Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia Review: Fight the Rhythm in this Classic Platformer

I’ve been a fan of platformers since I started playing videogames, and so I’m always eager to try a promising new example of the genre. Since I’ve mostly been a Nintendo fanboy over the years, that means I’ve played a lot of Mario, Kirby and Donkey Kong games. So when I initially demoed a game called Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia, I instantly saw it as a spiritual successor to the SNES Donkey Kong Country series of games.

Put simply, that demo convinced me to give the game a full review. Even though I had never played the original adventure, I quickly picked up the mechanics of Marsupilami 2, and found a lot of fun fighting against the antics of the Mummy Queen and her minions on Nintendo Switch. And while the game doesn’t do anything to evolve the genre, it’s still a lot of fun, and a platformer well worth your time.

Play that Funky Music

The story is simple enough. The Mummy Queen and her minions are driving the animals of Palombia to madness with musical enchantment, and only the three primary marsupials are unaffected. Those include the yellow-furred Twister, the purple-furred Punch and the red-furred Hope.

While they all stand out thanks to the bold color choices, they don’t have much in the way distinct personalities. Which is a little disappointing given how much personality Donkey and Diddy Kong had, but thankfully, you’re not playing Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia for the plot. And it mostly delivers in terms of precise and enjoyable platforming.

The Flavors of Palombia

The game itself is split across 3 main worlds, which include a jungle, city and frozen biome. Each one is overseen by one of the Mummy Queen’s skeletal minions. You can’t just run to face them immediately, and instead have to unlock the path forward by finding musical notes in each world. Each of them require 40 notes before you can challenge them, and you’ll need notes only found in their domain.

Every level in the game has 13 notes you can find at first, several of which are found directly in the level, and another bunch you’ll get rewarded with by gathering enough fruit. There’s also a dojo in each level you have to find, which requires you fulfilling an objective in a limited time frame and without taking damage. These range from gathering musical notes to defeating foes and even just surviving for long enough.

Once you’ve beaten a level once, you’ll unlock the Salsa version. These don’t have any musical notes hidden in the level, and reward you with a point multiplayer combo if you keep rapidly gathering fruit and not taking any damage. It can quickly balloon from x2 to up to x4, which is the highest I ever got it before I inevitably took damage. Your goal in these Salsa variants is gathering a set amount of fruit, and if you do, you’ll get up to three more musical notes.

Besides gathering musical notes in the default levels, you can also pay fruit to unlock additional ones, as well as eventually being able to challenge a Dojo Temple. Here, you can take on a set of challenges in a row, and if you manage to beat them, you’ll get 9 more musical notes. There’s multiple Cups in each Dojo, meaning that completionists will be spending a lot of time collecting everything long after they roll credits.

Once you’ve beaten all three of the Mummy Queen’s minions, a Portal to the Unknown will appear, which requires you to nab 60 fruit in each world to unlock it. This leads to the Disco Kingdom, which is a mix of a twisted amusement park, disco danger and even a little bit of Encanto-themed content. It’s actually a really neat world, though I was a little irritated that it required me to gather 30 keys to unlock the final boss battle, which I wasn’t really eager to do immediately after gathering so many musical notes prior.

You can probably tell there’s a lot of content in Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia, but for the most part it’s really fun. Each of the three characters has a unique ability. Twister can dash and then hover in mid-air, Punch can roll up like a pinball and bounce safely on spikes, and Hope can double jump. Besides those, each of them can also dash forwards, jump, grab onto handholds, wall climb, butt slam and even smack nearby foes with their incredibly long tails.

Each of the levels only features two of the three marsupials, and you can swap between them on the fly. Just keep in mind time doesn’t full stop for this, so if you swap in mid-air, you’ll be lower to the ground when you change characters, which is dangerous if done over a pit or spikes. I liked the inherent strategy of character swapping, and you’ll need to make use of both characters specialty to find everything.

Most foes are easy to smash past, either dashing into them, jumping on their heads or just tail swiping them. But there are several who can’t be killed, such as animated snowmen who toss their heads, and gigantic, flying bat monsters. The latter can be safely bounced on, but only with Hope.

Toucan Express

The game also swaps barrels for toucans, who gulp down our heroes and fire them at waiting toucans. Sometimes you’ll have to time it properly to gather goodies, other times it’s automatic. And sometimes, you’ll get fired and then have race against oncoming vehicles, or even against the galloping footsteps of a raging dinosaur.

Jungle levels are full of man-eating flytraps, whereas the city levels feature lots of traffic to weave between, as well as electrical puzzles. Then in the icy levels, you’ll learn to race on frozen slides, turn foes into ice sculptures and more. There’s plenty more in the game, and I appreciated how each world had features which distinguished it from the others.

Dance Off!

Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia features some fun boss battles as well. Each of the undead baddies has multiple waves to fight your way through, and they only get more and more challenging. One of them forces you to dodge electrical attacks and use them to trigger machinery, and another has you dodging projectiles while on a tilting platform. As for the Mummy Queen herself, let’s just say her battle is an ensemble event, and it’s a lot of fun. That said, none of the bosses were all that challenging, especially in comparison to the ruthless antics of King K. Rool.

Colorful Chaos

Musically, the game features a light and breezy soundtrack that was consistently entertaining, if not truly memorable. I hate to keep returning to Donkey Kong Country, but when it’s so obviously the inspiration, I can’t really help it. That classic series was known for an amazing soundtrack, and the best thing I can say about the music here is that it’s acceptable. Visually, Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia fares better, and it’s colorful, creative and full of spunk.

I don’t have a lot of complaints about the game, but the following issues held it back from a higher score. One is simply that I got tired of the same notification about how Salsa levels worked every single time I played one. That quickly grew very tedious.

Another, more substantive issue is that even though the game plays well, sometimes the platforming was a bit more slippery than I’d like, especially when wall climbing or using Twister’s hover ability. Lastly, even though I wouldn’t say the game is too short, I was hoping for a bit more overall content. 4 worlds isn’t that many, even with a late game unlockable level that will take me a while to get to.

Long-Tailed Heroes

Even though it failed to define a new generation of platformers, and perhaps plays it safe, Marsupilami 2: Salsa Palombia is still an undeniably fun and competent platformer, and it even offers co-op that I wasn’t able to test out. I appreciated the level variety, enjoyed the boss battles, and was happy with the overall challenge. Sure, it borrows a lot from Donkey Kong Country, but it’s still a worthy adventure that any platformer fan is sure to enjoy.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S; Publisher: Microids; Developer: Ocellus Studios; Players: 1-2; Released: September 3, 2026; ESRB: E for Everyone – Mild Fantasy Violence; MSRP: $29.99

Editor’s note: The publisher provided a review copy to Hey Poor Player.