Monkey Ball was a series that I have been casually wanting to return for awhile now. I've never been a mega die hard fan of the games but I had a lot of fun with them as a kid and I've felt like it would be nice to replay them every so often or to get new ones that follow the design philosophy of the original trio of games. That essentially is what Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania sets out to do; and for the most part it manages to succeed in a way that I'm pretty happy with.
So going into this I had a bit of a different expectation as to what Banana Mania was compared to what it actually was. The only trailers I saw for this game was the E3 announcement trailer as well as all the character reveal trailers that they did, but based on the initial announcement and how they made it a point to show that everything was coming from Monkey Ball 1, Monkey Ball 2, and Monkey Ball Deluxe I had assumed that this was a remake of the trilogy entirely as is in a similar style to how the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy was remade and not what we ended up getting, which was a remix of the three games into one game that uses levels and elements of each game. Personally I would have preferred what I assumed we were getting, but that is ultimately on me and not the game so I can't really hold it against the game. I did think it was important to note though due to how reviews will inherently be biased and what I thought would be nice versus what we got will definitely color this a bit.
That being said there are quite a few really nice changes that this being a remix of the first three games instead of straight up one to one remakes of them. One of them is the aforementioned characters that have been added, which while not adding any inherent gameplay changes does just work as a nice cosmetic thing. Seeing a little chibi Kiryu Kazuma rolling around in a ball collecting tauriner bottles or seeing Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog collecting rings in a ball is fun and adds a level of fun to it at the absurdity of these characters getting rolled around in balls. Also the rate at which you are given the currency used to unlock these characters as well as new modes is really quick and makes it feel like you're constantly gaining something and moving up even when you fail, which is a really nice feeling in my opinion.
The other main thing that I thought was nice is how despite this game being an amalgam of the other games they still left each game's challenge mode as its own thing so you could play through a collection of challenge levels from each game if you wanted too. It's nice that even if its all one game now they still left options to keep the contents from the different games in order for people who wanted to replay levels from a specific game if they choose too. It's a neat thing that I do kind of wish was how the main mode was handled as well but at the same time I do understand why they didn't do this for the main game as well.
This one is more of a complaint from someone who put way too much time into Monkey Ball deluxe as a kid, but the physics in this game are noticeably off compared to how they were in the originals and I am not really a fan of it. I'm not sure how best to describe this so the best I can really do is to give an example. There is a level you will see in deluxe's challenge mode that has you stuck in what is essentially a bowl inside of a much bigger bowl. You are supposed to keep going around the edges of the small bowl until through hitting the corners you gain enough momentum to go over the top into the larger bowl, where you do the same thing again but needing less speed to reach the goal. This is made significantly harder in this game since you do not gain or maintain as much height from bumping into the edges of the bowl and can get stuck in the small bowl much easier than in deluxe. I pulled out the original game and set up my original Xbox to test it and it is noticeably less functional due to how the game registers and calculates its physics in the Banana Mania version. This is also noticeable in the minigames that make a return from previous games, in that a number of them do not work correctly due to this change as well. Which is unfortunate but I was never big into the minigames anyway so it doesn't impact me too much.
Another thing that I'm not sure how I feel about with this is how it balances its level curve. The main mode of the game is a mix of the main modes from one, two, and deluxe which is nice since we still get all the levels from those games even if its not in the original format, but the way they're ordered in this game leads to having really random and unnecessary feeling difficulty spikes in each world. The original games definitely had difficulty spikes and tough levels, but those were at least ramped up at a more even pace whereas here you can have one of the easiest levels in the game back to back with one of the hardest here in Banana Mania. It isn't the most egregious thing since I would have had to do these levels eventually, but it did kind of break up the pace of the game in a really odd way that I didn't really enjoy.
Despite everything I've said up to this point though, its still Monkey ball at its core almost exactly how you might remember it. The gameplay might take a bit to adjust to if you are intimately familiar with the original trilogy of games, but for newcomers to the series this would most likely not be noticeable as most stages will still function fundamentally the same. The game is still incredibly fun but challenging and makes you really try to master its gameplay to finish its puzzlebox style levels. Sure I would have overall prefered we got full remakes/remasters of the first three games but I do think there is merit to remixing the games into something entirely new like this and I do appreciate the wave of nostalgia I got from seeing a ton of the old levels from the first few games that I remember so fondly.
Ultimately, I do still really like Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. It's goofy, its creative, it's frustrating as hell, but it's classic monkey ball. I'm glad this remix of the first several games exists and I hope that the monkey ball team getting this opportunity to recreate the original games means that an original monkey ball based on the first three is in the works coming up. This game has a really strong basis going forward for the series with it using the best of the original games as well as adding a lot of cool new features like multiple unlockable characters from other sega properties. I had fun with this game and I hope you do too if you decide to pick it up.
