I’m somewhat of a simple man. Tickle my nostalgia a little bit and I’m sold, and one franchise that I hold more nostalgia for than most is Super Monkey Ball. The series is a pure distillation of what it means to be a video game, with the only premise or set up being that you’re a monkey in a ball, who may or may not be super, and you have to navigate some obstacles to reach the goal. It’s as simple as games get, and yet it’s one of the most engaging franchises ever made. I love it.
After basically dominating the early to mid-00s, the series kind of trailed off approaching 2010, but was eventually brought back in the form of a port of the Wii release, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. Banana Blitz was billed as a reinvention of the series, in the sense that each world in the game’s story concluded with a random boss fight that wasn’t very good, and the game introduced a jump mechanic.
I hate the jump mechanic. All my homies hate the jump mechanic.
Jumping in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz always felt like a life or death gamble on whether or not you’d land fine, or take a ridiculous bounce and end up flying into the stratosphere. No stage exemplifies this more than Ultra Heaven Stage 5, where players have to jump from several spiky platforms that are liable to yeet you into oblivion if you’re even just a pixel off. Pretty sure that level shaved years off my life.
Despite the flaws that Banana Blitz has, it’s clearly had enough success to warrant Banana Mania, a remake/remaster of the first two games in the series plus Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, itself a collection of the first two games with new levels thrown in. In no uncertain terms, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania is the definitive iteration of the series, and that comes with addressing some of the changes made in the future.
Yes, the jump mechanic is an unlockable feature that’ll be added into Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, though crucially the feature will be off by default. I never thought I’d be so excited to see the words “off by default”, but the more I think about it, the more that a jump mechanic in a game like Banana Mania might be a great idea.
The original Super Monkey Ball games were developed sans jump mechanics in mind, so being able to literally defy gravity in this new version of the game should encourage new ways to play the game. The official Super Monkey Ball Twitter account seems to acknowledge that the development team had this in mind, stating that the option will appeal to newcomers to the series.
https://twitter.com/SuperMonkeyBall/status/1405616238932398084
Another potential audience that might see some benefit from the jump mechanic is the speedrunning community. Speedruns of the old Super Monkey Ball games are some of the most thrilling and entertaining runs to watch, so adding in an ability to shortcut a lot of the obstacles could truly open up some impressive times. That, or it’ll split the community between jump and no jump, but either way, it’s a new way to look at a game that’s been analysed and perfected already over the course of 20 years.
While a jump mechanic in Super Monkey Ball still sounds like an alien presence to me, being able to approach 300 classic levels with a brand new way of playing should appeal to a wide variety of gamers, whether or not they’re new to the franchise or a veteran who has devoted their life to getting the best time.
Just a shame there’s no online mode for the minigames. 1v1 me in Monkey Fight, coward.
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania is available from October 5th, 2021 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, and Switch.
READ MORE: Will There Ever Be A New Ape Escape Game?
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
