part of the reason I love old-school sega games is because I just love the way their games feel. games designed by sega straddle the line between nuanced, logical physics and exaggerated, arcade-y physics with aplomb. the sega rally series captures this perfectly, where the terrain material and topography are intimately factored into the performance of your car while at the same time you can perfectly drift around corners and fly over hills with a bit of squash-and-stretch going on. the tightrope here is between making the player feel like they're in total control of the car (with the consequences that result) while simultaneously hand-waving the internal mechanisms that limit player expression. the early monkey ball games are the same way: the level design is punishing yet it's addicting because any strategy you devise can probably work thanks to how controllable the ball is. it's why I've stuck with this series so long: from barely making it past beginner as a young child, to learning the extra levels as a high schooler, to finally conquering master and master extra in both games as I whittled away time during a global lockdown.

that being said, I didn't want to go into this game with unrealistic hopes. I knew the original engine was not being used here, so I figured it probably would be a bit stiffer and maybe a little hand-holdy. after all, this remake is partially meant to introduce new players and give them leverage to actually succeed in comparison to the original games, where over half of the levels were tucked behind some serious execution barriers. when I popped it in for the first time this mostly held true: I ran smb1 beginner (newly christened as "casual") without much issue. it wasn't until I touched smb1 expert immediately after...

167 deaths. 167 deaths without including expert extra no less, which I accidentally voided myself out of thanks to misreading the helper option menu that pops up automatically (protip to UI designers: don't make both your selected and unselected options bright colors!!!). these levels are no cakewalk, let's be clear, but I know these levels by the back of my hand. I've 1cc'd expert + expert extra in the original many many times, and even now out of practice I can manage 10 - 15 deaths. it just shocked me that this game felt so different, and so much less precise. in a lot of ways it felt like the original levels popped into Unity with a basic sphere physics plugin, and the results were not pretty. my roommates (also long-time monkey ball fans) also immediately wrote off the game after playing it. even though we had been so hype about finally getting an HD monkey ball - a monkey ball game that wasn't garbage and didn't require us to pull out our CRT - all of our energy immediately dissapated once we got our hands on the game.

so what exactly is the issue here? basically everyone agrees that the physics in this game are noticably different from that of the original, but I want to delve into why. after playing this game for quite a bit (all of story mode, up through master mode in smb1, all the deluxe levels, and poking around into other stuff here and there) I think I've narrowed it down to frictional differences between the two games. for those of you who haven't taken high school physics in some time, let me present the equation f = μN, where f is the frictional force applied parallel to surface we are moving upon (usually horizontally), μ is the coefficient of friction, and N is the normal force applied perpendicular to the surface (hence the name "normal"). before your eyes glaze over, let me connect these to some intangible game-feel statements:

coefficient of friction: this refers to how difficult it is to move over a material; for example, it accounts for why it's more difficult to slide your coffee table when it's on a shaggy carpet versus a finished wood floor. as it relates to the how it feels in this game, I'll borrow a quote from my roommate when he was playing the game: "it feels like every single floor is made out of glass"

normal force: this refers to how hard the object is pushing down on the surface, which in this case mainly refers to the gravitational force the object exerts. this scales with the mass, so we can think of it as how much the object weighs; a cardboard box is a lot easier to move than a full wardrobe. this affects the game-feel, as my girlfriend eloquently put: "it's like there's no monkey at all, and you're just rolling around a hollow ball"

so tldr: there's a severe lack of friction in this game in comparison to the original. in the original game, the ball was weighty, and the friction on the goal posts or ledges allows you to grip them easily (and a bit unrealistically for that matter). these things are boons to the player that go a long way towards making impossible looking courses just barely doable with practice. here the stages refuse to budge when you try to force them to, and you end up without a lot of the gravity-defying tricks you could initially pull off. I'll give some examples of situations that pop up that break under the new physics:

stopping the ball: this took a lot of adjustment for me, and while it's just a matter of relearning muscle memory it very noticeably makes some stages harder. in the original game you could stop pretty much on a dime (unless you were rolling to the point of sparks flying), whereas here the ball will sliiiiiiiide all over the place unless you very deliberately deccelerate. this is more of a general issue but a good example of where this becomes frustrating is Twin Cross, where you're expected to roll across a series of 1x1 tiles in diagonal lines. you need to keep a certain level of speed up to avoid falling off when crossing the corners of two tiles, but then also must deccelerate at the right moment to keep your ball from flying off at the end of a line (which itself is just a 1x1 tile floating in space). Edge Master also becomes more annoying than its prior appearances thanks to this issue, as staying within the bounds of the upward face of the first rotation becomes very precise given how much speed you gain when the stage rotates.

