How I leaked Sega's new Super Monkey Ball game

[Music] all right let's get this out of the way first I am beyond excited to exclusively reveal that for the first time since 2012 Sega is currently developing a brand new unannounced Super Monkey Ball game now I have a lot more details to share with you about this unannounced game including an interview with somebody involved in the project but in order for that to make sense I need to explain how I came across this info first the backstory last year I put together a short documentary about my hunt for the anonymous man who voiced the announcer in the original Super Monkey Ball games you can watch that video by clicking right up here now nobody knew who that voice belongs to he was not found anywhere in the Monkey Ball credits and all we had to go on were internet rumors anyways long story very short one quick trip to Japan later and I finally found the guy a voice actor living in Tokyo by the name of Brian Matt ready go now when I say nobody knew who this voice was I mean nobody not the fans of Monkey Ball not any of my contacts at Sega not even Brian himself and that might sound surprising but keep in mind brian has been working as a voice actor in Japan for decades doing multiple voice acting jobs every single week so it's understandable that one specific role he performed 19 years ago might not stick out in his memory at any rate once Brian heard the voice lines of Super Monkey Ball he was able to confirm that yes that was his voice and all the memories came flooding back so fast forward to 2020 in the time since we uncovered Brian's identity the man has really connected with the Super Monkey Ball community even just looking at the comments he's left on my youtube videos since that documentary was published it's clear that Brian was deeply touched to discover that this voice acting gig he took back in 2001 is still resonating with so many people all these years later the whole thing was just a feel-good story and I thought that the story ended there but it turns out that was just the beginning of my story with Brian C in March of this year I published another Super Monkey Ball video called the rise and fall of Super Monkey Ball which you can watch right up here in which I outlined the steep decline of monkeyballs quality after those first two games and the most fans of Monkey Ball this was not breaking news you can pretty easily draw a line between the first few Monkey Ball games which are these challenging pure minimalistic arcade platformer games and then everything that came after which with few exceptions was riddled with guardrails overly easy level design and loaded with tactile mechanics like a jump button enemy's character stats boss battles I don't want to repeat myself too much here I've gone it's in the other video but suffice to say somewhere along the line sega lost the plot when it came to Super Monkey Ball and for decades Monkey Ball fans have been clamoring for the games to return to their former glory now I don't like making negative videos and I wanted to end that video on a hopeful note so at the end I highlighted one specific man who could potentially write the ship Sega employee must sow chaaaa sake shidou sake who oversaw last year's remake of the notoriously mediocre Super Monkey Ball banana blitz has revealed in interviews that his favorite games in the series are Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 those first two in other words it appeared that for the first time in ages we had an Inside Man and a lie within Sega who understood what made Monkey Ball great to begin with now that was promising but equally promising was this a poll posted by the official Super Monkey Ball Twitter account asking fans quote what if we make a Monkey Ball next predictably that poll had two huge frontrunners people who want a remake of the first two games and people who want a brand-new Monkey Ball game still to be totally candid the possibility of a new monkey ball game in our day and age felt like a total long shot I mean after a decade and a half of disappointment it turns out it's a little hard to get your hopes up for anything that was until I got a very mysterious message from Bryan Matt it was March 6 2020 the day after I released my documentary about monkeyballs decline I had posted about my new video on Instagram and that evening I picked up my phone until the following message from Brian himself which with his permission I'll share with you now quote love it patience my little eye Ichan things will happen with a sweet little twist I'm excited and loved your video you have lit a fire of interest a while back and I thank you for that now to be honest I was equal parts excited and baffled by this message I had no clue what Brian could have meant by quote things will happen it sounded like he was hinting at something but Brian hadn't been the Super Monkey Ball announcer in nearly 18 years so what could he be talking about now around the same time Brian began posting cryptic messages to Instagram that were teasing well something in one post Brian said that quote something is in the works and another one screenshot of my documentary about monkey balls declined and added the caption quote don't give up on the monkey ball series you're going to be very surprised patience now a few Sega fan publications like Sega bits picked up on brands Instagram posts and ran with them as news stories but I still couldn't help but be skeptical about this it seems too good to be true I thought maybe Brian had been exaggerating that perhaps he'd been recording some monkey ball voice over on spec to try