thought I was lucky to find out my roommate had this on ps2 but once I booted it up I was sorely disappointed... this is really not the best version of old-school monkey ball. this game takes all of the stages from the first two gamecube titles and combines them with the scraps from an unfinished monkey ball 3 to make a definitive edition built on the structure of the second game. menus are identical to smb2 as well as story mode, and all of the minigames from both 1 and 2 return. this is certainly strong on its face, but this collection is bogged down with numerous issues that make it a lesser version in my eyes.
the performance is probably the most notable downgrade from the original, at least for the ps2 version (the xbox version is better as far as I can tell but I don't have a copy). framerate is cut down to 30 fps from the original 60 fps, and it's not a particularly stable 30 fps either. while this is always an annoyance in a ported game, it's an especially crucial change for monkey ball, where the level of precision is noticably reduced at a lower framerate. many lighting effects and textures were removed, most notably the wavy bonus stage and the AV logo extra stage from smb1. in some cases there's no texture replacement at all with solid color being used instead, and even when textures are retained they seem downsampled with an ugly grainy look. load times are excruciating, with noticable hangs between stages in challenge mode and most egregiously between stage selections in story mode. in fact, the story mode menu feels like a pre-release build, with frequent chugging and the aforementioned multi-second hangs while moving the cursor between levels. there also isn't progressive scan support that I could find within the game, and even over component cables the game looks like a blurry mess sometimes compared to the clean look of the gamecube titles.
to incorporate all of the new levels, each of the challenege courses has been lengthened considerably. while isn't necessarily bad, it does make every single course way longer than it probably should have been. beginner runs in the original games were generally 10 levels with some more extra stages on top (three for the original and 10 for the second game), whereas beginner here is 40 levels initially and then another 20 extra stages. on higher difficulties the level count is even higher, and it's just so draining to play through all of these; I wish they had something like the upcoming remake where you can play the beginner/advanced/expert/master courses for their respective games individually. the new levels themselves aren't equally spread throughout the courses either: it seems like nearly half of the beginner/beginner extra stages are deluxe-exclusive, with some more being in advanced and precious few being in expert. this left me pretty much unwilling to sit through all of expert like I would have otherwise, as I already played through all these levels before in a much better format. this is especially compounded by the fact that additional lives per continue seem much more inscrutable to receive versus paying for them with play points in smb2. I've seen different methods online for getting them but I only managed to get one extra one via story mode (in the middle no less, not after completing the story) and none via challenge mode, and without the easy potential to max out lives it makes getting a 1cc through an obscene amount of levels that much harder.
the new levels are pretty solid however, with the design philosophy of the unfinished third game being more about larger, complicated levels without as many moving-object gimmicks as the second game. levels like scrolls or cliffs are legitimately new ideas for the series, and I'm glad these deluxe levels will be returning in the remake. with this in mind, I was disappointed that there were virtually no new stages for the entire second half of story mode. this mode is a little easier now as you only need to finish half the stages in a given world to progress, but it was still a chore thanks to all of the performance issues and load times, and I would've appreciated some new content strewn throughout to give it more of a draw. another quick note I wanted to make: some of the levels are reversed this time around it seems? I noticed a couple times that levels from the first game would start their cycles on a different place than usual: for example pirates from smb1 where the sliding platforms now slide to the left first rather than the right. a really noticeable example is mixer (also from smb1), where the bars now rotate in the opposite direction from their prior appearance, making the level significantly easier (honestly not a problem in my book). there were also some physics and camera differences, but it's hard for me to tell how much of this is a result of the ps2 stick having a different feel than that of the gcn, or whether smb2's engine had differenes that are more apparent on the smb1 stages.