narrow lines: approach a ledge in this game and you'll notice that the bottom of your ball will just be barely close to the ledge when your character starts trembling and attempting to balance themself. compare that to the original, where the characters won't start said animation until their feet are literally touching the ledge, far closer to the center of mass for the ball. you basically have a lot less wiggle room on the edge, and it can become very apparent in certain levels that depend on this. kudos to the dev team for adjust Catwalk to accommodate, but on the flipside look at Invasion. I'd say this level was middle of the road in terms of its original difficulty, but here it's fucking brutal towards the end, where you're expected to navigate in a curve on a ledge around staggered bumpers. comments I've read on early gameplay capture on youtube were quick to point to this stage as one of the biggest difficulty bumps for a remade stage.

slopes: friction is the reason why we don't instantly slide down slopes in real life, hence why we use snowboards and skis instead of just standing on mountains waiting to gain speed. however, in monkey ball the goal is usually not to slide down slopes unless you're explicitly supposed to, and many levels depend on you being able to balance yourself on slopes either while waiting for a cycle or when speeding through before you have a chance to fall off. Drum and Twister back-to-back in smb1's ice world were originally breather stages, where you simply had to keep yourself balanced in brief intervals before reaching the goal. here they became much more precise than I feel was intended, as even slightly moving from the narrow top of the curve on either of these levels will send you careening to your death with no recourse. from smb2 I can absolutely not forget to mention Warp... oh my god Warp. this level was already surprisingly difficult in smb2, given that the flatter part of the curves here are covered with bumpers and maintaing yourself on a slope is already a trickier technique to learn (I see a lot of more casual players get stuck on Floor Bent from smb1 for this reason). here it's nigh impossible to do thanks to how little grip you have. Cross Floors is another smb2 example that requires a lot of practice in the original and here feels terrible to attempt.

centripedal force: some of you may have seen charity donation recepticles shaped like curved funnels (I've seen them in american malls at least), where you can put a coin into a slot and it will spiral around the funnel down and down until falling through a hole at the bottom, much like water spinning in a drain. there are multiple areas in the original monkey ball games that utilize this phenomenon to great effect, and it relies on the friction of the slope or wall that the ball is on to keep it from dropping out. however, when I first played Spiral Hard in this game, I was very surprised to find that I could not simply drop in as I was accustomed to, as even with a decent amount of speed the ball does not grab onto the slope and instead falls off. it took me several tries to successfully drop in, where I had to come in with an exceptional amount of speed, heavily tilt against the slope to avoid falling off, try to balance out before I lost the speed I needed to stay in, and then continue on my way. this level is already difficult enough as is, with a path that narrows the further it spirals down and a goal that is difficult to aim for, so I don't see why dropping in needs to also require a lot of set up when it didn't originally. the end of Stamina Master is also much more difficult than before thanks to this, as the spiral towards the end becomes nearly vertical, and I would often drop out of it completely before I reached the goal. the pipe stages also seem to struggle with keeping you moving, such as the smb1 expert extra stage Curl Pipe, where the second hill virtually always stopped me dead in my tracks (though I've had this happen occasionally in the original as well).

this would be a good time for me to also mention how the camera has changed significantly from the original games. the camera used to rather aggressively stick to the ball's back, whereas here the camera will follow your stick without really staying glued to a particular orientation on the ball. to solve this there is now camera control on the right-stick... this sort of defeats the purpose of the original one-giant-banana-joystick control scheme, but I'm sure plenty of players will feel more comfortable with it there. the big issue here comes when trying to line up straight lines: in the original game it was very doable to turn in place with the camera lining up directly with the center of the monkey's back. here it's already hard enough to turn in place given that you slide around with so little provocation, and now you must center the camera manually using... non-analog controls? yes, the right stick does not seem to have a real gradient of turning from my time playing with it, giving it little more functionality than d-pad camera controls. you can at least adjust camera sensitivity, but I feel like you're forced to sometimes go in and change it per stage, ie high sensitivity for when you need to turn quickly or steadily on fast stages, and low sensitivity when you line up precise shots. the latter was a necessity on Exam-C (a particularly infamous stage) and the aforementioned Twin Cross, as well as Checker, and it made all three of these stages much more tedious than I would've liked. sometimes the camera just breaks entirely, most notably on Centrifugal from smb2, where the speed of rotation in the giant wheel of death causes the camera to get stuck outside the level geometry, or flip in front of you to mess up the angle you're tilting the stage in.

