Super Monkey Ball
U.S. Release Date: November 18, 2001
The GameCube Archives Score: 8.0/10
After I bought my GameCube and a copy of
Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, I was flat broke, living off of wheat bread and large cups of water (you can trick your stomach into thinking it is full!)in my dingy college apartment. That's what friends are for, though. During that time, around the point I 100%'d
Rogue Squadron II, Jon, my jolly giant of a friend, called me one afternoon and said he had a surprise for me. He showed up with a Gamestop bag...containing
Super Monkey Ball.
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| The first Sega game for a Nintendo console...and also the first Nintendo game sponsored by Dole Bananas? |
Super Monkey Ball was a budget title, though still a generous gift from a friend with no more resources than I had. According to a recent
EDGE interview with
Monkey Ball game director, Toshihiro Nagoshi, he wanted to prove he come make a fun game "
with minimum resource, minimum time and minimum budget." Ironically enough,
Super Monkey Ball is the cheap gift that keeps on giving, and giving, and giving.
The concept is simple, and reminiscent of my childhood favorite,
Marble Madness. The player must take a monkey in a see-through ball (you can choose from a balanced monkey, a tiny, fast one that's hard to control, a big slow one, and a lighter, smaller one just a bit bigger than the tiny one), and try to roll it across a multitude of courses, from the start to the goal line. However, the player does not in fact control the monkey, but the courses themselves. The player must use the GameCube controller joypad to continuously tilt each course (in any direction), which causes their monkey to roll. Courses exist a million miles in the sky, so one small over-tilt, and it's off the side to certain doom.
The game's courses start out as simple inclines with bumpers and moving segments, and morph into rail-less obstacle courses from hell. The floating platforms they take place upon go from tennis court width, to tennis ball width. There are also bananas spread across each level. In true, classic video-game fashion, get 100 bananas, and earn an extra life. Run out of lives and continues, and it's game over. There's a "Beginner's Mode" with 10 courses, an "Advanced Mode" with 30, and an "Expert Mode," featuring 50 that were surely designed by Satan.
That's it. That's the game.
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| Monkey in a ball. Get monkey to goal. Don't let monkey die. Maybe get monkey bananas. |
Actually, it's not. Sega's Nagoshi truly had a chip on his shoulder when he created this game. Sega had just gone out of the hardware business, after ceasing production on the Dreamcast the previous year (R.I.P. Dreamcast, 1999-2001), and Nagoshi really seemed focused on proving that Sega could still make great games for other consoles.
I suck at
Super Monkey Ball. I can beat Beginner's Mode with a few beads of sweat on my forehead, Advanced Mode with great difficulty, but I can't even breach the second half of Expert Mode. It cracks up when I'm randomly bad at a game. There's no rhyme or reason to it. My gaming skills overall (and likely only due to experience) are above average, but every now and then a game comes along that I just suck at. Nagoshi, who insured that
Super Monkey Ball included spot-on controls and a fair difficulty curve, still anticipated that I would suck at his game, and included a multitude of extra modes to keep me busy accordingly.
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| I definitely died about three seconds after taking this picture. |
Some of these have to be unlocked, simply by earning points while playing the regular game (even a lousy player like myself can do it). These are the "mini-games," which include the addictive Monkey Bowling, the swanky Monkey Billiards, and the "holy cow, I'm so bad at this game, my pre-teen nephews and son can beat me at it" Monkey Golf. A lot of thought went into these modes, and they play quite well, particularly the bowling game, whose mechanics are so solid, it could be a game unto itself. These still hold up for multiplayer fun, as the aforementioned kids had a blast beating their dad/uncle at a video game for once. Won't happen again, juniors! I'd say these are great party games (and they are!), but
Super Monkey Ball also comes with three other bonus modes, and those are actually called "Party Games." These come available from the start, and include Monkey Race, which includes an entire circuit of race courses and three available racing speeds, Monkey Fight, which reminds me a little of Dreamcast classic
Power Stone, and is exactly what it sounds like, including some monkey-enhancing power-ups. Last, but not least, there's Monkey Target, where the player gets to roll down (and then up!) an enormous ski-ramp to launch themselves into the air, where they will float and position themselves to land on point-zoned targets. It never gets old.
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| Okay, Dole, we get it, you sell bananas, and you helped pay for this game. Hmm...I need to go to the store, and buy some bananas. |
All of these, excluding the two-player Billiards, can be enjoyed by up to four-players at a time. This game is party dynamite. It was well-worth the $19.99 plus tax Jon payed for it then, and well-worth whatever you pay for it now (*checks EBay as of 08/16/18 to make sure this statement is still valid...HOORAY, IT IS!*).
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| I wasn't planning on selling it, anyway. |
Super Monkey Ball's production values are classic early 00's Sega. The graphics are bright and arcade-like, which is of course because this game was originally developed for Sega's legendary NAOMI arcade board. With a bright, bouncy, early 00's techno-soundtrack that my Dreamcast-experienced son described as sounding "...just like the music from (the much underrated)
Sega Marine Fishing,"
Super Monkey Ball is one of the most Dreamcast-esque non Dreamcast games ever made. It's also a bit of a false promise from Sega--after this, it looked like they would go on producing quality titles forever, just as it did when they had their own hardware--in reality, they'd make a few more original titles, and then pump out so many subpar 3D Sonic the Hedgehog games, many people would forget they ever made anything else. Here's hoping for a
Super Monkey Ball-led renaissance!
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| C'mon, Sega, dive deep down in your monkey sub, and bring us back some hits. |
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