Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania Review - Return to Monke

in the span of just over two years we've gone from super monkey ball being a forgotten relic of sega's past to being a relevant ip once more with two new games on the shelves for those of you that don't know i am a massive fan of monkey ball or at least i am a fan of what it once was back in the gamecube days super monkey ball 1 and 2 were essential to anyone's collection they took the concept of guiding a ball to its destination in a labyrinth and manifested themselves into explosions of creative brilliance amusement vision used their high speed game engine to create levels that were all abstract anomalies of design just from looking at some of these levels you can probably understand what i mean they tested accuracy speed momentum generally using the environment to your advantage and those environments were endlessly varied each level was a fresh challenge and almost no two levels looked alike spirals slides gears seesaws bowls corkscrews even things i can't put a name to anything that could potentially make for a spectacular and frenetic display of physics puzzle solving went in all of this wacky stuff and all you really needed to complete these levels was an analog stick this is where the depth of super monkey ball lies you can tilt the stage with such finesse to either guide your monkey to its destination or send it flying towards the goal in a seemingly impossible fashion as a feat of human ingenuity while super monkey ball 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games of all time the same cannot be said for its subsequent follow-ups banana blitz sacrificed the unparalleled accuracy of the original control scheme for motion controls as a wii launch title and as a result the levels were forced to change as well they resembled something more akin to monkeyball's initial inspirations and lacked any concrete identity whereas in the original games every single level had a very distinct look and feel to it that and the game implemented a momentum shattering jump button as well as guard rails for automatically correcting your mistakes now at the time i thought this would only be a temporary switch in order to fit the wii's motion controls but this became the standard for monkey ball and it drove the series into the ground although from what i understand this was a conscious choice made in an effort to appeal primarily to kids and families and the developers always wanted to revisit the original game's philosophy on level design for years super monkey ball was a dormant franchise until the series made a surprise return in 2019 with banana blitz hd it was a means of testing the waters they had a limited amount of time and money to work with and the end result was a mixed bag the lack of motion controls made most levels even easier while other levels that worked solely because of the motion controls were replaced but thankfully the game was successful enough to warrant the existence of super monkey ball banana mania which brings together all of the levels from super monkey ball 1 2 and deluxe and includes quality of life improvements new features and more in an effort to reintroduce super monkey ball to the world banana mania is a golden opportunity for the franchise it's been a long time since the brand was active and with the effort sega has put into marketing this thing as well as the care that the developers took in crafting it things are finally looking up sega was actually kind enough to give me a code for this game so i've had plenty of time to evaluate its place in the franchise to tell you the truth i'm shocked that they reached out i was really bitter towards bananablitz hd in the past and i've learned a lot in the past two years i'm not nearly as uh blunt as i used to be anyway thanks for choosing me sega i don't usually do these kinds of videos but i couldn't pass this game up let's see if bananamania makes the most of this golden opportunity super monkey ball banana mania goes out of its way to be more succinct and more coherent than deluxe ever was while also delicately tweaking the game to be more accessible for newcomers and more replayable for veterans super monkey ball 1 and 2 have their challenge modes divided both by game and by difficulty which is a far cry from the ridiculous sizes of the challenge modes and deluxe for some reason deluxe thought it would be a good idea to lump levels from across the three games into its three main difficulties making for these massive and largely bloated endurance runs rather than using the standard 10 for beginner 30 for advanced and 50 for expert deluxe went with 40 stages for beginner 70 for advanced and a whopping 100 for expert and that's excluding the extra levels keep in mind in order to unlock the extra levels in each difficulty you'll have to beat each difficulty without using a continue imagine limiting your deaths across a hundred of monkey balls hardest levels all lumped together it's not easy that's why bananamania took the sensible approach in preserving the challenge and experience that comes with each previously compiled challenge mode and you can unlock the deluxe levels in their own separate mode by spending your bananas that's the other thing 100 bananas won't get you an extra life as this game completely nixes the live system the bananas you collect are for unlocking characters modes and customizable cosmetics for the monkeys this is actually where they've quarantined the jump feature which is pretty funny to see if you feel like seeing how you can break the game it's there for you to unlock while it would have been nice to have the option to toggle lives i understand why they've done this it was pretty demoralizing for a continuous run of challenge mode to die toward the end of your playthrough even if you feel yourself improving