I wanted to include this diatribe about the physics in here just to have some sort of document with the issues I've noticed with this game, and as to provide a detailed summary of why and where the physics are different without just saying they are. players who know the levels above might have noticed that they're virtually all pulled from expert and master: this is because the beginner and advanced difficulties (casual and normal) are totally playable regardless of the changes. that is not to say they aren't still difficult (I still have not beaten Polar Large in this game and, much to my consternation, can not even figure out a good route through it for some reason) but if you're coming in just to fuck around a bit, play through part of story mode, enjoy the cameos, and play minigames with friends, you're not going to notice the different game-feel to the extent of it being overbearing. on the flipside, I do feel justified in presenting my opinions on this in pedantic detail because beginner and advanced only make up 108 stages out of the 258 total stages between the non-DX games, which is to say that for over half of the game you will likely notice what I mentioned above unless you have never played the originals.

regardless of everything listed above, I've actually rated this one a bit higher than super monkey ball deluxe, a collection that still has the original physics intact. my rationale: banana mania is an amazing package overall. what honestly frustrates me more than anything about this game is that it perfectly captures the features and content I'd want in a remake of these games without the tight gameplay I originally adored in the originals. whereas deluxe (on ps2 mind you) was a poorly performing mess with overly-long course structure and a lack of improvements over smb2, this game is packed to the brim with extra modes, great cameo characters, and accesibility features. not everything really hits, but I appreciate how much effort and material there is here with so little development time.

the main game specifically deliminates between the first two games for its courses, unlike deluxe where stages from both games were interleaved. each course is 1:1 with their original set of stages, with extra stages now being unlocked if all the regular stages were completed without the helper functions active. master mode for smb1 is now accessible just by completing expert without the 1cc requirement or even extra stages being finished. there are also marathon modes for each, which while not as wild as the ultimate course from deluxe, still are great additions. stages in both have been rebalanced, with the original layouts being included in a special purchaseable game mode. overall the rebalances were really well done: probably the most notable for me was Arthopod, a stage from smb2 that was complete bullshit originally and has now been made less annoying to deal with by far by removing gaps. virtually all of smb1 master was rebalanced as well, with Stamina Master getting a much-needed nerf to its infamous middle 1x1 moving tile balancing section (which balances out the more difficult first and last sections a bit). the other master changes honestly make some of the stages like Dodge Master and Dance Master trivial, but I don't really mind considering that the requirements for obtaining master are less restrictive now. other changes are more subtle, such as adding curved inlets to the titular launchers in Launchers (which honestly don't help very much) or an extra 30 seconds for the timer in Exam-C (which helps an insane amount).

there's a story mode identical to that of smb2, with truncated cutscenes in mime retelling the lovably bizarre plot of the original. personally I don't mind this change, as the story isn't really that important or complicated. I'm a little puzzled at why they didn't use the expanded worlds of deluxe's story mode, but it's not a big difference either way. as I mentioned prior stages that were changed have their original versions present in a standalone mode, and all of the deluxe-exclusive levels have a mode as well. playing through them all back to back, I have to say I still like them for the most part, as there's a lot of great ideas present (maybe one too many maze stages tho). there are also a few modes that remix the levels. golden banana mode is probably the best of these, where you need to collect every banana in a stage in order to clear it. this actually changes how the stages need to be approached quite a bit. the opposite of this is dark banana mode, where any banana touched instantly causes a game over. while the idea is good in concept, they're designed for a level of precision I just don't think exists in this game. finally there's reverse mode, where certain levels start you at the goal and make you work your way back to the starting point. the best level of these is Free Throw, where they make you throw yourself backwards onto the starting platform in a cool twist. the others mainly just require you to tread the same path as whatever the hardest goal is, so they come across as rather redundant.

minigames are also back in full force, with all of the features from deluxe retained to my knowledge. the big thing that turned me off here was the lack of alternating multiplayer, which even in a patch could be such a trivial addition. I bought this on ps4, where I don't really have extra controllers to work with, and it's frustrating that my roommates and I can't play monkey target or billiards by passing the controller around. overall the minigames seem to be pretty much as I remember them from the old games, with all the customization you could want to boot. I can't really pretend something like monkey race isn't scuffed as fuck, but they were in the originals as well so it's pretty faithful. all that I played other than monkey target look very solid... monkey target is honestly a "Made in Dreams"-ass game here, but it's so annoying in its original form that I'll let it slide here. most of the other games here I can just experience via yakuza or really don't care that much about, beyond perhaps trying to go for completion later down the line.