and get Sega's attention and get them excited about maybe including him in a theoretical future game someday in other words I thought Brian was going off on his own trying to generate hype for a new Monkey Ball project but Brian didn't stop posting about monkey ball this was not just one single throwaway comment it was a series of cryptic clues and messages that began to paint a really interesting picture eventually I could not contain my curiosity so in April I reached out to Brian and asked him point-blank what is going on here [Music] so I waited and waited and eventually I got a reply from Brian hello Nick sorry for the delay Saiga we have done one paid recording I did this with a female narrator but we are on hold right now the government here is a mess with yes no Olympics and yes no lockdown we will chat soon but that is all I can offer at this point let me know this email stunned me up until this point I had hesitated to believe that this could be real but according to Brian Sega had actually hired and paid him on at least one occasion to record voice work for a brand new super monkey ball game according to Brian there was a new Super Monkey Ball project in the works and most fascinating of all Sega had apparently sought the involvement of the original game's original announcer a man whose entire existence we had only managed to unearth a few months ago at this point I knew that I needed to speak to Brian directly so out of options and desperate for some sort of resolution I asked him for an interview he said yes now one quick note before we go into this interview as his standard Sega had Brian sign a NDA a nondisclosure agreement so you'll notice in this interview that Brian has to be pretty cautious about what info he can and cannot share now lucky for us Brian is an experienced voice actor who knows his way around NDA's having signed hundreds of them in the past but when it comes to this game he can only speak in vague generalities about what he knows which means it's going to be up to us to read between the lines and speculate about what these clues could mean got it okay good without further ado here's my interview with Brian [Music] hello hello but I just wanted to double check and make sure you're okay with the recording and all that yeah that's fine that's fine great cool well I I almost don't know where to start I think there have been little teases here and there but from the sound of things it sounds like you've been spending some time in the studio revisiting a a beloved I guess not a character but a beloved voice of beloved tone of voice so what can you uh give me updates for us like what do you been up to oh let me just say first of all I mean I think you're the one who opened up Pandora's box and really got this going again I think this is really exciting because it means that somebody somewhere at Sega was made aware that you were out there in the world that the original Monkey Ball announcer was still out there that our quest to find you was fruitful and I'd yeah it's just exciting that they're bringing back the original Monkey Ball announcer so what sort of lines have you been performing so far oh you detective you you never stop do you okay see here I can I can give you what I can give you without getting in trouble okay Raik one rank to rank three of course yeah this was the new one you could to take some this one advanced level one enhanced level one interesting advanced and enhance now this caught my attention right away anybody who's played the original Monkey Ball games is familiar with the four difficulty levels beginner advanced expert and master but enhanced was new but before I could even begin to wrap my head around what this enhanced thing was that was when Bryan dropped another major bombshell I do remember we went into modes and for example retro mode 5 retro retro mode for hang on a second retro mode retro is in classic Super Monkey Ball 1 into retro now let's break this down putting aside the fact that calling the original Monkey Ball games on the Gamecube retro makes me feel insanely old this is some incredibly exciting stuff this retro mode would mark the first time Sega actually acknowledged the huge gap between what Monkey Ball used to be and what it eventually became and the idea that there would be some sort of a throwback mode and a new monkey ball game is incredibly exciting to fans of the originals the other thing was the monetary or the point system and it was quite quite quite interesting it was like risk 100 coins Chris one gigabyte risk 5 gigabytes like this sort of thing what that is that is fascinating I I'm trying to figure out what that could possibly end up being the other one was this is really good we didn't say this 20 years ago they said are you sure this isn't a dream you had this sounds so bizarre no this was not a dream this is not a game at all yeah Wow sad emoji happy imagine excited you know like these kind of things I was it just a test or was it a take or sometimes we do takes and they use it like you said or they don't use it so I really don't have an idea on that one well that is either way it is that is fascinating all right so what about new characters well listen to this I know it always depends like a varies project a project but for this upcoming Monkey Ball project have you seen any gameplay yet like have you seen the game in motion or is it not that stage yet what I have seen so far we had different like you know different parts that we had already recorded and there was some things like you know doing some of the gamers some of the names now that we have like you know the rules