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Super Monkey Ball Review
Chris Leyton
00/12/0000
Sega`s entry to the Gamecube`s launch is one of the quietest, but perhaps the best...
What type of crazed maniac places helpless monkeys in hamster balls, and pits one solitary task in front of them, reach the goal or fall to your doom? Well the same one that created one of the most insanely addictive and playable games of recent times, simply put this is a must have title in the same way as Tetris was for the Gameboy.
Super Monkey Ball marks Sega's first foray into multi-platform publishing, and thankfully the elements that we associate with Sega seem to have come across to their first GameCube title intact. Super Monkey Ball is a puzzle title based on the same mechanics as Atari's classic Marble Madness. It's up to you to steer your 'money-in-a-ball' across different levels to reach a goal, the main objective being time and how quickly you can reach that goal, whilst any bananas collected will tally up, collect 100 and you'll earn an extra life. Whilst the game starts out at an easy pace, by the time you've reached the medium difficulty level you'll be pulling your hair out at the fiendishly tricky levels to be found. However therein is where the magic lies, the game never feels outlandishly tough, there's always that feeling that next time you'll do it!
One of the best elements to this title is the level design, packed in the game are over 150 levels, each thoroughly thought out and planned to ensure that 'one-more-go' appeal oozes from each. An early level is styled like a guitar, with players having to roll down the strings to reach the goal, however each string is of different size, the smaller ones containing more bananas, and ultimately the smallest one resulting in a special goal that will transport you to a higher level and a massive bonus points score. It's this type of risk assessment that keeps up the competitive element, especially when playing in one of the games many multi-player modes.
Amusement Vision have nailed the controls, all that is needed for most of the games is the analogue stick, which you'll franticly be twitching on some levels and wrestling with on others. Both intuitive and responsive, Super Monkey Ball plays like a dream.
Super Money Ball is crammed full of different modes. Firstly is the Main Mode, where players take it in turn to negotiate the maps and complete them. Doing so will open up that map for the other modes, whilst completing the whole section will result in progress to the credits where you'll play a little game to earn your points. I won't spoil it for you, suffice to say its the kind of spark of innovation that you'd expect from AV & Sega.
The competitive mode is styled in the same manner as before, however rather then taking turns everybody plays at the same time. Although you're not able to knock opponents over the edge or physically interfere at all, there is a great competitive feeling about this mode. Do you risk taking the shortcut, or go for the easy option in the hope you can do it faster. This mode alone makes Super Monkey Ball one of the best multi-player games in recent years.
Then there's the mini-games, to start of with 3 games are available with at least three more to be opened when your reach a sufficient amount of points to open them up. Those available form the start include:
Monkey Race - A Mario Kart clone, players have to race across the courses whilst picking up power-up's to use against the others, it's a lot of fun but begins to wane after too much play.
Monkey Battle - Everybody's monkey is now equipped with an extendable fist, with the objective of knocking the other players off the map, along the way you can collect power-up's to make your fist bigger, extend the reach, etc... It feels like a cross between Bumper Balls (Mario Party) and Bomberman and works beautifully, essential for any party's.
Monkey Target - Players must roll their monkeys down a ramp, and then open up the balls to act as wings with the idea of landing on scored targets out in the sea. As with Monkey Race, it's a lot of fun to start off with but tires after a while.
Those available to unlock are Monkey Billiards, Monkey Golf and Monkey Bowling, unfortunately we've yet to open these however from what I've played so far I'm expecting good things. We'll have an update when we reach that tricky 2500 pts...
One area that could have become a major stumbling block is the issue of camera control, in a title such as this when time means everything and position equally as important the camera plays a vital role. You don't want to be wasting time positioning the camera, so you can make the perfect cross against a pixel lengthed bridge. AV decided not to give the player any control over the camera, instead they've pretty much perfected the camera system. Times spent trying to re-shift the camera are kept to a basic minimum, it might have been nice to be able to have manual control for these times, but that would be taking away from the main aspect of this game, keeping it simple.
You'll probably not buy Super Monkey Ball to show of the GameCube to your mates, out of the three launch titles this is the least striking and could just have easily been released on the Dreamcast. However the graphics are functional, move at a very smooth pace and best of all have that quirky Sega feel to them. Special mention must go to the animation of the monkeys, watch as you slowly move them around and then pick up the pace to see your monkey loose footing and spin wildly out of control, it's a funny sight and lends credit to my campaign for more monkeys in videogames.
