I honestly cannot remember the last time that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Monkey Ball was a relevant series for Sega. While the company did re-release the Wii exclusive Super Monkey Ball: Banan🧜a Blitz in an HD format, it seems like eons since AiAi and friends jumped into their gerbil balls and rolled around deadly labyrinths. O꧑nce a launch title for the GameCube that became an overnight success, Sega has since moved onto greener pastures.
Thankfully, time works in loops. What’s old is new again as the saying goes, and t𒊎hat brings us to the upcoming release of Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. Essentially an HD port of the Xbox/PS2 compilation titled Sꦚuper Monkey Ball Deluxe, this latest HD port goes back to the beginning of the series to provide the definitive version of classic Monkey Ball. You’re getting a metric ton of levels here, something to the tune of 300 stages. There’s also a plethora of new unlockable characters, including the legendary Dragon of Dojima, Kiryu Kazuma, from Yakuza fame.
Sega was onto something wi♚th Banana Blitz HD a few years back, but Banana Mania might truly be the best release in the 💫series thus far.
From a pure marketing standpoint, Banana Mania sounds like a slam dunk. Featuring every level from Super Monkey Ball Deluxe al𒁃ong with an arra♉nged mode, it soundly beats every other game in the series in terms of the number of stages. All of the ridiculous party mini-games from Deluxe are present and accounted for as is a new cooperative multiplayer option. If you love challenging your friends, now you can team up with them to help each other complete levels.
All of that is well and good, but what if the game feel is off? What has hurt Super Monkey Ball sequels beyond the original few games is that the 🎃ball physics are radically different from those original titles. There’s also the introduction of needless gimmicks such as the Wii balance board and touch screen controls on mobile, but none of that is here. Banana Mania feels more refined than Banana Blitz HD, accurately recreating the tight controls of the original.
In possibly the best move, you even have some camera control this time out. While playing the game with just one joystick ♒is fine enough, being able to stop and rotate the camera a bit helps you spot where you might need to go during some of the more intense levels. It’s a little awkward when moving around (the camera tries to snap behind you at all times), but you can technically use it on the go. It really does help make the game feel more modern.
Not that you’d be playing Monkey Ball for its story, but there is a “campaign” of sorts to work through. Taking you across the original 300 levels of Monkey Ball 1, 2, and Delu൩xe, each segment is punctuated with a funny little animated cutscene that attempts to set the stakes for your adventure. Some dastardly monkey is causing trou♔ble and steals your bananas? I’m actually not quite sure, but I do like how things are framed from the perspective of the cast watching a Saturday morning cartoon.
Once you get into the game, there’s no pomp and circumstance about anything. An announcer simply counts down to 1, then tells you to go. Super Monkey Ball is easy enough to understand that you don’t need a tutorial and it’s nice that one isn’t present here. I don’t remember if the first level of Monkey Ball was laid out exactly like it was here, but the campaign appears to be composed of the arranged levels rather than the clas♓sic ones.
Don’t go into Banana Mania expecting The Last of Us Part 2 here, but those that aren’t skilled in twitchy arcade games like this will find some accommodating options to help them get through tough levels. On every level of the game, if you fail roughly 10 times, you’ll get a prompt for “Helper Function.” This can be turned on at will from the pause menu, but it essentially doubles the time for each le🌳vel and gives 🍸you a slow-motion button. It’s very minor, but it can make all the difference in the world when you’re teetering on a very thin ledge.
In the points shop (where you go to unlock extra game modes and characters), there’s also a jump option you can enable. This will break maℱny of the levels, but it’s another nice touch for those that🅘 are struggling with specific segments. Having the option to jump straight over things is great, even if I chose to ignore these for the story mode.
What’s more interesting are modes like “Golden Banana” and “Reverse." T🌠his is where you’ll find some of the original levels and even DX levels, but they take some of the pre-existing stages (or cycle in the older ones) and give you a new objective beyond simply reaching the goal. In Golden Banana, you’ll have to collect every banana in a level to complete it. Reverse is all of the stages from story mode in reverse, except f𝕴or the ones where you descend platforms in a stage.
It’s a lot of content to offer, working almost as a full sequel to the original games instead of simply a remaster. Super Monkey Ball has always been🦩 a game about speed, so it likely won’t extend the shelf life beyond 10 or so hours, but I’m surprised at how many new courses there are here. Seeing the older courses get repurposed also gives you a chance to master your routes for challenge mode while working on a different objective.
The best part: none of this is unlockable through microtransaction DLC. All of the cur🦋rency required to nab new costumes or characters is acquired by beating levels. Grab the bananas in each level to give you a single coin while completing levels will net you between 100-1000 based on whether or not you’ve finished some in-level missions. It’s a nifty way to add some replay val♓ue.
Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania feels like a blast from the past in the best possible way. During the PS2 era, developers tried their bes♚t to innovate with new franchises that hearkened back to the golden age of arcades and Monkey Ball was the king of the jungle. Maybe this won’t appᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚeal to younger gamers that crave more story substance with their gameplay, but my old-school loving heart is already in love.