I just wanted to mess around with this one considering that it was one I always wanted as a child and the fact that it's getting remade, but it was a much rougher experience than I was hoping for. it deserves points for having this many stages as well as all of the minigames intact, but on ps2 the performance issues are just too much to bear, even on a CRT. I originally played story mode on a 4k TV, where even with game mode turned on it was a huge, painful slog. thankfully the remake drops the day after this review comes out, and I'm sure I'll have countless hours to spend grinding the missions and getting used to the new handling and level tweaks.
the performance is probably the most notable downgrade from the original, at least for the ps2 version (the xbox version is better as far as I can tell but I don't have a copy). framerate is cut down to 30 fps from the original 60 fps, and it's not a particularly stable 30 fps either. while this is always an annoyance in a ported game, it's an especially crucial change for monkey ball, where the level of precision is noticably reduced at a lower framerate. many lighting effects and textures were removed, most notably the wavy bonus stage and the AV logo extra stage from smb1. in some cases there's no texture replacement at all with solid color being used instead, and even when textures are retained they seem downsampled with an ugly grainy look. load times are excruciating, with noticable hangs between stages in challenge mode and most egregiously between stage selections in story mode. in fact, the story mode menu feels like a pre-release build, with frequent chugging and the aforementioned multi-second hangs while moving the cursor between levels. there also isn't progressive scan support that I could find within the game, and even over component cables the game looks like a blurry mess sometimes compared to the clean look of the gamecube titles.
to incorporate all of the new levels, each of the challenege courses has been lengthened considerably. while isn't necessarily bad, it does make every single course way longer than it probably should have been. beginner runs in the original games were generally 10 levels with some more extra stages on top (three for the original and 10 for the second game), whereas beginner here is 40 levels initially and then another 20 extra stages. on higher difficulties the level count is even higher, and it's just so draining to play through all of these; I wish they had something like the upcoming remake where you can play the beginner/advanced/expert/master courses for their respective games individually. the new levels themselves aren't equally spread throughout the courses either: it seems like nearly half of the beginner/beginner extra stages are deluxe-exclusive, with some more being in advanced and precious few being in expert. this left me pretty much unwilling to sit through all of expert like I would have otherwise, as I already played through all these levels before in a much better format. this is especially compounded by the fact that additional lives per continue seem much more inscrutable to receive versus paying for them with play points in smb2. I've seen different methods online for getting them but I only managed to get one extra one via story mode (in the middle no less, not after completing the story) and none via challenge mode, and without the easy potential to max out lives it makes getting a 1cc through an obscene amount of levels that much harder.
the new levels are pretty solid however, with the design philosophy of the unfinished third game being more about larger, complicated levels without as many moving-object gimmicks as the second game. levels like scrolls or cliffs are legitimately new ideas for the series, and I'm glad these deluxe levels will be returning in the remake. with this in mind, I was disappointed that there were virtually no new stages for the entire second half of story mode. this mode is a little easier now as you only need to finish half the stages in a given world to progress, but it was still a chore thanks to all of the performance issues and load times, and I would've appreciated some new content strewn throughout to give it more of a draw. another quick note I wanted to make: some of the levels are reversed this time around it seems? I noticed a couple times that levels from the first game would start their cycles on a different place than usual: for example pirates from smb1 where the sliding platforms now slide to the left first rather than the right. a really noticeable example is mixer (also from smb1), where the bars now rotate in the opposite direction from their prior appearance, making the level significantly easier (honestly not a problem in my book). there were also some physics and camera differences, but it's hard for me to tell how much of this is a result of the ps2 stick having a different feel than that of the gcn, or whether smb2's engine had differenes that are more apparent on the smb1 stages.
I just wanted to mess around with this one considering that it was one I always wanted as a child and the fact that it's getting remade, but it was a much rougher experience than I was hoping for. it deserves points for having this many stages as well as all of the minigames intact, but on ps2 the performance issues are just too much to bear, even on a CRT. I originally played story mode on a 4k TV, where even with game mode turned on it was a huge, painful slog. thankfully the remake drops the day after this review comes out, and I'm sure I'll have countless hours to spend grinding the missions and getting used to the new handling and level tweaks.