with each attempt as the story mode of super monkey ball 2 demonstrated you don't necessarily need a life system to keep monkey ball compelling simply completing the level was an accomplishment in and of itself this means that the extra levels corresponding to each difficulty are included in their respective challenge modes as long as you can reach them just like the originals if you give up on a challenge mode run at any point you'll have to start from the beginning next time so in a sense the spirit of the original arcadey philosophy of monkey ball is still alive you can't give up on the run at any point if you want to reach those secret levels but even if you do the experience you've gained from those previous runs will stick with you either way this gave me a chance to experience levels that i could only watch videos of on youtube as they were previously too hard for me to reach like the master levels i was finally able to play some of the hardest and best levels from some of my favorite games and i'm incredibly grateful for that going back to super monkey ball 2 story mode that was also included in banana mania in full while the presentation may be simplistic in order to save on development costs the experience from super monkey ball 2 has been preserved throwing yourself at all of these levels and restarting as many times as you like is still just as fun as it once was and a small selection of levels from across the game have been subtly tweaked to reduce their insane level of difficulty including the infamous arthropod they actually managed to make arthropod tolerable simply by making the goal stand up straight if you'd like to play these levels in their original form you can still unlock them with your bananas there are also challenges for meeting all sorts of criteria across the various modes and levels which net you even more bananas the replay value is through the roof here and as it stands this feels like a definitive collection of the best that monkey ball has to offer oh and in case you're wondering most of the minigames are at their best here in banana mania there are some unfortunate oddities though monkey billiards forces you to play with a computer player whereas the original games didn't require that it can be a bit of a pace breaker to have them around this is not me doing this by the way this is the computer i'm pretty sure they're gonna fix this in the day one patch but this is this is this is why i don't like having a computer player along the most egregious example however lies with the fan favorite monkey target i'm sorry to say but something's up here in the original games your momentum would stay with you as you tried to launch yourself off of the ramp in banana mania it feels artificial see that weird jolt as we launch ourselves off the ramp it's as if the game is taking your speed into account and then projecting the most realistic simulation of what would actually happen with that speed perhaps this is a problem with the new engine which brings us to our second topic the physics [Music] one of the first things i investigated was how the game actually felt to play and i'll warn you right now it doesn't feel exactly like the gamecube originals but that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing it's complicated and i'll explain in the gamecube games when you'd push the control stick in any direction the level would immediately respond to however the stick was pushed this added great depth to the gameplay of monkey ball you could snap the stick in any direction for sudden alterations of your momentum and then gently push the stick to ease yourself along narrow paths banana mania doesn't have the same responsiveness it will still immediately respond to your jolts of the analog stick but it will gently ease into a full tilt no matter how hard you push the stick here is a visual comparison see how in the original games the stage would immediately lean forward but in banana mania it slowly transitions into a full tilt it's a small but very noticeable difference as it affects how you build maintain or alter momentum in stages while this rarely affects regular gameplay this makes many of the cool strats that depend on sharp movements either slightly more difficult or almost impossible in banana mania the beehive skip it might be possible but you can't do it in the same way cereal jumps way harder to steer your monkey into the goal due to how hard it is to accurately change speed and direction on a dime these are just examples of tricks that i'm capable of the speed running scene is going to be much different for this game as top players adjust this new engine it's not that you're incapable of doing crazy maneuvers it's just that they're much more difficult even when we're not talking about speedrunning or cheesing levels entirely certain levels that depend on harsh snaps of the analog stick are much harder to beat in this new engine the original control scheme was so delicate and so accurate to your own physical thumbstick movements that it was famously linked with a 2006 study that demonstrated improved surgical performance after playing losing that control scheme means losing a core part of super monkey ball's identity however evidence points toward this change being deliberate banana blitz hd may not be fresh in everyone's mind so i feel it is important to remind you that the game's engine felt in line with the classics if you set aside the jump button the game would accurately respond to sharp tilts of the analog stick just like the games i know and love the developers clearly have an understanding of how the games are supposed to feel keep in mind that this studio is made up of some people who have been at sega since the amusement vision days including monkey ball and yakuza creator toshihiro nagashi this subtle change to bananamania's physics was likely