How Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania Saved The Franchise | A Brief Retrospective

[Music] there is one thing that i'm clearly not doing enough of on this channel and that is talk about my love for super monkey ball these games have a really special place in my heart dude see look i have all this physical media to prove it it's not just that the original games were super good and i've been suckered ever since it's that as an entire series there's actually quite the interesting lineup here listen sega has now monopolized the mania title in gaming you know you make a bunch of controversial sonic games and then you publish sonic mania and save the day well the record is now two for two because as far as i'm concerned super monkey ball banana mania is exactly the thing the franchise needed obviously it is the release of banana mania that inspired me to take a look back at the entire series and you know what big shout outs to sega they provided me a review code for the pc as well as these switch versions of banana mania and man i am so happy between sonic colors ultimate and now monkey ball banana mania you guys got me good this holiday season alright i'm eating good this year but a lot of time has passed since the series first started a lot of you guys probably think oh yeah you know we got those two classic games a couple of mid-tier titles here and there and then banana mania happened no things are a little more dire than that so there are two distinct eras of the super monkey ball timeline there is the classic era with the monkey ball arcade game super monkey ball one and two on the gamecube and deluxe on ps2 and xbox and then everything else happened and oh boy this series took no time to get from the all-time great puzzle game status that it had to just oh no i imagine by now you're all familiar with the premise of super monkey ball you pick your adorable monkey of choice and you tackle a series of challenging obstacle course stages to go for your best times your best banana count go for secret exits really you can tackle these games any way you want and that is awesome when any game out there has a sick momentum-based physics system it really elevates things man this game feels so so good a casual run is really fun but then you take a look at what's possible with some people like the speedrun community getting their hands on this and oh oh my god are we playing the same game here and it is that combination of excellent physics with the great aesthetics that keep super monkey balls special it's not like there's any shortage of marble rolling games out there to choose from there's the core olympic games on the wii marble it up is a really fun one on the switch there's this indie game on steam called rolled out that's wearing its influence on its sleeve and that is really really cool but in my opinion nothing has quite been able to replicate the rush of a really well executed monkey ball level man this series man it started off so good dude and the party games those are fantastic too you would probably assume that these little sports minigames in a side menu for a puzzle game would be a bit of an afterthought but there are 12 unique party games to be played here specifically monkey ball 2 and they're all surprisingly really fleshed out and are just awesome just full stop monkey target is an obvious standout here this game has stood the test of time and it is a consistent treat for gaming with buddies or even solo it's so good the others though are no slouches baseball tennis golf man billiards all these modes all these modes are so good i will say though the story mode in game two yeah that was that was pretty weird the evil dr bad boon has taken all the bananas from jungle island and thanks to the hero squad of ai mimi baby and gongon performing a trippy and visually endangering dance ritual you progress through enough goal rings to stop his evil plans it's weird it's just a weird thing man you see in the original game as well as one of the side menus of monkey ball 2 there's just a series of levels based on difficulty you just plow through them arcade style it's a ton of fun but here there's a story with actual progression and there's also this one time where you see bad boone's feet thank you but i have said this many times by now man dumb shoehorn story modes and puzzle games are my jam and this is no exception i could just try to be the best at the time limit but i kinda also want to save the world at the same time and this game lets you do that now as you are already well aware these are the games that are the basis for the biggest game the franchise has seen in years bananamania but in reality boy they they sure kept chugging along after this alright now one could say that ii has had a bit of a rough history since his jump away from the gamecube you could say that listen here alright i'm gonna keep reusing this joke until we're all so numb to it that we're able to bury it six feet under where it belongs super monkey ball junior did you ever want that classic precision based monkey ball rolling formula but this time on the game boy advance what do you mean no this is certainly technically impressive but yeah as you can expect this controls like garbage sure there probably is no way to make it not feel like garbage on the game boy advance but i mean they also didn't need to make the game you know they did go ahead and pour this game to the n gauge a year later so you know clearly they didn't care from the start then we got super monkey ball touch and roll how did this title screen get past the esrb this is the title that introduced the new art style the series uses nowadays and it actually did a much better job adapting the monkey ball style to a handheld so that's cool the touchscreen controls work pretty well but even if you use the d-pad it actually plays kind of fine but most of