The controls certainly feel a whole lot more rough around the edges than they did on the GameCube eras, but it's not like I expected much else given the direction of the Super Monkey Ball games ever since. I think what's really keeping me from loving this in the same way that I did the zaniness of the first two Super Monkey Ball games just comes down to the fact that while it's definitely a lot more graphically pleasing - there's another aspect that just feels missing and perhaps it's just the fact that the way the stage tilts around only makes a chunk of the game feeling like you're controlling a rock.

And to a certain extent, that's always been the point of Super Monkey Ball. You're struggling to keep your balance like you're actually rolling around, which has always been the greatest charm of these games while they were very minimalist and inexpensive. But ever since these games got bigger, they just lost a lot of that.

Either way, I'm just a sucker for the stages that I loved playing when I was a kid so being able to revisit them as an adult felt really nice.