I also wanted to briefly mention the art design for both the menus and the levels, which are absolutely phenomenal. beyond some UI nitpicks I mentioned earlier I think the interface is very clear and clean, and feels like an accurate translation from the older games to a modern style. the world designs are really gorgeous, and blew me away with their accuracy. I really would not have thought a quickie project for RGG would capture the style and detail of the original worlds so well in HD, but they absolutely nailed it here. the banana blitz-era monkey designs I'm not crazy about but they do the job fine, and the cutesy redesigns of kiryu and beat are so fun; I still can't believe they're in the game!! the music has all been remixed as well, though I personally think they're pretty middling overall. the original soundtracks are legendary so I definitely didn't expect them to live up here, but they really veer into tacky EDM territory more often than I would like.

finally, I wanted to bring up the accessibility options, which are much-needed additions for newer fans looking to try the series out. you can use helper functions in each level to double the timer as well as open up a very useful slow motion mode for the cost of receiving no points upon clearing the level and disabling the extra stages for the course. I messed around with these a bit and I think they do a good job of covering the bases for someone learning a given stage. if stage is too taxing, you can also pay 2000 banana coins to mark it as cleared. which is a hefty toll but honestly worth it when poking around in the special modes to skip annoying levels that would take a lot of practice. finally, the jump from banana blitz has been added in as a purchaseable item, and surprisingly it doesn't void trophies/extra stuff like the helper functions (though it can't be used in ranking mode). when watching trailers I thought I wouldn't touch this at all but I decided to try it out when struggling on Warp and wow did it really save my ass. because the jump wasn't present in the original games, it opens up a lot of ways to break previously challenging level design, and honestly that became the most fun part of the game for me at points. skipping all of the tiring maze levels from smb2 feels so great, and I even managed to pull off a strat equivalent to the speedrun route for Stamina Master by jumping at the peak of the first ramp. it honestly made the final worlds of story mode a lot more enjoyable given how many frustrating and gimmicky levels are contained within it (they were bad in the original too, not just this game). when I eventually get around to smb2 master and master extra, I'm sure I'll have fun finding ways to break levels that originally took me dozens of lives to beat.

I think I've exhaustively covered every aspect of this game that I've played so far... and now that I've finished this giant wall of text I can finally move onto some other games. I don't think I've wasted my time with this game at all, and I'm glad this package exists, but man does it really not scratch that itch that the original games do. perhaps an engine on par with the original simply isn't capable of happening without the original source code available... but at the end of the day I'll still have the original games to return to when I really want to experience monkey ball as it originally felt.

Why tf does this game have so much content packed in it’s insane

This game is just really great, a huge love letter to the monkey ball series and a great way to experience previous Monkey Ball titles imo. Sure the physics aren’t quite what they were originally, but they’re still fun and super bouncy and addictive so as far as I’m concerned I still had a lot of fun with this. 2’s story mode has a lot of highlights and surprisingly not a whole lot of frustration (well, outside of the clock tower level personally. That entire level and all stages associated with it can go dive under a tractor for all I care). On top of Monkey Ball 2’s campaign, you can the stages and challenge modes from 1 2 and deluxe with all different difficulty styles (which is, you know, a lot), a heap of cosmetic options including additional playable characters like Sonic, a heap of party games that all feel great to play apart from Monkey Targets for obvious reasons, sure the story mode presentation could’ve been better and sure the physics could be tweaked some more to deliver something even better, but for what this is, this was a lot of fun to play.

Also you can play as lil Kazuma Kiryu in a lil ball. The dame da ne man himself!

If I only played the main game, this would probably land at a 3.5-4/5 for me. The physics changes from the original are noticeable, but all the levels are various levels of workable, and the extra modes (and jump!) are a nice addition to the remake.

Unfortunately, the remade minigames really suffer from the physics changes (Monkey Baseball in particular) and even the ones that mostly made it unscathed just didn't feel as satisfying as their originals. Doubly unfortunate, I'm a sucker completionist who felt obligated to do all the challenges, and the capricious nature of a few of the games (Monkey Golf, I'm looking at you) really highlight how rough some of these games came out of the remake. I wish I could split the ratings for the minigames vs. the main levels, but as a whole, I'm left a bit wanting for something more faithful.

The controls certainly feel a whole lot more rough around the edges than they did on the GameCube eras, but it's not like I expected much else given the direction of the Super Monkey Ball games ever since. I think what's really keeping me from loving this in the same way that I did the zaniness of the first two Super Monkey Ball games just comes down to the fact that while it's definitely a lot more graphically pleasing - there's another aspect that just feels missing and perhaps it's just the fact that the way the stage tilts around only makes a chunk of the game feeling like you're controlling a rock.