and I remember carefully ok gamer gogo and you know we had some additions there and so I could see what gogo looks like and I could did a really nice presentation and it's not the actual game itself it's just snippets of footage that they've already completed that or they've already designed so and bear with me because we're viewing into rampant speculation territory here when Brian talks about the gamers I think what he actually means is players like play of playable characters okay so when he says go go what does go go mean well if we look at the naming conventions of other Monkey Ball playable characters most of them fall into that two syllable repeated sound pattern I I Mimi Gong Gong Yan Yan and so on so personally my theory gogo is a new playable monkey being introduced in this game and if we want to get really speculative look at this picture Brian posted from the recording studio last week at first blush the image appears to be about what's on the TV but if we look closely Brian has actually drawn a monkey on the sheet of paper in front of him now we know Brian has a penchant for dropping clues on Instagram so you have to wonder could this sketch be our first look at the character design for a go-go again take that with a grain of salt that is unabashed it's speculation from me but that's my theory now if you're like me the most exciting part of this so far has still been the retro mode stuff and as exciting as that is on its own talking to Brian a bit more it became clear that retro might not just be a mode in this new game it might extend to the game's entire philosophy and I guess lastly I'm do you have any idea what they might be thinking in terms of a name or a title for this game I think they're good actually go back to bringing the original and mix it with what we have now so I would just say stick with the good old days and well try to think of a a word that you could pick from the past I I think I might have already said one of the words already I have a feeling very very strong feeling because there's no title call for it but I get to see as many times as I said it I they're not gonna go to numbers again because the people that missed out 20 years ago Monkey Ball super monkey ball three you know well it's a good idea you know the hardcore fans like yourself understand that one and two or this and then everything on words was this yeah and so I think yeah their point to go with Super Monkey Ball and then one word and it's not gonna be a number they need to have something that translates over to over to cut the kana so I think that and then I don't know you know sports a Japanese market I do know one thing that they've not used any Japanese narrators or this one which is really interesting that is interesting all right so let's switch back into speculation mode what do we know about this title we know it is not a number so we can take names like Super Monkey Ball three off the table for now we know that the title is one word as in super monkey ball : blank we know that it must be a word that can be easily translated into katakana for the Japanese audience and lastly and perhaps most crucially it's a word that Brian has already said in this interview now that still leaves us with a lot of possibilities but how can we narrow this down well and this is a bit of detective work I think I'm proudest of if we rewind back to when Brian pulls up that script in his own coy way and makes eye contact with the cam if you look closely we can just barely make out three katakana characters at the bottom of the screen Rey toe and row I'll sound that out rat Toto what does that sound like to you because to me it sounds like retro in other words all signs point to the working title and perhaps the final title of this new super monkey ball game Super Monkey Ball retro which to me says this is a game about what Monkey Ball used to be [Music] now strap in because believe it or not there's even more first let's quickly recap what we know we know sega is developing a new super monkey ball game we know that it's working title seems to be Super Monkey Ball retro and we know that the game appears to be focused on recapturing the classic Super Monkey Ball gameplay that fans love best now even knowing all that there are still huge things about this game we don't know I think most pressingly what we don't know is is this a remake or is this actually a brand new game with brand new content is it gonna be all old stages from the old games or is it gonna be all brand new stages now if you'll permit me to speculate again for a second my suspicion is that it's both personally based on the title my guess is that the main game is going to be brand new stages while the retro mode is going to be remastered stages from Monkey Ball 1 2 and deluxe and perhaps others I mean think back to the poll sega ran last year virtually everybody who responded said they wanted either a remake of the first two games or a brand new monkey ball game this concept a new game with a mix of old and new levels that would satisfy both of these fans at once think sonic mania but for Super Monkey Ball now once again this is abject speculation nobody outside of Sega including Bryan has seen actual gameplay from this game yet but nonetheless I gotta say despite having never seen this game in motion this whole project is unbelievably exciting for more than a decade Monkey Ball fans have been clamoring for a return to this classic gameplay style and all the signs here seem to indicate that Sega has finally heard us and is setting out to make that exact game now despite all the info we were able to glean from