One of the launch titles for the Nintendo Gamecube was Super Monkey Ball, a quirky game made by SEGA's Amusement Vision (F-Zero GX ring a bell?). It certainly was a niche success spawning a sequel Super Monkey Ball 2, with tons of new content. I recently had time to sit down and play the original game again, and it is a classic in its own right. It plays completely different from any other game and that is part of the charm behind this well crafted game.
The object of Super Monkey Ball is to roll a monkey in a ball to the goal and reach it before time runs out. While the concept of the game sounds like extremely odd, it plays out quite well. At the start you can select one of four monkeys to control in their own special balls, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. The main character is Aiai, the medium sized monkey who happens to be the most well balanced. Beginners should play as Aiai to get the basic controls down.
At the start of Super Monkey Ball, there are three options (or difficulties) in 1 Player Mode. The first, Beginner, offers ten courses to guide your monkey through and all are quite simple. In every course, your monkey has to collect as many bananas as possible, while reaching the goal as fast as possible. After reaching the goal, your monkey is awarded points based upon how many bananas you collect and how fast you complete the course. At the end of completing Beginners, the player is given a final score, which is added into the Player's overall score, which I'll talk about later. In Intermediate mode, there are 30 courses and each get increasingly harder. The Advanced mode is the hardest, offering 50 courses, with limited continues and some truly puzzling courses. Most will require several tries before completing. As a side note, same rules apply in gaining points for all three modes.
The points you gather in 1 Player Mode is used to buy minigames in multiplayer. There are six minigames to be bought in all and the majority are fun. There is Monkey Billards, Monkey Bowling, Monkey Target, Monkey Golf, . All are self-explanatory except for Monkey Target. In Monkey Target, the player must control their monkey into landing on the targets below, each forth a set amount of points. It is ideal to land on the areas with higher points, but trickier as things such as wind factor play an important role.
Graphically the game is not a technical breakthrough, but pleasant to look at. The backgrounds are suiting to the game's style of being "happy" and the courses look fine. The Monkey's roll realistically along the course and the ball spins when they move (I found it to be quite interesting). Everything is very simple looking, and that's ok because you aren't expecting a lot for this type of game when it comes to graphics. Sound is done well and the sound effects seem right. Some of the voices are annoying to hear after a long time playing the game, but not a big bother.
Completing the single player game may take awhile as it depends upon how skilful you are. It should take no more than 10 hours to complete and you may have more play time if you want to go back and play the courses again. Multiplayer mode is fun for quite awhile and is certainly not an add-on. It is an essential part of the gameplay and if you have a few friends, be sure to bring this game out. Overall this game is solid and is a Player's Choice title. It may not be anything revolutionary but it is quite fun to play.
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