And to a certain extent, that's always been the point of Super Monkey Ball. You're struggling to keep your balance like you're actually rolling around, which has always been the greatest charm of these games while they were very minimalist and inexpensive. But ever since these games got bigger, they just lost a lot of that.

Either way, I'm just a sucker for the stages that I loved playing when I was a kid so being able to revisit them as an adult felt really nice.

An absolute travesty of a game for hardcore OG Super Monkey Ball fans.

Shit wrong with the main mode:
1. The physics and camera are completely off. Especially the camera is REALLY bad. Who thought it would be a good idea to be able to control the camera? AND HAVE THE CAMERA SNAP? WTF?
2. No multiplayer.
3. Sound effects are terrible. Think of the rolling sound effects, monkey sound, etc.
4. Visual effects. No particles for when you move fast, so you have almost no visual clue about how fast you're going. The goalposts aren't unique to the worlds anymore. The aesthetics of Master 2 and Advanced ex 5 are completely nerfed. The master world feels fucking empty because of the stupid decision to not put the banana temple where the goalpost is. No monkey face on the mini-map, instead just a lame arrow. ETC
5. The remixes are really low effort. The originals were made in the early 2000's and they had better sound design, arrangements and mixes.
6. You can't kill yourself easily in expert 20, cause of the bad physics. And more of these kinds of examples.
7. You can't change the size of the mini-map anymore.

Shit wrong with the party games:
1. Extra characters like Sonic are not playable.
2. All party games feel insanely unpolished. Try playing this Monkey Target and then immediately playing the originals like we did. It's such a jarring contrast in quality.
For example: After winning a fight in the original monkey fight: A cool tune starts, the character does a victory pose, you are able to still punch (even punch the camera away lol) and then flies up with a cool sound effect and it fades to white. The Banana Mania one sucks ass compared to it. Just compare it.
When getting a score with bowling the music just continues during the announcement? Like wtf?
3. The party games play way more clunkier than the Gamecube counterpart. Actually insane.

General polish:
1. You can't skip to the particular stage you want in practise mode quickly. You have to scroll through all stages. Which is just tedious. Just make a next page button lol
2. No monkey voices when selecting a character. Just a lame announcement. Probably cause they don't have voices for the extra characters...
3. THE GAME LAGS A LOT. PLAYING SUPER MONKEY BALL WITH OCCASIONAL LAG IS JUST UNPLAYABLE.

Overall, as an avid Monkey Ball fan and speedrunner I am utterly disappointed with this game. The only redeeming quality I can mention are how the floors look themselves. And the menu theme is pretty good too. The developers don't understand. We wanted a new SMB game which had the physics and gameplay of the original 2. We didn't get this. R.I.P.!

the day is June 15, 2021. I was watching the Nintendo Direct from that year’s E3 when all of a sudden, I saw AiAi from cult classic SEGA franchise, “Super Monkey Ball” appear on the screen. immediately I go “PLEASE LET THIS BE SMB1 and 2 REMASTERS”, lo and behold the montage of 1, 2, and Deluxe starts playing followed by remastered footage of the levels from those games and I proceed to start screaming and going bananas like an excited child who just encountered their first Shiny Pokémon (in the inside of my head of course).

yeah I was pretty hyped for this game. after the later games went into experimental directions and the controversial decision of releasing Banana Blitz onto modern platforms, it was glorious to find out that we were getting Banana Mania with all the original levels and a bunch of other stuff.

everything is here, Story Mode from SMB2, Challenge Mode and Practice Mode from SMB1 & 2, all the party games, and even the Deluxe stages which were given their own mode. on top of that, you also got Original Stage Mode, which features a good portion of levels that got nerfed in this game in their original form, Reverse Mode that features levels that have the starting and ending points switched, Golden Banana Mode, where you have to collect all the bananas in the level to complete it, and Dark Banana Mode, where you’re not supposed to touch ANY of the bananas in the level. you can get these modes buy spending in-game points at the shop which not only has these modes, but accessories you can put on your monkey, different stylized balls for the monkeys, other SEGA characters like Sonic, Tails, Beat, and Dame Da Ne guy, and even a jump button (if you’re a coward or you like speedrunning). lastly you got the Ranking Challenge, where you can compete to get the quickest time in Challenge Mode or get the highest score in the party games. You can even race other people’s ghosts Mario Kart style so you can learn all the cool shortcuts and techniques the game has to offer.

