The psychics are definitely the main thing of controversy here. In most levels the change doesn't really effect anything and they still play great but in a few of them you can feel the change pretty hard which makes them harder and more frustrating than they should be. Not "unplayable" imo but just a really unfortunate problem for there to be when it really didn't need to be there.
But as a package this is fantastic. Three great Monkey Ball games that are fun singleplayer and as party with unlockables that can give you more content like a reverse mode, and original stages. Tons of minigames that can be really fun party games (I've heard some of the mini games feel a bit off, I can't say for sure been too long since I played originals). Very fun game and it was nice to play some good old monkey ball again after so long. And it has Kiryu

SMB: Banana Mania is Sega's attempt to recapture the magic that SMB1/2 had in the early 2000s, featuring remastered versions of SMB2's Story Mode stages, as well as all of the Challenge Mode stages from both SMB1 & 2.

While the look of Banana Mania is fresh and new, the feel of the game is what falls short. The physics engine and controls are much clunkier compared to the early Monkey Ball titles, and there are also some small QoL issues that make going through the game a bit of a slog if you aren't fully invested. The party games this time around have very little heart & soul put into them, as they are simply graphical remasters of old party games combined with the new, worse control scheme. Completing the game is also proving to be a tedious task, as every single story mode level has its own list of missions to complete in order to earn every achievement.

Banana Mania is probably one of the best modern SMB titles, but it really only achieves that status by remastering the content that Amusement Vision created 20 years ago. Even with its flaws, I have still enjoyed my time with the game as a huge fan of the original SMB titles.

Technically, I played the Anniversary Edition, but the game itself is the same across all editions... I don't know why they've been split up here, but I figure most people will be clicking on the normal version so here's where my review will go.

The physics are noticeably looser, as if every stage is made of glass. There's no sense of weight or momentum, partly due to the worse sound design (impacts and rolling noises are reduced, sometimes absent). The controls are less precise, and for some baffling reason they decided to make the camera follow you more loosely, while letting you adjust the camera with the right stick to make up for it.

You may be asking, "but doesn't every game now use the right stick for camera control?" Yes, however... It sounds counterintuitive, but the way the original games' camera always followed your movement made navigating precise stages much more comfortable and reliable. In Banana Mania, you will be making many, many camera adjustments while simultaneously trying to control a ball on tight ledges - with a strict time limit, by the way. It adds up to create an unnecessarily cumbersome experience.

The added content is cool, particularly the evil banana mode, but it means nothing when the core systems of the game feel so loose and imprecise. I suppose it's a step up from the PS2 port of Deluxe, but that's not saying much.

Stick with the GameCube versions of 1 and 2, and use 2's Deluxe mod for the Deluxe stages. They perform really well on Dolphin, so you should be able to get at least 480p60 on even the weakest laptops and phones of today.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/p2cc5xDT5v0

I love Monkey Ball. I played it a lot as a kid back on the GameCube – so let’s just say I was a bit excited for this remake.

Gameplay:
There’s… not much to say here if you’re already familiar with Monkey Ball. You tilt the stage to move your monkey ball around and get it into the goal. A simple setup, but one brought to its absolute limit with the game’s over-the-top level design. Giant speed tunnels, crazy moving platforms, plenty of verticality – the levels are all over the place and it never gets repetitive, even if there’s the occasional stinker or two thrown in there. The original games were some of the best 3D platformers I ever played and it was a lot of fun giving them another shot in Banana Mania.

Difficulty & Accessibility:
Stages I remember being super difficult long ago are still just as difficult here, but the remake also makes a number of changes to increase accessibility without compromising too much of the challenge. The outdated life system, for example, has been removed and they even added the option to outright skip stages. There’s also a new “helper mode” which doubles the stage time, gives you arrows pointing out the proper path, and allows you to slow time. Of course, you can just ignore these additions and play it like a traditional Monkey Ball game as I did, but props to the devs for the options.

Content:
This is by far the most content-packed Monkey Ball title and includes not only the stages from 1, 2, and Deluxe, but numerous other game modes. There’s Reverse mode, Dark Banana mode, Golden Banana mode, and of course, Classic mode. All of these were fun to play – Dark Banana mode being a personal favorite – and they add quite a bit of extra stuff to do on top of the already massive collection of base stuff.

Story mode, challenge modes, practice modes, ranking challenge – it’s honestly a bit overwhelming and, although the story mode took me just five hours to clear, that is a mere fraction of the time I can see people spending on some of these other modes. Whether that be clearing the mountain of in-game missions or trying to duke it out on the online leaderboards – it’s just a beefy game.

And that’s before you even get into the party games. There are 12 of these minigames, including classics like Monkey Race, Monkey Bowling, and – my personal favorite – Monkey Target. A handful of these even have leaderboard support and I’m already interested in seeing how competitive the Monkey Target board will be in the next week or so.

