True, but in this case it also means 'less fun'. Compounding things, it seems that the design team equate 'more crap on the courses' with 'harder'. And again, it's another element that the intended audience probably won't even be aware of.

The few times you nail it feel good – and it certainly makes collecting every banana you can worthwhile, but ultimately the controls aren't reliable enough for this to be the gameplay icing on the cake that it could have been. It's a great idea but ultimately just highlights the game's shortcomings – it's simply too clumsy using the bongo-based control scheme to deftly manoeuvre through hazards like steel barrels and TNT barrels to hit the wooden ones. You can stockpile a number of speed boosts, and there's an interesting combo system associated with it too – each enemy, opponent or wooden barrel that you run into while the speed boost is still active extends the boost, so there's the potential to chain together a sequence of take-downs to keep boosting. Every 50 bananas you collect on the course gives you a speed boost power-up which is executed by holding back on the Nunchuk analogue stick then releasing. And then there's the 'Wild Moves' system. There's also an attack button which can be used to hit opponents who get close and to punch through wooden barrels. (Oh wow – it's a monkey with a mini-helicopter strapped to his back! Aargh – there's a bird flying around me pecking at me: how do I get rid of it? Eeshk! I just got reamed by some weird pineapple thing!). As you'd expect, the game has an array of pickups, but very few of these are adequately explained or intuitive to use, and very few seem to have any tactical use.

Pow! Indeed, young players have to take a number of other things into account. One of the only decent animations in the game kicks in when DK right hooks a shark. Not that this is a game that's meant to be taken seriously of course – it's definitely pitched at a young audience, but the simplicity to simply pick it up and play it isn't there either. It all adds up to a unique control scheme which can be quite fun as you're frantically jiggling the Wiimote and Nunchuk, but that ultimately isn't smooth enough to be taken seriously. Yes, it's a big bongo fest and no, it doesn't make any sense. Steering left and right is achieved by yanking up on the Nunchuk and Wiimote respectively, while to jump you must pull sharply up on them both. Take a hit, however, whether by running into an obstacle, being snapped at by a shark or being attacked by another racer, and you'll have to work those udders to get back up to speed. Building up speed is achieved by busting out the move known in Wii circles as 'milking the cow' (alternate moving the Wiimote and Nunchuk up and down to hammer both bongos) but you only have to do this until you hit top speed, at which point you can concentrate on weaving through the fields of barrels and enemies on the courses. The Nunchuk represents your character's left hand and left bongo, while the Wiimote represents the right. In order to build up speed, turn and jump, you'll need to – and this is quite a flight of fancy for Nintendo – play the bongo jets strapped to your character.

Within that path you have room to move, but this is essentially an on-rails racing experience. Hop into a race, for instance, and the first thing you'll notice is that you automatically follow the course. Jet Race, you see, keeps things simple in some regards, but less so in others. To paraphrase Gwen Stefani, this shit is bananas. In practice, however, it's a jumble of ideas, some of which work, many of which don't. In theory it's better than any future we could have imagined. It's a good thing then, that Nintendo remembers those halcyon promises of the future, and is here to deliver a vision of a world where monkeys have bongo jetpacks and race against one another through treacherous courses filled with lava, ice, monstrous beasts and barrels.

Donkeykong jet race