the levels here are from one and two and you know it's cool that it's portable now but if you wanted something new here you're gonna be a bit disappointed also after every single world is an unskippable credit sequence why why is that a thing they did include a first person shooter deathmatch mode though so alright that now the game is top tier then we got super monkey ball banana blitz at the wii's launch and it added a jump button why maybe this was just a kind of appease to the mass markets that we was striving to get at the time but this one simplifies things to an annoying degree no longer are the levels these obstacle course challenges but something more akin to a traditional platforming stage because of the jump button every world even ends with a boss fight it's so weird this is easily the worst part of the game boss fights are the last thing this series needed on its own though i will admit it's actually not all that bad all these years later this is still one of the better uses of the weirmote's tilting technology and if game feel is important to this series i think this game still nails that but it doesn't come anywhere near close to the highs of the gamecube titles precision and a mastering of the momentum-based physics made those first games so special so it's admirable that they knew you weren't going to get that precision with a wii remote and they built a different style of levels to compensate for it but when the game does require that precision yeah no i will say though the soundtrack is great just filled with fantastic songs from top to bottom they were not holding back with the music this time around that is the best part of the game the party games though oh oh boy remember how i said the second game had 12 party games and they were all really fleshed out so as a result they were really fun well how about 50 super shallow ones oh god this is simply a very clear indicator that the developers were trying to capitalize on that early we hide man 50. 50. did we really need 50 minigames on top of a full story mode i think the developers implemented any single idea that they could possibly think of and figured out how to add motion controls and pointer controls to them and then threw them in whatever no actual interest in making them good just put them in so we could say there's 50 of them on the box we need a game where you're catching bugs on a stick dammit we're going up against twilight princess this holiday this is the only chance we have thankfully though some of those issues did get slightly fixed with the game's remaster banana blitz hd going through levels with sharper graphics the whole menu interface has a nice cool yellow and black now i really like that the motion controls have been totally replaced with traditional analog controls and also the party game count has gone from 50 to 10 thank goodness and a bit of polish has been added to the ones that remained still not that great honestly but hey for what it's worth they tried it is definitely a well done remaster all things considered although most of the soundtrack got replaced due to licensing issues and that really sucks because the new stuff kinda stinks uh so that's that's really really lame but otherwise things are kept really faithful if you want to play banana blitz this is realistically the way to go just keep in mind that it's still not that great of a super monkey ball game eliminating the motion control gimmick that sort of justified the shift and level design style really exemplifies that it works when you get to the precision based areas it works a whole lot better than if you were tilting the controller and it would be nice if gyro was an option here but hey maybe some will disagree with me i think this is still the way to go and i will forever be confused at sega using banana blitz of all games as the first attempt to revive the franchise after laying dormant for so many years but hey you know we could have gotten a remake of adventure instead all right let's just speed this up here the rest of the games in this franchise aren't terrible but they all have boring level designs and these really weird and not fun gimmicks god i don't know why super monkey ball adventure exists step and roll the big feature with this one is weaker level design to compensate for the optional wii balance board gimmick fun i actually covered this one in a balanced board dedicated video a while back and like i don't know man the game's okay if you're into controller gimmicks then it's fine but certainly not a good monkey ball game this is very middle of the road honestly then there's the 3ds game which has even more boring level design but this time lacks a substantial gimmick to make up for it and for some reason that i haven't been able to figure out the main theme on the main menu is like a rendition of silent night [Music] why why why why so why does this sound like silent night i don't understand this one sucks this is the worst game of the series monkey ball jr at least that one's impressive this one this one just sucks from top to bottom and then on the veto we have banana splits which suffers from the same issues plus we have less responsive analog controls a half-baked level creator using the vedas cameras doesn't work well at all and we have a really weird art style sometimes not all the time but then sometimes the characters are like made out of arts and crafts but i don't i what what what is going on here there are some motion control based mobile games too that don't really go much beyond just being decent there's a newer arcade game out there called ticket blitz that has a rollerball controller so that's kind of cool i guess doesn't seem all that fun but i mean when you're in an arcade setup you'll play damn near anything honestly it's so wild to me that sega kept making these games they realistically never stopped they heard