a conscious choice but why well due to the increased resistance to full tilting this ironically allows for more accuracy when trying to walk thin lines these were often the hardest levels in the original game you couldn't rely on your monkey's speed to carry you to safety you'd have to be consistently precise and make it to the end without running out of time new players tend to overcorrect themselves when traversing fine lines like this kind of like walking a tightrope you lean too hard in another direction to prevent yourself from falling over and you'll find yourself aggressively rocking back and forth until you fall in banana mania there's less room for error due to how the level gently tilts in response to your analog stick movements thus making these levels more fun and bearable anything that requires methodical accuracy in this game rather than high speed snapping is more accessible thanks to this change actually on top of that you finally have full control over the camera which was one of the only hang ups people had over the original games i found myself steering my monkey in tandem with the camera in order to attempt certain skips it's an entirely new way to experience timeless monkey ball levels honestly and that's the most exciting thing different isn't synonymous with worse i may prefer the way the original game feels but that doesn't mean bananamania's new physics won't invite the same experimentation i want you to understand you can play banana mania just as you would the original games and your muscle memory will likely kick in even on some of the hardest levels some of it might not because the game feels heavier and less responsive but you can still do some crazy stuff in this game the game even encourages this you can save your bananas for unlockable modes like golden banana mode and dark banana mode golden banana mode has you collecting every banana in specific levels before time runs out while dark banana mode has you avoiding them as you make your way to work the goal as brutal as dark banana mode is it is absolutely brilliant this level here was already a great test of accuracy and momentum in the base game as you get yourself into a rhythm but in dark banana mode you have way less room for error you need to be as accurate as possible when traversing this level this mode's existence is proof enough that this kind of advanced gameplay is still possible in banana mania veteran players will just have to completely relearn or otherwise adapt certain techniques that's the thing while the game's physics may not be accurate to the originals they still invite new wacky discoveries thanks to their different feel and i can't wait to see what people come up with as you can see this is an issue that is very complicated but i'm also very passionate about it if this change truly was deliberate i would suggest designing new levels around these controls as a veteran i will continue to gravitate towards the original controls and i'm inclined to recommend that they switch back but if they design levels specifically made to accommodate for this little change we could have a true return to form for super monkey ball on our hands something fresh something new but also something that doesn't compromise on the original philosophies for the series and that's an exciting prospect no matter what they do i feel it is dependent on the performance of bananamania and thankfully this is a collection that i can recommend to almost anyone while playing some of the extra and master levels in banana mania i had a moment where everything seemed to come together in my mind i had this opportunity to play a level that i'd never been able to reach in the gamecube games thanks to the removal of the live system i was adapting to the new controls and i had no doubt that i'd be replaying these challenge modes again and again simply because i wanted to discover new ways to beat these levels and while i was doing all this i was listening to some of the new compositions of remixes which were either emotional revisits to the original melodies or entirely new compositions that evoked a feeling of nostalgia and comfort that's when it all hit me there's a lot to appreciate about bananamania as someone who will still end up revisiting the gamecube originals but this remake didn't aim to be a replacement for the original games this game is a tribute to the timeless level design of the original super monkey ball games a chance to reintroduce these levels to the world without the archaic elements of the past an opportunity to show those unfamiliar with the series that super monkey ball will always be bananas and i believe this game will be a success with a wealth of content to delve into endless amounts of charm and enduring gameplay that'll no doubt continue to resonate with people as the years go by it's hard to see any reason it wouldn't it's not a perfect package there's no multiplayer in the challenge mode which is pretty inexcusable the online features are relatively bare bones being relegated to leaderboards but at the end of the day they've compiled an excellent tribute to some of the best games of the gamecube era this game is fun and that's what matters if you care about this series in any capacity it's in your best interest to support this game if it does well enough i have no doubt that sega will be willing to green light a proper follow-up to super monkey ball 2 where the team can really prove to the world that they've still got it welcome back my beloved monkeys [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Liam Triforce

Views: 91,274

Keywords: super monkey ball, banana mania, banana blitz hd, retrospective, review, analysis, critique, remake, steam, pc, switch, gamecube, sega, nintendo, amusement vision, yakuza, ryu ga gotoku

Id: 9zNcltiwMw4

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021