Super Monkey Ball (2001) for Nintendo Gamecube

When Sega mascots are considered the go to character to represent the company is always Sonic The Hedgehog, and for good reason. Sonic has been a big part of Sega's history and absolutely one of the main reasons for their success in the videogame market. However one series that still keeps Sega's attention beside from Sonic is Super Monkey Ball.

With the very recent release of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania for Nintendo Switch, I thought it'd only be fitting to take a look at its original release for the Gamecube.

History

Starting life as an arcade game, Super Monkey Ball quickly made its way to home consoles through the Nintendo Gamecube. Shortly before this, Sega had made games for its own consoles, but due to poor sales from their Sega Saturn (1994) and Sega Dreamcast (1998), as well as increasing competition from Nintendo and Sony, Sega decided to discontinue the Dreamcast in 2001, and leave the console wars for good. From this point on they would focus on game development for other consoles, which is what led to Super Monkey Ball being released on the Nintendo Gamecube later that same year.

The game itself was developed by a branch of Sega called Amusement Vision, led by Toshihiro Nagoshi, who had previously worked for another Sega branch, Sega AM2, which specialised in arcade games. The idea of Super Monkey Ball came from Nagoshi's desire to create a game that could be instantly understandable to new players, involving controlling balls through maze like levels.

Designs for the balls themselves were originally flat colours or patterns, but this was decided to be too unappealing and made judging movement a pain, leading to a transparent design with monkey characters inside the balls, moving them from within similar to a hamster ball.

Having the game released on a Nintendo console was seen as a huge event in Sega's history and Nagoshi stated that the game's cute aesthetic and Nintendo's younger audience worked well for the game's vision.

Upon release Super Monkey Ball saw a lot of commercial and critical success, quickly becoming one of Sega's best releases. Confusingly, the game saw the least success in the Japan market, which disappointed Nagoshi as he thought the style of the game would have sold well. Regardless it received plenty of positive reviews from game critics, stating that the difficulty was just right, and praised it's level progression, solidifying it in the Gamecube's iconic list of games.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, Super Monkey Ball lives upto it's concept of a easy to pick up, difficult to master game. After choosing one of four characters, AiAi, MeeMee, Baby and GonGon, you can select your chosen difficulty/set of levels. These consist of Beginner, Advanced and Expert. Each set increases the amount of levels you have to progress through to win.

The levels themselves are obstacle/platforming challenges called "floors" by the game, becoming more difficult and complex with each one. Completing a level requires the player to use the control stick on their controller to tilt the floor, allowing their monkey ball to roll around the floor towards a goal at the end, collecting bananas as they go. All of this is done under a time limit seen at the top of the screen.

Like most games, you have a set number of lives and continues, but can gain an extra life when collecting 100 bananas.

From the very beginning it's super easy to figure out what to do, and the first few levels are basic enough to allow for some error and get to grips with the controls. The difficulty slowly ramps up as you make it through a set of levels and I honestly can't say there are any horrible difficulty spikes that impeded my progress. Something I really like about the game is how it's always your own fault if you lose. While it is possible to brute force your way through levels, the game will punish you for it as at high speed your manoeuvrability becomes tricky to manage. Patience is definitely key to some levels but overall it's pretty accessible to both hard-core and casual gamers alike.

Game modes

Now in terms of how the game is broken up, there are three modes to choose from with their own gameplay elements and appeal. First up to the main game, which I've touched on briefly above.

Main Game

As mentioned before, the main game consists of three difficulty levels, Beginner which includes 10 floors, Advanced which includes 30, and Expert which includes 50. Aside from this there are also Normal, Practice and Competition modes. When selecting Normal, you can have 1-4 players taking turns progressing through floors, Practice is what you'd expect, and Competition is a 2-4 player race mode through a selection of levels. I'd say Super Monkey Ball is at it's best with 2-4 players as it's a lot of fun competing against your friends to beat each others best times and high scores as well as watching them chaotically bounce off stages.

Party Games

Party games are the next mode, giving you three games to choose that can accommodate 1-4 players.

The first is Monkey Race, which sees players racing through levels at the same time to see who can finish first. Items are available to use to give yourself an advantage and Time Attack is also available to measure your fastest speed.

Monkey Battle is next, which involves the players rolling around an arena with boxing gloves attached to their monkey balls. The objective of the game is to knock all the opposing players off the arena, which gives you a point for each knockout, in order to have the most points by the end of the game.

Finally there's Monkey Target, the most unique of the three party games. This sees your monkey roll down a ramp at high speed into the air, deploying a set of wings, and gliding towards a floating dartboard target while collecting bananas mid-flight and avoiding hazards.

While the selection of the party games is fairly limited, I think they work quite well for what they are, fun, short, party games to play with friends. The concept of each game is very replayable and it's definitely worth hopping into after playing the main game with a friend.

Mini-Games

I'd say the mini-games are actually my favourite part of the game. I've had a lot of fun replaying them and in all honestly I think they're just as fun as the main game. The games themselves take real life sport games but swap the balls used in them with the monkey balls.

First is Monkey Billiards, which is essentially a game of pool which you can play a normal game of or a tournament mode if you feel like it. I'm a big fan of pool and snooker so this was always going to be a hit with me.

Next is Monkey Bowling. I'm sure you can imagine what that's like it's basically a regular game of bowling.

Finally there's Monkey Golf which has the most depth to it in terms of game length. You can play an 18 hole course which is scored in the same way as regular golf.

They don't sound like much and to be honest they're really not but they're a nice change of pace to the regular game so I think they make a fine addition to the options you're given.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Super Monkey Ball is a must have addition to your Gamecube collection. As a single player experience it's incredibly replayable and has enough content to warrant jumping back in every now and again but as a multiplayer game it's brilliant. The charm expressed through such a simple concept is extraordinary and it's easy to see how such an easily understandable premise became such an extensive series that still sees releases today.

Okay, that's all the time I've got, I gotta get back to playing Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania on my Nintendo Switch.