all the people complaining and calling for a return to the series roots for years every single time they made one of these people just wanted one and two again and they actively chose to make worse experiences every single time what a weird company man the best thing monkey ball had for years was the representation in the sega all-stars racing games honestly that stuff was pretty dope there's a banana car in those fine i'll talk about adventure so like i i get it you know you're a kid in the mid 2000s you were attracted to character action games of that generation you probably thought turning super monkey ball into a weird objective based pseudo open world journey was really cool and you probably have overwhelming nostalgia for it as a result so you know with that in mind god i'm sorry guys this game this game really blows if the world is not sometimes simply really confusing to navigate it's mostly obnoxious trying to get where you need to go with the ball rolling physics those things don't really combine well this simply doesn't work with this style of gameplay why make this a monkey ball game you could pull another random franchise from the backlog you can make something entirely new why why monkey ball it's not like this stuff couldn't inherently work and fit in just fine with this console generation but by using the super monkey ball franchise name on the same console as the original titles that made the series popular that sets up a level of expectation that this was never going to achieve that is all the more evident in the traditional challenge levels that are sprinkled throughout and man it just feels so incredibly off to be 100 honest from a historical perspective i find black sheep like this to be very fascinating i may not think the game is fun but i will say it is very fun to talk about but in its own little bubble or dare i say monkey ball yeah it's uh it's just it's just not good well if you didn't know now you know you don't get a mania titled game without having a few screw-ups here or there you got the classics for sure but then those rest of the games manpayer they are just really rough i am supposed to review this game aren't i i almost forgot ah man i am so so happy this game is a thing dude i know it's probably a bit excessive to go over the entire series in celebration of this one release but i've been following said series since day one that context of what led to this moment is pretty important to me actually and it does me immense pleasure to confirm that yes super monkey ball bananamania is exactly what the series needed and for the first time in over a decade has me very very excited for what's to come in the future this project was clearly the result of getting together a group of developers that truly care about this franchise on the surface this could be played off as a remake of games one two and deluxe with a bit of a new art style and that's it and while that is definitely its biggest selling point there is so much more than that now i'm sure the biggest talking point with bananamania is the physics and yes for the hardcore purists out there things don't feel exactly as those original games did it seems like i would say for any casual player out there you can easily nail any trick you can think of if you put your mind to it if you're even more vanilla than that and you try to play every single level just straight up and not be adventurous at all i don't know man i didn't run into a single issue in that regards perhaps i'm not the right person to ask about this from what i can gather if you put a fine-tooth comb through this and probably consult some speedrunner opinions there's potentially enough here to call this remaster quote not good enough i swear i've seen people call some of these stages absolute garbage especially compared to how they used to be but honestly i think i might just be incredibly biased here no amount of difficulty made these things feel like they were unattainable it's not like it wasn't banana blitz where completing the difficult stages in the end game felt like pulling teeth things here felt totally fine just keep trying it eventually you'll get it done but for everyone else out there this is easily now my preferred way of going through these games when you pick up immense speeds the sound design isn't as punchy as it used to be which is sorely missed and it does genuinely take away from the game feel more than i expected it to but i got used to it pretty quick and besides you sonic fans are already well familiar with this give the pc gamer community enough time those details will be fixed before you know it with mods it's obvious oh thank god here we go monkey with no ball oh yeah you know for those who love super monkey ball but hate spheres you win you win this time all of the difficulty based challenge modes from both super monkey ball one and two here the deluxe exclusive stages here the story mode and all of the levels they're in from game two yeah man also here the cutscenes are mere slideshows now so if you were a fan of the fully animated cutscenes and dr bad boone's feet please do not raise your hand if that's you that is unfortunately no longer here but it will always remain in our hearts and hey besides the psychedelic dancing is still present so you know i'm glad we get to keep that bit of insanity alive didn't make much sense back in the day doesn't make much sense now hey man whatever go save the day as a monkey in the ball we got customization options from alternate skins to accessories like hats shirts shoes and ball styles we have jam and jet as unlockable characters these guys were randomly introduced in those mid-tier monkey ball games didn't need to be here but they decided to do it anyway and we even got some sega characters too sonic tails beat from jet set radio and kazuma curio from yakuza that's crazy and yes there is some