okay let’s talk about that story, and unfortunately it’s barely a story. Story Mode has the same wacky story as in Super Monkey Ball 2. normally this wouldn’t be a problem as I love SMB2’s cutscenes, but they butchered the story HARD. the story is now told through a comic book-like style and just looks embarrassingly cheap, like they didn’t even have the budget to make it look professional. the worst part is that there’s no dialogue in these cutscenes AT ALL. due to this, if you’ve had no experience with the original story mode, you’ll have no idea what the heck’s going on during the entirety of the mode. gameplay wise it’s become simplified as well. In each world in SMB2, you were able to choose whichever level in any order you wanted to, Deluxe added onto this by including SMB1 levels and keeping the level requirement at 10. unfortunately you’re forced to go through all the levels in a preset order, which kills the variety and replayability of that mode. it tries to make up for this by letting you take on optional missions during these levels, but personally I’d prefer if they just stuck to how they originally did the mode. you also can’t play SMB1 levels in Story Mode, so that sucks. but hey you least you’re not restricted to only using AiAi so I guess that’s cool?

Challenge Mode is pretty great though. unlike Deluxe which combined each of the two games' difficulties which made them go on for much longer than needed, here they’re separated by SMB1 Challenge Mode and SMB2 Challenge Mode, which means they don’t end up overstaying their welcome. a big difference however is that unlike the originals, there is no life system as that has been removed. a controversial decision for sure, but personally I don’t mind too much. the later levels straight up become MBT (Monkey Ball Torture), so not having to worry about using up lives and continues can be a good thing. I think everyone would be more welcoming of this decision if there was also an option to play with the life system like the old fashioned arcade way. since bananas don’t give out lives anymore, you’ll be using them to get points that you can spend in the in-game shop, so they’re not completely useless (at least for a good while). the Extra levels are also just given to you in this mode, as long as you aren’t using the Helper Function (Easy Mode) on your way there. the Extra levels can be pretty big difficulty spikes to any newcomers so be very wary of that.

so about those new modes, they’re neat. Original Stage Mode and DX Mode are my personal favorites. Challenge and Story Mode nerfed some of the levels (some needed a nerf, some not so much) so in this mode you can go through most of these levels in their original horribly unbalanced forms and I love it. DX Mode has you go through all the levels that were added in Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. personally they’re a bit less interesting than the SMB1 and 2 levels, but I’m really happy that they’re here and they were kind enough to give them their own exclusive mode. Reverse Mode has you complete levels backwards, with you starting at where the goal post was supposed to be, and the goal post being moved to your original starting point. this one’s neat, not much to say about this one but it’s a fun time. Golden Banana Mode is….ehhhh? you have to collect all the bananas in the level to complete it, which is fine for most of the smaller levels (Strata moment), but you can bet for sure a lot of them are going to include the BIGGEST levels the game has to offer. completing the big ones is pretty tedious from my experience. Dark Banana Mode is difficult, but not in a fun way imo.
here you have to reach the goal and avoid touching any of the dark bananas or else you’ll get an immediate game over. to be honest, I didn’t really find this fun to go though. I get why others like this mode, but for me and probably a lot of other people as well, it just isn’t my cup of tea.

so those party games….they’re certainly party games. all the party games from SMB1 and 2 are back and unlocked from the very beginning. the party games are controlled a bit differently than they did originally. for the most part you won’t really notice it, well except for the obvious one, Monkey Target. as someone who hasn’t played the original Monkey Target for a good while, I immediately knew someone was off with it in this game. you have to be very delicate with how you move your monkey in this one, unless you want to end up falling in the water. that is not at all how Monkey Target worked originally. it’s possible to get used to it and avoid things like that from happening, but overall it’s just not as fun to play, which is unfortunate since a ton of us Super Monkey Ball fans give Monkey Target such high praise. like I said though, the other party games still play fine (except for Baseball, Soccer, and Tennis they were always mid) so you don’t have to worry about them.

okay let’s start off with the misc. positives and negatives. starting with positives, the main game looks beautiful! all these cool worlds have been remade in HD and they turned out great! the decision to add other unlockable SEGA characters is a nice touch. they didn’t have to do that, but they did and that makes me happy. Ranking Challenge is also a delight, as this game was made for speedruns so it’s really cool how you can compete with other people’s times online. having the option to use the monkey’s original designs as well as having most of the original music gives me a big smile on my face, but the way to do so doesn’t, which now leads me to the negatives. the original monkey designs and music, as well as some exclusive characters can only be obtained by purchasing DLC with real money. why???? you can already unlock stuff in the game with in-game currency, so why are some of these stuff exclusive to paid DLC? the classic skins and music are one thing, but the fact you need to pay real money to get characters that control exactly the same as the ones you already have is dumb and inexcusable. while I loved how the main game looked, the party games don’t look as good. it feels they had the A team for the main game while the B team was relegated to the party games. Monkey Target’s water in particular just looks….off. the party game music from the first Super Monkey Ball is missing, as well as the bonus stage music from the first game as well, how did they forget them? lastly the monkey voices and ball sound effects sound annoying and lame. nothing against the current monkey’s voice actors/actresses, but the original voices just had more charm to them. the ball’s underwhelming sound effects are pretty terrible though, why didn’t just stick with the original ball sound effects? you can even hear a small portion of the original ball SFX in Monkey Baseball what is going on?!?