Physics:
The change that is likely to be most controversial comes in the form of the game’s physics. As this is a remake – not a remaster – it was built in a new engine and yes, the physics are not a 1:1 identical match to the original games. I was never a hardcore, speedrunning type Monkey Ball fan, so I honestly didn’t notice the slight changes to the physics, but it’s still something to note for those going in expecting the same shortcuts and such to work – they might require some small adjustments. Then again, this also opens the door to entirely new shortcuts and skips, so that’s something to look forward to as well.

Complaints:
My complaints are more minor – like the lack of online play in party games, the bland music outside of a couple standout tracks, the tacked-on story cutscenes that don’t really add anything, and a couple of the minigames that are not nearly as fun as others. And of course, just as with the originals, you do get the occasional boring or just outright frustrating stage.

PC Port:
On my 1070 Ti, I maxed out the settings and played at 1440p 60+ fps without any hiccups. No crashes, no freezing, no major fps drops – it was smooth sailing and the only issue I had was with the game’s VSync option. When toggled off, it capped my fps to 60, under half of my actual refresh rate. I ended up having to keep it enabled to maintain 144 fps, but even then, the gameplay is seemingly still locked to 60 while the UI and menu elements are not. I’m not 100% sure if this is the case, but there might be some frame doubling going on here.

Controls, on the other hand, are fine. The game plays flawlessly on controller, but the keyboard and mouse support isn’t even that bad. Full rebinding is available for both options and you’re even able to set up custom controls for individual minigames if you really want to go all-out. I found the default layout to be intuitive enough, but it was nice to have the option.

Overall:
Banana Mania may just be the best platformer of the year. It takes all that I love about the original games and slaps them into a brand new shiny package, with hundreds of levels to complete, a ton of new game modes and quality of life features, and a solid PC port tying it together. It may have some faults – the tacked-on story stuff, the lack of online multiplayer, and the occasional bad level or two – but it’s the best that Monkey Ball has been in literally over a decade and is well worth a play for both fans and newcomers alike.

Had Super Monkey Ball 2 as a kid and played it all the time despite sucking at it. But I never rrally realized as a kid that I was that bad at it because of the way the story and challenge mode were set up, despite getting a game over you would always get the credits, so I thought I was a master at the game or something lol. Flash Forward to now, I havent played Monkey Ball 2 in years becuase I lost it, only played Monkey Ball 1 once at a freiends house and have never touched Deluxe. This game just makes me happy that it exists, its such a good package. You get every good Monkey Ball games stage, and the main game is remade pretty faithfully. The physics dont feel bad at all. My only gripes would be the sound design is not great (like when rolling, the sound doesn't speed up) and the art styles pretty cheap looking compared to the originals. The music also wasn't good from what I heard of it, but I very quickly bought the Classic soundtrack pack to replace it. All the new tracks sound pretty forgettable, maybe aside from the main theme. Also, the new cutscenes… I get not wanting to remake them fully and dont mind, but why do they look like something you would find on Youtube Kids? There almost kind of embarrassing if I got caught playing the game and those cut scenes came up on a train. The game makes a lot of good modern choices that make me want to go back to this game in the future as opposed to the gamecube originals, like no lives being the big one. I have never been able to get far in Advanced mode due to getting gameovers, so its nice that I can see a lot of these harder stages for the first time. An issue I see, that isnt really so much the games fault but the Switches fault is, before writing this, I beat Monkey Ball 2’s story mode, a chunk of the deluxe levels and Monkey Ball 1’s Casual and Normal Challange mode, with only getting to stage 20 in Advanced. I plan to go back to the game over time on days when I’m bored to slowly work on these levels. The problem is that when doing the Advance stages, I needed to switch to the Gamecube Controller at a certain point, because the Pro Controller or Joy Cons just weren’t cutting it for the amount of presicoion needed for those later stages, since neither of the controllers have notches like the GC controller has. So whenever I go back to do these levels, I feel like I have to do them in docked mode, because i cant imagine how hard some of them will be on Joy Cons. That and they should have added a save feature to challenge mode because doing 60 stages in one sitting can get exhausting. Overall, really amazing package overall, it doesn't completely replace the originals, but for being made in Unity, this is so nice to have on the Switch.

yep, it is definitely a remake of monkey balls 1 and 2. Controls differently with a different physics model, and has different visuals and music, obviously. I think for this particular remake they played everything really safe and ended up really pleasing nobody, since the diehard monkey ball fans and speedrunners won't like the different physics and controls, with also not a lot of extra new stuff to keep any new fans interested imo. I think the game still plays perfectly fine, its just it doesn't have much of a soul, I guess. Maybe I am just weird, and you should probably try it out for yourself and see if you can see where im tryin to come from here. I appreciate the sentiments behind this game, but they just made boneless monkey ball