8/10
So going into this I had a bit of a different expectation as to what Banana Mania was compared to what it actually was. The only trailers I saw for this game was the E3 announcement trailer as well as all the character reveal trailers that they did, but based on the initial announcement and how they made it a point to show that everything was coming from Monkey Ball 1, Monkey Ball 2, and Monkey Ball Deluxe I had assumed that this was a remake of the trilogy entirely as is in a similar style to how the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy was remade and not what we ended up getting, which was a remix of the three games into one game that uses levels and elements of each game. Personally I would have preferred what I assumed we were getting, but that is ultimately on me and not the game so I can't really hold it against the game. I did think it was important to note though due to how reviews will inherently be biased and what I thought would be nice versus what we got will definitely color this a bit.
That being said there are quite a few really nice changes that this being a remix of the first three games instead of straight up one to one remakes of them. One of them is the aforementioned characters that have been added, which while not adding any inherent gameplay changes does just work as a nice cosmetic thing. Seeing a little chibi Kiryu Kazuma rolling around in a ball collecting tauriner bottles or seeing Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog collecting rings in a ball is fun and adds a level of fun to it at the absurdity of these characters getting rolled around in balls. Also the rate at which you are given the currency used to unlock these characters as well as new modes is really quick and makes it feel like you're constantly gaining something and moving up even when you fail, which is a really nice feeling in my opinion.
The other main thing that I thought was nice is how despite this game being an amalgam of the other games they still left each game's challenge mode as its own thing so you could play through a collection of challenge levels from each game if you wanted too. It's nice that even if its all one game now they still left options to keep the contents from the different games in order for people who wanted to replay levels from a specific game if they choose too. It's a neat thing that I do kind of wish was how the main mode was handled as well but at the same time I do understand why they didn't do this for the main game as well.
This one is more of a complaint from someone who put way too much time into Monkey Ball deluxe as a kid, but the physics in this game are noticeably off compared to how they were in the originals and I am not really a fan of it. I'm not sure how best to describe this so the best I can really do is to give an example. There is a level you will see in deluxe's challenge mode that has you stuck in what is essentially a bowl inside of a much bigger bowl. You are supposed to keep going around the edges of the small bowl until through hitting the corners you gain enough momentum to go over the top into the larger bowl, where you do the same thing again but needing less speed to reach the goal. This is made significantly harder in this game since you do not gain or maintain as much height from bumping into the edges of the bowl and can get stuck in the small bowl much easier than in deluxe. I pulled out the original game and set up my original Xbox to test it and it is noticeably less functional due to how the game registers and calculates its physics in the Banana Mania version. This is also noticeable in the minigames that make a return from previous games, in that a number of them do not work correctly due to this change as well. Which is unfortunate but I was never big into the minigames anyway so it doesn't impact me too much.
Another thing that I'm not sure how I feel about with this is how it balances its level curve. The main mode of the game is a mix of the main modes from one, two, and deluxe which is nice since we still get all the levels from those games even if its not in the original format, but the way they're ordered in this game leads to having really random and unnecessary feeling difficulty spikes in each world. The original games definitely had difficulty spikes and tough levels, but those were at least ramped up at a more even pace whereas here you can have one of the easiest levels in the game back to back with one of the hardest here in Banana Mania. It isn't the most egregious thing since I would have had to do these levels eventually, but it did kind of break up the pace of the game in a really odd way that I didn't really enjoy.
Despite everything I've said up to this point though, its still Monkey ball at its core almost exactly how you might remember it. The gameplay might take a bit to adjust to if you are intimately familiar with the original trilogy of games, but for newcomers to the series this would most likely not be noticeable as most stages will still function fundamentally the same. The game is still incredibly fun but challenging and makes you really try to master its gameplay to finish its puzzlebox style levels. Sure I would have overall prefered we got full remakes/remasters of the first three games but I do think there is merit to remixing the games into something entirely new like this and I do appreciate the wave of nostalgia I got from seeing a ton of the old levels from the first few games that I remember so fondly.
Ultimately, I do still really like Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. It's goofy, its creative, it's frustrating as hell, but it's classic monkey ball. I'm glad this remix of the first several games exists and I hope that the monkey ball team getting this opportunity to recreate the original games means that an original monkey ball based on the first three is in the works coming up. This game has a really strong basis going forward for the series with it using the best of the original games as well as adding a lot of cool new features like multiple unlockable characters from other sega properties. I had fun with this game and I hope you do too if you decide to pick it up.
8/10