For the past week, I have spent every evening getting back together with a very dear old buddy. I used to be obsessed with Super Monkey Ball, especially during the GameCube era. However, our relationship deteriorated when the series abandoned its flawless combination of challenging gameplay and precise physics in favor of uninspired level designs and clumsy motion controls targeted at a younger demographic. As a result, you can understand my lack of interest when the first trailer for Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble emphasized the chaotic, 16-player online battles.
However, I have never been happier to be mistaken because Banana Rumble contains the best collection of classic Super Monkey Ball levels since the GameCube originals, all supported by tight mechanics that give me total control over the game’s challenging late-game obstacles. Now that Monkey Ball has returned, all I want to do is roll.
The astounding 200 courses in Banana Rumble are broken up into 20 whimsical worlds, each with ten levels. In typical Monkey Ball style, the configuration is incredibly easy to understand: The obstacles between the starting point and the objective, which you must roll your monkey across in 60 seconds, vary drastically throughout the adventure. The early stages of Banana Rumble are not overly difficult; instead, they cleverly introduce you to the game’s fundamentals so you are prepared for when things heat up.
Being a qualified master of Super Monkey Ball 2, I breezed through the first 80 levels or so. Despite this, I still enjoy rolling through them since they have obstacles like ramps, curves, rails, switches, and bumps that bring to mind the level designs of the fantastic Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2. It was also a lot of fun to see how quickly I could blast through levels that did not require a lot of finesse, like ones where you can slam dunk into the goal with a perfect launch right from the start if you know what you are doing. Speedrunning is a classic feature of the originals.
I quickly concluded that Banana Rumble was a return to the series’ original formula, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself while blasting through the game’s early stages and listening to its fantastic GameCube-inspired soundtrack.
Chaos, Controlled
Super Monkey Ball, for the first time in decades, strikes the perfect balance between stage design and variation. Although Super Monkey Ball appears to be about driving your ball directly through each course, the real objective is to control the stage, not the monkey. When the control stick is in perfect alignment with the stage’s angle, you have exact control over how the terrain tilts, which affects how your monkey rolls across it.
Banana Mania in 021, which recreated every level from Super Monkey Ball 1, 2, and Deluxe, was supposed to be a smash hit since it brought back the greatest stages from the series’ past, but at worst, the controls were so clumsy and imprecise that they were nearly unplayable. The hardest stages need precise controls, and Banana Rumble handles them so effectively that I nearly always felt guilty when I went off the stage, which motivated me to get better the next time.
I adjusted all the settings to the highest possible degree and discovered that provided me the expert level of control I was looking for. Banana Rumble even provides a plethora of control options for the stage and the camera. Even though the physics are not perfect—I occasionally did not get the appropriate amount of bounce when I fell over a high ledge—this Super Monkey Ball still feels the greatest that I have felt since the original two.
Banana Split-Screen
Reintroducing multiplayer to the main game is a pleasant change after it was surprisingly absent from the previous two installments. With up to three additional players, you can play split-screen local multiplayer or online cooperatively to complete all 200 stages. Online multiplayer gaming is fairly seamless. My friend and I played the full campaign together without ever experiencing a hiccup. When playing Banana Rumble on the Nintendo Switch alone, it likewise runs at a very fluid 60 frames per second, and it keeps up that pace when you play it online. In split-screen mode, the frame rate slightly drops, but not to the point where it becomes unplayable.
The Verdict
Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble represents a fantastic comeback. With 200 amazing courses that range from quite adorable to extremely difficult, Monkey Ball has finally made a comeback. Tight mechanics and predictable physics give me complete control over my monkey’s destiny. This is not just a cover record of Monkey Ball’s biggest hits, though, because the cleverly designed online play adds new levels of strategy and cooperation, and the new spin dash ability is a brilliant extension of the franchise’s fundamental concepts. The main letdown of Banana Rumble is its dull and unmemorable battle mode, but it is easy to overlook given the abundance of alternative tasks and replay value in its adventure mode. Banana Rumble is without a doubt the greatest Super Monkey Ball game in more than 20 years, even though it does not quite match the incredible GameCube originals.
