Thanks to the Brawl hacking community, I can now extract DSPs, brstms, and more from my Gamecube collection. This is a piece from one of my favorite Gamecube games - Super Monkey Ball 2.
Story Mode's "Unlimited Lives Per Level" formula is how most challenging games work today, including Dark Souls, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, etc, because "tightrope" difficulty design isn't fun. Lives are an antiquated mechanic that just make retries take longer because you have to click through a "game over" screen, since games aren't coin-operated anymore.
@@Sparkz1607 Lives encourage learning ways to beat a level consistently. They test your knowledge of the game as a whole rather than just a specific section. There are many levels in monkey ball that you can bang your head against until you luck your way through it once which is why having lives can make for a better challenge. Calling lives antiquated is naive and also limiting mindset for developers.
@@Sparkz1607 "Lives are an antiquated mechanic that just make retries take longer because you have to click through a "game over" screen, since games aren't coin-operated anymore." This only true if you're spamming continues. The challenge of seeing how far you can get on a limited number of lives is exciting and tense, and makes collecting bananas actually worth doing, while introducing another set of decisions to make (Do you risk your valuable lives to go for the banana bunches and get more? Do you have the time to?) It also makes winning feel much more satisfying. After all, winning without continuing is hard! This concept of the elusive 1 credit clear is basically the driving force behind arcade gaming, the scene from which Monkey Ball originated, and is an aspect of gaming that's effectively been lost. Sure, you can try a no death run in Celeste or whatever game if you'd like, but the game isn't designed around that. Very few games are any more. The only thing that comes close is roguelikes, which also understand the value in permanently ending your run to make victory that much sweeter. But it isn't the same. I like that story mode exists, it's good practice and fun in it's own right. Picking and choosing which levels you'd like to play out of a set was a great way to let players have some freedom in their playthrough, and lets you skip those levels you don't like. It's just kind of sad to me that an aspect of gaming that greatly expands the replayability of many of our favorite games has been thrown in the trash because gamers largely don't care about this style of gaming any more, and would rather take it away from those who do rather than wait a few seconds to get through a continue screen.
@@Sparkz1607 a limited view. It's better for some applications, worse for others. You get why it's bad, but you're not considering why it can be good. There's a thrill behind that sort of games design, and thrill creates drive, which informs skill. Then the consequence causing the skill halts it when you lose - so it's a tradeoff. I'm gonna guess you weren't around for the tightrope-dominant days? Where forget about infinite lives, you were lucky to even get save states. I was there and I know the difference. It's a very different feel. I think the world of gaming is best off with both approaches, applied where best fits.
Yet it makes some players rage in spite of not even knowing when to time your roll to make it past the lines, they just say "FUCK IT" and just roll fast into the goal. What a risky maneuver.
Trial and error, that's how I did it. But yeah that's not good stage design. It's infuriating that some nonsense like this made it in among such otherwise awesome and memorable stage design elsewhere.
Opera is ok once you learn it. You just have to go reaallly slow and steady. Or just yeet yourself off of the second to last platform and do a trickshot goal lmaooo
This game very well have been what made me understand my rushdown nature of how I play games. Not recklessly throwing myself at it, but steady, confident movements. Man, do I have a lot of great memories with this. It's telling that well over 10 years later I still remember Opera lol
Yep! The funniest game to me was Monkey Fight 2. That game is hilarious. Also, for Cylinders, that running trick does take some practice to nail actually, but the wow factor will never go away! My friend thought the same until I showed him how intense it could be, then he got as into it as I was. Haha.
I know all the different worlds had unique visuals but something that always stood out to me was how the giant comb was completely different in design for this world when compared to the version in the whale. It still acted in the same way but was a completely different model which I always found kinda neat.
Mine was the target practice one where you would fly and try to land on the bullseye. Countless hours we played that one my sister, cousin, and I haha. I remember some stages you could just run through them. Good times...
I got my boyfriend to play this recently. I did Switch Inferno in one go and he said it looked like a hellfire of nope. If only he knew how long it took to figure it out as a kid...THERE IS A REASON WHY I NEVER FORGOT!
Nice! My cousin was like that game appears very "homosexual" ,but it's probably one of the funniest games out their. And his words still stand to this day, that game was too much fun. Thanks for the advice, if I remember next time I play it, I'll try it out
Hardest Stages: Tiers Switch Inferno (only when you don't figure it out the first time) Challenge Mode: Arthropod Giant Comb (If you don't know what you're supposed to do)
How I beat switch inferno: I hit a switch and saw that certain switches lit up on the map on the bottom right corner. I believe the switches that don’t light up are ones you can hit. That map they give you helps a lot, especially on Free Fall and Launchers.
I remember how I accidentally beat Switch Inferno... This was back, before I could look up things on the Internet. I was knocked around by those walls. The next thing I knew, I hit a couple of switches, and flew into the goal. I played this game a few weeks ago, and I looked up how to do this. It seems quite simple, now that I've looked it up...
When I found them out I didn't turn of the system until I beat all of them. There was one stage that I kid you not took me 4+ hours to beat. I forgot the name or level of it, but it was the one made entirely of spinning cylinders. Woo, R.I.P. Good Super Monkey Ball games.
Oh...I know what you're talking about. The stage was called Cylinders...Here's a hint: Blast through! Do it right and you can bounce over the gap in the middle and hopefully bounce straight into the goal. When me and my friend first encountered that stage, he told me to go straight and I did and beat on my first try.
the interesting thing for me is i couldn't beat world 3 for like half a year, then i come back later and get to world 4, stuck on THAT for nearly 4 years (no joke) and then i breezed up untill 9 which i never see my self beating XD
...... Is it bad that i was afraid of this game from this stage onwards because of the monkeys being shrunk down to a size small enough to have a level in a cooking pot and a Laundromat? 😩
this world hit me like a brick wall in the sense that i could not pass it no matter how hard i tried. this level is the reason i cringe at the mention of okra.
Most fitting Smash stage: Pilotwings (Sm4sh) Reason: Though catchy, it, like other songs in this game, would need a more similar stage to truly fit. Pilotwings has some unique music (like Wonderful 101) and that is enough for me.
