Donkey Konga will probably cause more trouble for your carpal tunnels than any other video game you have ever touched. Play for a few minutes and you will notice a twinge of discomfort. Play for a few hours and you will begin to feel the burn. Play all day and you will spend the evening with a bag of frozen peas draped across your forearms, moaning about how the stupid Advil is totally not kicking in and would it be OK to take another one?

Right now a bit of classic medicine is running through your head.

DOCTOR: Does it hurt when you do this?
PATIENT: Yes.
DOCTOR: So stop doing this, dumbass.
PATIENT: Er...
DOCTOR: Dumbass.

The thing is, it is very hard to stop doing this when the "this" in question is Donkey Konga. It is a music game equipped with outstanding music, and the tasks it asks you to perform consist of drumming and clapping your hands. If you have any sense of fun at all you will not be able to tear yourself away, not even after that throbbing-tendons feeling has set in.

The game comes in a big box, which also contains a pair of electronic bongo drums. These are the controllers of choice, for the game is all about drumming, and drumming by tapping buttons and twiddling a joystick is deeply lame when compared with actual drumming. You play by doing three things: tapping the drum on the left, tapping the drum on the right, and clapping your hands. It is not a very tough control scheme. Even your mother could probably handle it.

To play, you select a song from a large library of pop hits. You can choose "Right Here, Right Now," or "Rock Lobster," "Whip It," "We Will Rock You," or any of several dozen other sugary treats, or you can choose "Super Mario Bros. Theme." You will be surprised how good it feels to drum along with "Super Mario Bros. Theme." Then again, it is a tune built from the ground up for video gaming, so maybe you will only be surprised at how great it sounds when re-orchestrated as a breezy cocktail lounge number.

The actual play goes much like the actual play in any of many other music video games. A line stretches across the screen, and Donkey Kong the big ape sits at one end of it. That is the spot you need to watch. Then, icons begin moving along the line. There is an icon that means "tap the left drum," and one that means "tap the right drum," and one that means "tap both drums together," and one that means "clap."

When an icon lands on DK himself, you must tap or clap accordingly. These taps and claps all happen in time with the underlying track, so if you have any sense of rhythm at all you will soon find yourself attacking the bongos with great fierce flourishes, even throwing gratuitous claps in, just to show the room you came to, you know, represent.

A dedicated controller in a music game is not a new idea. Everybody has seen the Dance Dance Revolution series and its famous floor mats, and if you have not already tried the PlayStation Eye Toy camera, you are missing some jolly good fun. (Sadly, nearly everyone missed the electronic maracas of Samba De Amigo. Sometimes in video game land, there is no justice.)

The bongos of Donkey Konga are not the mind-popping treats those other devices were, mostly because the bongos do not require vigorous exercise. You can play Donkey Konga with your rump still stuck to your sofa. But credit where credit is due: The game is good enough that you will hurt your body playing it and still go back for more.

One thing that will bother you is that none of the songs is recorded by the original artist. Presumably the lawyers could explain this, but one important fact remains: "Rock Lobster" without Fred Schneider is crap crap crap crap.