There is no reason to play this over the GameCube versions. If you've been playing Deluxe your whole life, you've been doing yourself a disservice. There's even a mod now for SMB2 that adds in the Deluxe-exclusive levels.

On Xbox, the game is almost passable. There are some graphical effects missing, but the real issue is that the controls are much less precise and accurate than on GC. This is not because of the controller, it's a fundamental problem with the game code itself. You can use any controller, even a GC one, and it will still feel worse compared to the original versions.

Don't even bother with the PS2 port. It has all the same issues above, runs at 30fps, and has loading times between levels. It's awful.

What about Banana Mania? That has gameplay issues of its own that I explain in my review of that game. Just stick with SMB1 and 2 on GC for the best experience.

Holy shit I fucking love every single thing about this game. This is tied with super monkey ball one as my favorite monkey ball game. This was our most favorite fucking game to play on the old ass ps2 that we had growing up at the day care I went to my whole childhood. We would just spend hours and fucking hours playing this game, we couldn’t get enough of it even with how rage inducing it was. I really liked how deluxe combined the levels from one and two and added its own exclusive levels (I found these ones to be my favorite). I have so many good and bad memories with this game, it holds such a special place in my heart. This game is the reason why I love the monkey ball series so much in the first place and definitely made me who I am today. It pushed me to spend hours upon hours playing monkey ball one to perfect my skill and technique until I was able to clear expert on it and eventually reach expert extra (still trying to reach master to this day). I can’t wait to get a copy of this game again now that I have my own ps2.

i have almost definitely sullied my experience with this game by playing the PS2 version which is notorious for how ass it is compared to the OG xbox version. so many loading screens, which is a bummer and a hell of a step down when you're used to the immediacy of the original gamecube versions. the combination of levels from 1 and 2 makes for a hefty challenge when it comes to the arcade mode, one which is not great given how imprecise a PS2 analog stick is compared to a GC analog stick. furthermore, the new stages they've added into deluxe are just kinda... bad? like they're all massive and gimmicky and have a lot of unused space on them. i might come back to this on the original xbox one day, but for now i can only rate what i played. and i did not enjoy it that much. it is fundamentally still fun because of how strong its predecessors were, but fails to add much of anything interesting or new. minigames are fun tho.

Super Monkey Ball Deluxe is essentially both the first and second Monkey Ball games crammed onto a single disc for both the PS2 and Xbox and it's just as wonderfully delightful as you'd expect it to be crammed with all sorts of fiendish levels to tackle.

Nothing pumps up the heart more like seeing Aiai in his monkey ball just teetering ever so close towards that goal, especially with the much more trickier levels which'll have you on the edge.

Combine that with all of the fun party games and you have a cracking little title that's definitely worth a look (although you will have to put up with rather long load times with the PS2 release).