Great videos here. I agree with a lot what you said. Was also refreshing to see someone praise Step n Roll (I really do think that game is completely overlooked and pretty solid). Really the only terrible Monkey Ball games are 3D and Adventure imo.
1 i dont like step and roll at all, banana blitz shouldnt have been made, and 3d was an underwhelming thing to revisit, as i actually liked it. touch and roll has a bad rap why?! its like my favorite one aside from smb1
@@matthewevans6169 banana blitz isn’t even close to the worst game in the series, though it was responsible for its steep decline. However it wasn’t the culmination of that decline
This is suddenly in my recommended, maybe it's because I watched some of Nick Robinson's super monkey ball video. That being said, I like your review, great work! 👍👍
That’s great! I watched some of nicks video earlier! Think he’s a bit harsh and the series isn’t as bad as he was making out! I did enjoy his earlier video about finding out the narrator though! :)
Exciting news! I found out recently that someone has actually found Super Monkey Disco Ball! Kind of... They found the title screen in the old Super Monkey Ball Adventure website! At least that's proof that it actually did exist! Hopefully someone will be able to find the files behind it and get it to work again! web.archive.org/web/20080510075348/www.supermonkeyballadventure.com/en/discoball/
This one-two punch of videos deserve so many more views. Great job! I love Monkey Ball and it feels like the fanbase is a dying breed, keep that enthusiasm up. Hopefully we'll get a good one soon. Banana Splitz was such a great swan song for the new games. I hadn't played it until a year ago when I got super addicted to the games again. I bought a new charger and memory card JUST for it. My Vita was down for the count for probably 4 years until I played this. And it was worth every penny. I'm surprised that's not the one they ported recently instead of Banana Blitz. It went under the radar so much :( As for the batteries not being replaceable, I feel like if there's a battery door, you should be able to do it. I know it looked like the battery was locked in place, but I bet you could make a modification to replace it! Probably too much effort for something like that, but I bet it could happen. This was such a joy to watch. Great job, again :)
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed them both! I would have preferred Splitz as the HD port. Let’s hope Banana Blitz sold well enough that they think it’s worthwhile to do more of them in the future!
Amazing set of videos you’ve done here! I would love to see you do this style of video on another series in the future but it’s probably a hell of a lot of work tracking every game in a series down haha! I’ve never seen a lot of the mobile games you spoke about in this video, it’s sad how a lot of them aren’t playable anymore...
Thanks, so glad you enjoyed them! Yeah it took a long time to get everything together! I do have some plans for future videos in this style... Trying to track down all the games by Quintet to do a big retrospective on the developer
Here's a zip of AiAi's Funhouse: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qlSRq92LVJhP1g5XaApx-B-Rjw9BJv3e?usp=sharing I was the one that edited that game list (JediWolf29 on Fandom). I managed to find Funhouse and Monkey Golf, but the others I couldn't except an image of Bowling and that same video for the Java monkey ball. Disco Ball was a flash mini game on the Super Monkey Ball Adventure website (long taken down). All that's left of it on the Wayback Machine is just the title screen. I played it a LOT when I was a kid lol. Hope this helps!
Nice and comprehensive! I've seen a lot of people talking about lost J2ME games lately. I think that's going to be the next big thing in game preservation.
Thanks! I was amazed to see so many J2ME games that are completely lost now, with no even screenshots, let alone backed up files! It made me think that somewhere just sitting in a draw, untouched, are phones from the early 2000's with some games on that don't exist online!
I remember when I had the Super Monkey Ball duology for both the GameCube and Java, but I always took the original SMB duology because it’s controls, level of creativity and presentations felt a lot fresher imo.
When I saw Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania on the switch today, I said “I’VE SEEN THIS MONKEY BEFORE!” I had some fond memories of playing a little game with the little monkey face back when I was in the Philippines as a little girl. I could not remember where I had played with the little monkey before though. I remembered it was black and white and on a little handheld device, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember where he had been. I did a quick search but couldn’t find anything of that description so I clicked this video and its that little mcdonalds toy!! This is a late comment on an older video but I wanted to thank you for posting it anyway, if you will even see this comment. The nostalgia of simpler times hits hard.
I really appreciate this format, a comprehensive review of the entire series. I'm also a big fan of the Super Monkey Ball series. Now I really want to try out Jr. and Touch n' Roll!
Awesome and comprehensive video! You made me realize that I don't actually own Banana Splitz yet, so I'll be keeping an eye out for that one soon. I love Monkey Ball, so thanks for all the time and effort to make the series.
Super Monkey Ball's had a huge part in my life and seeing the series get this much love lately is just so great! I love that compilation at the end with "Roll With Me!" in the back. That was so cool. Roll on, SMB!
Ive got step n roll in my collection of games i havent played yet. After hearing you praise it im really looking forward to giving it a go. And it aoumds like it might even be fun and suitable for my 6 year old! 🎉
As a guy who's only recently gotten into Monkey Ball, this video was really cool and informative! Just completed Jr. and had a blast, and hoping to play Banana Splitz one day (sadly bc of my lack of Vita atm). Love ur work!
Cool restrospective, i can telly you are a huge monkey ball fan. I've played only the first one, i remember playing it back in 2004 but i always remembered with so much nostalgia, now i am exited for the remake.
Just finished watching part 1 and 2! Really enjoyed it! Im 42 and bought the gamecube monkeyball on release and loved it! Im currently playing through banana blitz on the wii but on my wii u and im just loving it! I have a question. You mentioned that on monkeyball2 you have to complete the main game game to unlock the mini games. Do you know if thats the same for the first monkeyball on gamecube too? I think it is, cos i borrowed my friends disc and was like "what, where are the mini games"?