that interview with Bryan I still walked away with one major question who was at the helm of this project whether or not this game is any good will in all likelihood come down to who is producing and directing it well the day after my interview with Brian he still managed to toss us one last breadcrumb once again via Instagram after we spoke Brian posted a screenshot from our interview with the description quote that part in the interview when you realize the detective at Babylonian snagged that info crying laughing emoji now the key is that beneath that Brian tagged a bunch of names Sega Sega games monkey ball super monkey a Oni production Sony glow ha official cheer of sake and then some pretty complex kanji now those first four are obvious I looked into the fifth one on e production and found that they're a Japanese talent agency the six named glow Han is the music producer who Brian recently befriended who's behind Super Monkey Ball remixes that keep showing up on famous rappers mixtapes like lil uzi very famous dex and more you can catch my interview with glo Han up here by the way now Sony I have no clue what that's doing on Bryan's posed I guess he could be hinting that the game is coming to PlayStation but from my conversation with Brian I really didn't get the sense that the platform for this game has been decided yet so it could be as simple as them recording the voice work at a Sony studio who knows either way it is inconclusive but these last two names these last two man bake these for me are the really exciting ones ok first at shirasu kiemce or at shiro sake em now if shiro Saki em sounds a little bit familiar to you think back to the beginning of this video remember the guy I told you about the guy within Sega who oversaw that banana blitz remake and prefers the original to monkey balls that dude's name was massaged your sake and sure enough the name on the account Shiro Saki M is must sow shura sake now as for the kanji at the end it is a name a first and a last name a man's name and that name is tashi Hiro Naga XI now anybody who watched my video about the downfall of Monkey Ball knows this name very well but if you don't Naga she is the creator of the Yakuza series and more critically he is the director of and the creator of the very first Super Monkey Ball game insanity [Music] this whole situation is a feel-good story for a ton of reasons not only are we getting our first real monkey ball game since 2012 and not only am i getting the honor of telling you about this games existence it really seems like this game involves both monkey balls biggest champion within Sega shirasaka son and the prodigal son and co-creator of Super Monkey Ball itself Naga she who I think I can say on behalf of all monkey ball fans Naga she if you want to come back and start working on monkey ball again we will welcome you back into the fold with open arms I mean these two guys among Sega's current roster of employees is basically the dream team of who you would want working on a new Super Monkey Ball game but it's also a feel-good story because dude they brought back Brian Matt somebody inside Sega cares enough that they followed the story of our hunt for the original Monkey Ball announcer and pulled the strings necessary to bring him back into the fold that fact almost more than anything else speaks volumes about the attention to detail Sega seems to be putting into this game bringing back this enthusiastic and Ematic man to reprise the announcer role for the first time in 19 years like that that is beyond fanservice now the one thing I'm struck by every time I talk to Brian between the first time we spoke in November to the impromptu Skype interview we did last year to this most recent conversation about this new game the the thing I'm always struck by is his passion I mean at the risk of over mythologizing Brian he really is a sincere warm energetic guy and it's genuinely touching to see how much he's embraced his newfound status as the voice of Super Monkey Ball I'm really really happy that you brought something up from 2001 wish you all the best with your subscribers and also future visits to Japan and as if that wasn't enough while I was recording this voiceover Brian threw us one last morsel a screen shot on Instagram that appears to be from the popular Japanese messaging app line messenger and the message reads as follows no sucky mess out ganbare a shirasaka son we're all rooting for you thanks again to Brian for the interview and if you enjoyed this video enjoyed this storytelling style or you're just interested in monkeyball stuff in general I invite you please subscribe to this channel this is just the beginning of my coverage of this game likewise if you're interested in more monkeyball content from me here are three Monkey Ball videos that I've put a ton of effort into over the past year that I think you might enjoy if you made it all the way to the end of this video but either way thank you for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Nick Robinson

Views: 948,924

Rating: 4.9526844 out of 5

Keywords: super monkey ball, super monkey ball 2, super monkey ball 3, super monkey ball retro, retro mode, interview, leak, exclusive, brian matt, gameplay, playstation, xbox, nintendo switch, xbox one, playstation 4, playstation 5, pc, steam, new monkey ball, SMB, 2020, 2021, E3 2020, voice actor, narrator, japan, sega, remake, remaster, remastered, sequel, banana blitz, banana splitz, smb2, smb3, gaming, documentary, logo, title, source, report

Id: gA4bjZm902c

Length: 22min 58sec (1378 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020