okay listen, I’ve been very critical with how this remake was handled, but I truthfully really do love this game. I want to see this game succeed, as well as the Super Monkey Ball franchise as a whole, so I kinda got to be critical so the franchise can improve itself for the foreseeable future. does this completely replace the originals? no, but if you can’t get any easy access to the originals, then this is definitely a worthy purchase, there’s lot of stuff to do here. I’d recommend you get the PC version if you can. the modding scene for this game fixes tons of problems that I mentioned earlier, especially since SEGA hasn’t updated this game since release date (c’mon SEGA don’t tell me you’ve already abandoned this game?) so please, purchase the PC version and let SEGA know we still care about Super Monkey Ball.

keep the Super Monkey Ball spirit alive everyone :^)

When I say munky, you say cheez!
When I say munky, you say cheez!
Munky! (Cheez!)
Munky! (Cheez!)


Munky to the cheez to the cheez to the munky!
Cheez to the munky to the munky to the cheez!
Munky to the cheez to the cheez to the munky!
Cheez to the cheezy munky's chunky chunk of cheez!!

(monkey sounds)


Munky munky cheez, munky munky munky cheez! (x3)
Munky munky cheez, munky munky fuckin' cheez!!


When the cheez is too chunky, the munky gets funky!
Smother brother's uncle in your mother's sunken trunk!
When a punk sees a munky gettin' spunky like a drunk
Duck in a bunker full of junk and funny skunks!
No wonder you're dumber than a munky dunker's uncle
And your muppet fuckin' grunkle's got a hunk under his buckle!

(more monkey sounds)


Brass munky, crown munky, gold munky too
Nobody know what the munky gonna do
But what the munky may see, munky may do
That's why they say the munky see the munky do
When you see munky do, munky see, munky do
You see the munky and the munky see you
When you see munky do, munky see, munky do
But what the munky see is the munky go BOOM! (explosion)


Munky go boom, munky go boom (explosions throughout)
Munkys go booms, munkys go boom
Munky go boom, all the munkys go boom!
Munky go boom, ALL THE MUNKYS GO BOOOOOOM!!! (louder explosion)
(even more monkey sounds)
Munky go boom, munky munku go boom (more explosions)
Munky go boom, munky munky go boom
Munky fuckin' munkys go munkys fuckin' boom
Munky go boom, ALL THE MUNKYS GO BOOM! (even louder explosion)

Monkey Ball was a series that I have been casually wanting to return for awhile now. I've never been a mega die hard fan of the games but I had a lot of fun with them as a kid and I've felt like it would be nice to replay them every so often or to get new ones that follow the design philosophy of the original trio of games. That essentially is what Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania sets out to do; and for the most part it manages to succeed in a way that I'm pretty happy with.

So going into this I had a bit of a different expectation as to what Banana Mania was compared to what it actually was. The only trailers I saw for this game was the E3 announcement trailer as well as all the character reveal trailers that they did, but based on the initial announcement and how they made it a point to show that everything was coming from Monkey Ball 1, Monkey Ball 2, and Monkey Ball Deluxe I had assumed that this was a remake of the trilogy entirely as is in a similar style to how the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy was remade and not what we ended up getting, which was a remix of the three games into one game that uses levels and elements of each game. Personally I would have preferred what I assumed we were getting, but that is ultimately on me and not the game so I can't really hold it against the game. I did think it was important to note though due to how reviews will inherently be biased and what I thought would be nice versus what we got will definitely color this a bit.


That being said there are quite a few really nice changes that this being a remix of the first three games instead of straight up one to one remakes of them. One of them is the aforementioned characters that have been added, which while not adding any inherent gameplay changes does just work as a nice cosmetic thing. Seeing a little chibi Kiryu Kazuma rolling around in a ball collecting tauriner bottles or seeing Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog collecting rings in a ball is fun and adds a level of fun to it at the absurdity of these characters getting rolled around in balls. Also the rate at which you are given the currency used to unlock these characters as well as new modes is really quick and makes it feel like you're constantly gaining something and moving up even when you fail, which is a really nice feeling in my opinion.

