A port of Super Monkey Ball
The goal of the game is to maneuver a monkey trapped in a ball by tilting the labyrinth and reaching the goal at the end of the maze. Like many other games of Super Monkey Ball series, the player has the option to choose Aiai, Meemee and Gongon. In multiplayer, two to four people can pick the same character. Super Monkey Ball (N-Gage) is a port of the original Super Monkey Ball for the Nokia N-Gage system. It features Challenge Mode, Practice Mode, and Party Games.
Also in series
Reviews View More
The five star rating is less the game being anything amazing and more just me being in awe that the demake of Super Monkey Ball for GBA is anything other than a disaster
It's a miracle this port even manages to exist, which I have to give credit for. Still, the GBA simply isn't the right platform for this style of game. The misery I've felt trying to play through the levels with the limited control I have is immense.
At least the minigames were entertaining! Bowling was by far my favorite.
At least the minigames were entertaining! Bowling was by far my favorite.
It's easy to write off technical marvels of yesteryear. Sure, a working 3D Monkey Ball on the GBA is an insane thing to even exist, but appreciating it on an interactive level can be a challenge in the first few minutes of gameplay. This is a franchise that relies heavily on analogue input and depth perception; playing it on a 2.9" screen with a d-pad and two face buttons is bound to bring some frustration.
Even so, when you get the hang of it Super Monkey Ball Jr. does offer a rewarding challenge, and utilizes some great features to make it a worthy portable expedient. I played this game exactly where it was meant to be played, on the bus and in the break room at work. With some accessible cheat codes to enable unlimited continues, SMB Jr. becomes a great pickup and putdown game for those looking for a bite-sized bit of precision.
The game isn't without sore spots. Expert levels ask quite a lot of the player, and it can be hard to imagine beating later challenges without using the inverted Konami code on the title screen. The lagging camera and difficulty involved with making micro-adjustments are a particularly big source of frustration. Still, it's hard to be too upset when you're playing Monkey Ball on a device with less than half a megabyte of RAM. Especially when the gameplay is as competent as it is.
Even so, when you get the hang of it Super Monkey Ball Jr. does offer a rewarding challenge, and utilizes some great features to make it a worthy portable expedient. I played this game exactly where it was meant to be played, on the bus and in the break room at work. With some accessible cheat codes to enable unlimited continues, SMB Jr. becomes a great pickup and putdown game for those looking for a bite-sized bit of precision.
The game isn't without sore spots. Expert levels ask quite a lot of the player, and it can be hard to imagine beating later challenges without using the inverted Konami code on the title screen. The lagging camera and difficulty involved with making micro-adjustments are a particularly big source of frustration. Still, it's hard to be too upset when you're playing Monkey Ball on a device with less than half a megabyte of RAM. Especially when the gameplay is as competent as it is.
It's Super Monkey Ball 1 on the Gameboy Advance. There's a lotta pop-in, but the mad lads at Realism actually did it, it and it's impressive it for the most part works and everything is recreated faithfully. Even the minigames, Monkey Fight is still stupid fun.
Digital Control with Monkey Ball's camera absolutely kills this game (instead of speeds based on how you move the stick, you can adjust your acceleration rate with A to increase and B to decrease), it's not bad until some of the expert courses which really demand you work with the much more limited monkey. That one part of Expert 7 with the slope killed me so many times just because it was asking a lot to align my monkey and the camera with the slope. It's like Mario 64 DS but a generation earlier and with a less popular IP so no one's really defending it.
They worked with what they had, which is really impressive from a technical standpoint that they got this much Super Monkey Ball to work in 2002 on the GBA, but I don't think the GBA was ready for Super Monkey Ball. Unless you like the one level with the realism name, I'd stick to the console releases of SMB1.
Digital Control with Monkey Ball's camera absolutely kills this game (instead of speeds based on how you move the stick, you can adjust your acceleration rate with A to increase and B to decrease), it's not bad until some of the expert courses which really demand you work with the much more limited monkey. That one part of Expert 7 with the slope killed me so many times just because it was asking a lot to align my monkey and the camera with the slope. It's like Mario 64 DS but a generation earlier and with a less popular IP so no one's really defending it.
They worked with what they had, which is really impressive from a technical standpoint that they got this much Super Monkey Ball to work in 2002 on the GBA, but I don't think the GBA was ready for Super Monkey Ball. Unless you like the one level with the realism name, I'd stick to the console releases of SMB1.
By far the worst port of Super Monkey Ball, and yet... there's something deeply fascinating about it. It's impressive that Realism managed to get such a competent port running on the GBA at all, let alone with minigames and multiplayer included.
The minigames fare better here since they don't require direct movement input, but otherwise there's little reason to go for this when SMB1 and 2 emulate so well on just about any modern portable device of your choice.
The minigames fare better here since they don't require direct movement input, but otherwise there's little reason to go for this when SMB1 and 2 emulate so well on just about any modern portable device of your choice.
genuinely impressive they got this running on gba