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.

Reviewed for Budgetgaming.nl

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania has largely become what was expected of it. The main game feels just as good as before, and the many unlockable extras and missions make Banana Mania the perfect game to play both for hours on end, as well as to start up in between for a handful of levels or missions. With the new controls of the party games and the questionable changes to the audio, the game misses the mark a bit, but that should certainly not spoil the fun. With Banana Mania, we have a really good Monkey Ball title in our hands for the first time in over fifteen years. Happy birthday, Super Monkey Ball!

Read the full review here (Dutch):
https://www.budgetgaming.nl/game-review/super+monkey+ball:+banana+mania+-+anniversary+edition_switch.html

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania makes me feel things. This was my first Monkey Ball game, and as an introduction to the franchise, it was... something. Starting with the positives, the game looks and sounds great. The visuals are stunning and all the remixes are absolute slappers. Most of the levels are at least decently fun, although a select handful of them made me feel like ripping my arm out of its socket (Soft Cream can suck the shit out of my ass). By far the worst thing about this game is the camera, though. It does an excellent job obscuring exactly what you need to see at all times, and the ability to control it with the Right Stick isn't worth much when the regular default camera fights with it all the time. I eventually just stopped bothering even trying to control the camera at all, which kind of defeats the purpose of having camera control in the first place if the game arguably handles better without it. All in all, this is definitely a Monkey Ball game for Monkey Ball fans, with a bunch of general improvements such as no more lives and a bunch of adjusted levels, and I'm interested to see where the series can go from here.

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 :^)

It's very strange that in a bunch of the toughest levels I completed in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania it felt like controlling the camera was almost more important than controlling the stage itself, and it's also weird that the story mode will have large spikes in difficulty nested between other fairly straightforward levels; I found myself wishing the levels were reordered so that they had something better resembling a difficulty curve.

That said the game was a bunch of fun. I think the levels that require intense precision are not very interesting and can land on the bad side of frustrating (any level that asks you to go in a straight line down a very thin path falls into this), but the levels that demand you wrap your head around what the physics engine is doing, that ask you to iteratively form a plan and execute it well, or that just present a fun little idea to engage with, are generally a blast. In a few different instances during my story mode playthrough I would get stuck on a level for 10 or 15 minutes only to find finally completing it felt very rewarding and like all my hard work had finally clicked perfectly into place.

So much missed potential with the Super Monkey Ball 2 story, the cutscenes were the SOUL of that mode. Now it's just a boring slideshow with dumb monkey noises.

The other mode has unlimited lives so the challenge is gone, therefore the replayability is affected heavily. There's no need to get better because you can just try again infinitely AND on top of that there's an easy cheat mode. Casuals really ruined gaming. I wouldn't mind if there was an easy cheat mode AND lives, but they really went and made it as easy as can be.

On top of that, a bunch of returning minigames are downgraded by a lot, most notably Monkey Target being just unplayable and unfun.

I'm only glad they finally listened and gave Monkey Ball fans what they wanted, even though it could have been so much better