The other main thing that I thought was nice is how despite this game being an amalgam of the other games they still left each game's challenge mode as its own thing so you could play through a collection of challenge levels from each game if you wanted too. It's nice that even if its all one game now they still left options to keep the contents from the different games in order for people who wanted to replay levels from a specific game if they choose too. It's a neat thing that I do kind of wish was how the main mode was handled as well but at the same time I do understand why they didn't do this for the main game as well.

This one is more of a complaint from someone who put way too much time into Monkey Ball deluxe as a kid, but the physics in this game are noticeably off compared to how they were in the originals and I am not really a fan of it. I'm not sure how best to describe this so the best I can really do is to give an example. There is a level you will see in deluxe's challenge mode that has you stuck in what is essentially a bowl inside of a much bigger bowl. You are supposed to keep going around the edges of the small bowl until through hitting the corners you gain enough momentum to go over the top into the larger bowl, where you do the same thing again but needing less speed to reach the goal. This is made significantly harder in this game since you do not gain or maintain as much height from bumping into the edges of the bowl and can get stuck in the small bowl much easier than in deluxe. I pulled out the original game and set up my original Xbox to test it and it is noticeably less functional due to how the game registers and calculates its physics in the Banana Mania version. This is also noticeable in the minigames that make a return from previous games, in that a number of them do not work correctly due to this change as well. Which is unfortunate but I was never big into the minigames anyway so it doesn't impact me too much.

Another thing that I'm not sure how I feel about with this is how it balances its level curve. The main mode of the game is a mix of the main modes from one, two, and deluxe which is nice since we still get all the levels from those games even if its not in the original format, but the way they're ordered in this game leads to having really random and unnecessary feeling difficulty spikes in each world. The original games definitely had difficulty spikes and tough levels, but those were at least ramped up at a more even pace whereas here you can have one of the easiest levels in the game back to back with one of the hardest here in Banana Mania. It isn't the most egregious thing since I would have had to do these levels eventually, but it did kind of break up the pace of the game in a really odd way that I didn't really enjoy.

Despite everything I've said up to this point though, its still Monkey ball at its core almost exactly how you might remember it. The gameplay might take a bit to adjust to if you are intimately familiar with the original trilogy of games, but for newcomers to the series this would most likely not be noticeable as most stages will still function fundamentally the same. The game is still incredibly fun but challenging and makes you really try to master its gameplay to finish its puzzlebox style levels. Sure I would have overall prefered we got full remakes/remasters of the first three games but I do think there is merit to remixing the games into something entirely new like this and I do appreciate the wave of nostalgia I got from seeing a ton of the old levels from the first few games that I remember so fondly.

Ultimately, I do still really like Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. It's goofy, its creative, it's frustrating as hell, but it's classic monkey ball. I'm glad this remix of the first several games exists and I hope that the monkey ball team getting this opportunity to recreate the original games means that an original monkey ball based on the first three is in the works coming up. This game has a really strong basis going forward for the series with it using the best of the original games as well as adding a lot of cool new features like multiple unlockable characters from other sega properties. I had fun with this game and I hope you do too if you decide to pick it up.

8/10

It's Super Monkey Ball Deluxe with the new artstyle and a lot of extra fat. There are quite a few minute differences between BM and its source material, but the notable changes include a movement and camera system which don't appreciate small, minute movements and make it hard to move completely straight forward without veering to the side. I also expected a free-cam stage view. I had no reason to expect this, but I did, and it's not in the game. I appreciate that Banana Mania is high resolution, visually appealing, and separated its Challenge Mode into well-portioned level setlists, because Deluxe's setlists could go on for hours, and I like completing a Monkey and a Ball in one session. Despite its corporate pop artstyle, BM feels ever so slightly cheap in a couple places: guest characters provide no auditory exclamations whatsoever, and, despite having a large menu, the options are rather shallow, particularly camera options and control stick deadzone options. I couldn't find a setting which makes the camera feel comfortable, whether I'm moving it with the right stick, or the game is. Control stick deadzone issues also caused some problems at first, preventing me from going top speed while moving diagonally, making 8-7 "Warp" and 10-6 "Crazy Maze" unwinnable, but I found a fix in Steam controller settings. Overall, it all right. It tasteless and lukewarm. It remind me of me beer, which I like better. Seriously, play a GCN monkey ball back to back with Banana Mania, and you'll feel that the original games have incredibly responsive controls. There's no substitute for good physics... especially when that's all the game is.