Just came across this 2 part video. Great stuff. SMB (not that one!) needs more love! A future video suggestion: It may be a little old for you but I'd love to see something similar with official Space Invaders games. Nobody that I know of has ever done that. Lots of talk of individual games but never a full rundown/retrospective. It's wierd!
I was able to download SMB Sakura Edition to both my iphone and Android tablet via their respective stores, but I needed to use the Aptoide apk downloader to locate SMB Bounce, and SMB2 Sakura Edition.
Loved the vids. A little sad you weren't able to cover the original arcade version though, still awesome job! I wouldn't call a lot of the monkey ball 2 stages "luck" though. You just gotta know what you're doing (;
Even if they were supposed to be more comical, the Nick Robinson's SMB videos were kinda unfair to the games post-SMB2, and I feel like your videos were a more honest and down to earth take on the more modern titles. Cheers from Brazil!
Thanks! I hadn’t seen Nick’s videos when I made these but after watching I think that my videos will be good for people that want to know more about the series as a whole and see them from a more balanced perspective! I enjoyed his vids but he did pretty much just dismiss any of the games after number 2!
How dare Nick Robinson be rude to the Super Monkey Ball games that came after SMB2 for the GameCube! He’s just jealous that he can’t make a game! I just wish that he wasn’t so harsh on these games when they did nothing to him and are an improvement over the original! Okay, okay, that sounded like an over-exaggerated impression of people who hold Modern Sega to a high standard, but in all seriousness, it’s more unfair to be upset with Nick Robinson (not the actor of Love Simon and Jurassic World) and anyone else for that matter because he doesn’t like the Super Monkey Ball games that came after 2 (except for Banana Splitz, it’s another one of the greatest Super Monkey Ball games up to the ranks of Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 for the GameCube) than to admit that his opinions are at least respectable.
I wish I had a Vita to play Banana Splitz. I've seen footage and runs, and that stuff is on par with the GameCube OGs. It would be awesome if they ported the Banana Splitz levels as DLC for Banana Mania.
Despite having to do it a different way through Google, I believe you can still get Super Monkey Ball Bounce. Otherwise, very cool video and informative also! I never knew there was a Monkey Ball game on Nokia N-Gage.
oh my god, another fan of java games! i used to go on downloading sprees as some sites were going down. :// id love to get a hand on the monkey ball ones, but my searching skills arent that good. but maybe i could keep you updated? great video! (oh, btw - i have a happy meal lcd of a sonic game that died, but me and my dad did some wiring with an aa battery holder to get it up again. if you were up to do that of course!)
I've just shared my ZIP file of AiAi's Funhouse on the wiki page (my username on there is JediWolf29). I've had it for a while but have just shared it now since the site I got it from has been long gone. Enjoy :)
I really love the monkey ball series and I don't hate any of the games personally. Banana blitz is overhated in my opinion. These are nice videos you have here and I'm glad you gave the series a fair look.
Seems like they were worried about the precision of the tilt controls then, or worried about upsetting kids by making it frustrating for them. the iOS game already had tilt controls before the 3DS game but that didn’t have overly simplified levels.
Is there a new game coming? I know there was rumours.. and as for the video series.. I’ve got plans for more series reviews in the future :) I kind of did a Super Mario one a few weeks ago :)
Call me crazy, but I really like Adventure on my PSP. The framerate is perfectly fine once you set your CPU clock to 333 MHz. Then it runs better than on my Vita. 😅
while I agree with most of what you said, I feel the ngage monkey ball is completely different from jr. they're both trying to be ports of smb1, but they were clearly built with different goals in mind. The stage designs are a lot more faithful in the n-gage one but everything else is much worse, I dont know how people started claiming it was a port of jr
Weird, from what I played it seemed exactly the same, maybe later on the level designs begin to differ? I only played a few stages because the framerate was horrible haha
@@RetroBreak the master stages are suuuuuper different, but in order to unlock it in ngage you have to beat every difficulty and play every mini game. I'd say its worth playing through just because how weird the game is
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RxB3rNp4BsA.html it’s an awesome fan song by Victor McKnight he also does a lot of other cool Sega songs too!
smb3d is my least favorite in the series. At least adventure was trying! Although I do have to admit it does have one of the best smb soundtracks. Touch and Roll is really good. My 5th favorite game below 1,2, deluxe, and step and roll. I haven't played jr or banana splitz.
I'm back again! I added a page for SEGA Monkey Ball onto the wiki. There WAS an IGN page for it and more images of the game but unfortunately it has been taken down (or I just can't find it now). I did find 2 guys on LinkedIn that have worked on the project and the other J2ME games, maybe try to contact them? Or ask Nick Robinson lol, this seems like his sort of thing haha. supermonkeyball.fandom.com/wiki/SEGA_Monkey_Ball?venotify=created
@@RetroBreak android super monkey ball game. One v1.0 apparently was when it was paid app no micro transactions. Second one from Google play store. I also got some smb apk but won't install.
The three worst games on this video that was the games for the GBA, NGage and PSP never saw release in Japan. I bet the local consumers would complain a lot... terrible games that Sega never had the courage to release in they home country.
I actually had a friend who had monkey ball on the ngage. I thought it looked a bit crap since I had monkey ball 2 on gamecube. I wish I did take a closer look at it though since the ngage is such an obscure phone