absolutely bonkers dlc on top of that too why not of course that's all here oh god okay there's a photo mode with a bunch of filters a helper mode that adds a slow-mo button and a helper arrow an unlockable jump feature which is a lot more enjoyable to use here than in banana blitz because this is purely for the sake of breaking the game rather than a requirement and it can contribute to the leaderboards anyway so have at it and there's a handful of extra modes too and these are really neat do these stages in reverse play some of the stages in their original forms that are much harder than the ones found in the normal game get all of the bananas in these stages don't get a single banana in these stages there is so much to do here and of course all of the party games are back too and in my opinion they are just as fun as we all remember i got really nervous when i saw they were attempting to capture these same magic of those original games and this fine enough of a detail but for 11 of the 12 games they did an excellent job maybe again you know fine tooth comb there may be more issues here than i'm currently noticing but if you're worried about how banana blitz handle this many games rest easy these ones are really really good in single player multiplayer no matter how you go through it it's a lot of fun at least in my opinion you know well except except for monkey target oh man ah this this sucks dude monkey target now feels really bad you can essentially pull off the same typical gameplay loop of flying towards a target and sealing yourself back up into your ball to get maximum points when you land but it just feels wrong and not in a way that i can see being easily redeemed either i never so consistently ran into the issue of falling into the water early before it happened so many times i don't understand what happened here hopefully this too can be fixed up over time by any means necessary because the rest of the games totally fine the best one is now the worst one that's a that's a pretty bad timeline right there in general though i spent roughly 15 hours going through every single stage the game had to offer as well as slowly chipping away at the whopping 700 plus achievements holy cow time limits banana counts rewarding specific goals like going through this stage without stopping banana mania is content overload so yeah it is a slight shame that things don't feel as good as they did back in the day but what is here is more than enough for me to call this game amazing as far as i'm concerned it's one of my favorite games of the year fight me just in anything but monkey target that mode still sucks and for all of you switch owners out there worried about this game's status on that console after sonic colors ultimates interesting launch well you can rest easy there too the game runs fantastically on switch the load times are great the frame rate is just as smooth as any other console there's gyrotilting if you want to play the game in a worse way hey man it's all here and then some more options not a bad thing just i wouldn't recommend it but hey it's here oh and the physical special edition too get me a super monkey ball themed art book and that is easily the fastest purchase i'll ever make the only main complaint i have about bananamania is the dlc unless you purchase the digital deluxe version elements like the original soundtrack from the gamecube days classic character skins playable sega consoles which are genuinely hilarious it's weird that you can't play as a genesis but everything else but hey i'll take it still funny those are all locked behind a paywall and cannot be unlocked in game normally which is unnecessarily money hungry i do not understand this there are also extra cosmetics behind a paywall as well but you see those and only those come with the physical anniversary edition and now the differentiators between game versions has suddenly become very confusing we could have prevented the sega why did you screw up at the finish line and then of course there's the extra character dlc which for sure it's an absolutely wacky lineup of characters monster rancher is here why but these are all five dollars each for solo characters that cannot be customized used in multiplayer they don't come with any special music or anything like that it does not seem worth it in my opinion why why five dollars for the thing from monster rancher i'm so confused luckily all of that stuff is totally extra on top of a complete package here so it's not that big of a deal but still i don't like it oh yeah and they also removed the amusement vision stages and replaced it with something else because that company is like no longer around now so that makes sense but worst of all the most egregious thing that banana mania has done is it removed the dull banana branding from all of the bananas shameful is it perfect no but it is easily one of my favorite things sega has put out in years and like i said before it is one of the first times in a long time i am very excited for the future of this franchise super monkey ball banana mania total thumbs up okay but but you know before we go can we just take this time to really talk about the fact that touch and roll's title screen really is just ai showing us his butt and saying touch me why [Music] you

Channel: AntDude

Views: 350,082

Keywords: AntDude, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania Review, Super Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball series, Super Monkey Ball retrospective, Super Monkey Ball games, Super Monkey Ball Switch, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD, Suezo Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball DLC, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania DLC, Banana Mania, Banana Mania review

Id: LGUHUSmdwhs

Length: 21min 23sec (1283 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021