK Bongos during a meeting regarding Donkey Konga, [5] and Koizumi conceived the central idea for Jungle Beat upon seeing players' reactions to using them. It follows the gorilla Donkey Kong as he sets out to defeat a series of evil kings to conquer the jungle. He said that Jungle Beat "show[s] how we take experiences with our own families at home, or in places other than work, and bring those experiences back to our work". There are tracks from the Mario series, The Legend of Zelda series, and other Nintendo related music.

The player uses these controls to perform backflips, slap the terrain, swing on vines, and jump between walls. The Wii remake of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat did not feature Bongo controls but rather the player had to control it with the Wii Remote.Using the DK Bongos presented some challenges; since the controller restricted the player's movements, EAD Tokyo had to conceive new game mechanics as a workaround. EAD Tokyo prioritized simplicity; [13] Shimizu said that because contemporary video games took considerable time to complete and lost appeal if an individual had to stop playing, Jungle Beat 's levels were designed to take between five and ten minutes without any shortcuts.