The Do's and Don'ts of Super Monkey Ball - A Retrospective 

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Imagine a Monkey Ball game on the switch that controls different color coded portions of the stage depending on which joycon you're using. Granted, this would only fully work provided you have the neon red/blue joycons, but it's cool to think about a Monkey Ball game that tests your ability to control two platforms at one time.

I played 1 and 2 back in like '04 and despite loving them and not forgetting about them, I actually didn't know until this video that they weren't the only games in the series

I went looking for a retrospective on Super Monkey Ball because I don't hear this series talked about enough. Really enjoyed this! I agree that SMB2's Adventure Mode is much more enjoyable because you don't have to worry about lives. I always enjoyed trying the same stage over and over until I figured it out, instead of having to get back to the point where I failed with barely any lives left like in the first game. I also remember having SMB Jr. as a kid and liking it, but I haven't touched it in years. Seeing it on the big screen makes me realize how rough it is! But I think the aspect that has made Super Monkey Ball so special to me for so long is the Party Games. When I get together with my younger cousins, we almost always break out the GameCube for some multiplayer fun and SMB2 is often what we play. I can't count how many rounds of Monkey Target we've played, and I always enjoy Baseball, Soccer, Tennis, and most of the others as well. (Except Boat; that one is kind of bad). I remember thinking Monkey Shot was super cool as a kid, and Monkey Billiards taught me to play 8-ball! I still have no clue what Japanese 9-Ball is though; never heard of that anywhere outside of Monkey Ball. This is the main reason why Banana Blitz was so disappointing to me. Instead of a handful of well-crafted minigames you could play for hours, they piled a shovel full of one-off games akin to something you'd find on the App Store. None of the games in Banana Blitz grabbed me like Target, Golf, or Billiards in SMB2. It's really a shame, as I feel that Monkey Ball could come back with a new game that packs a ton of stages and new, high-quality minigames. We can dream. Great work on the video again!

Found this video after the remake announcement. Super interesting video man, intended to just stick around to see the main mechanics and watched the whole thing. Great job!

And here we are 16 months later and SEGA just announced Banana Blitz HD...

GonGon x Liam is a good ship.

Getting into Monkey Ball now after the remake announcement, playing 1, it’s very fun!

This was a great video, man. I love the Super Monkey Ball series! In fact, I played the second game before watching his video! I played SMB1, SMB2, SMB Jr, SMB T&R, SMB BB, and SMB 3D. I would really like to see a revival of the franchise, similar to what was done with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon. What SEGA can do is create an enhanced remake of SMB Deluxe called "Super Monkey Ball Ultimate." Here's what it would have: 1. Online functionality for both Challenge Mode and Party Games 2. 3 different modes for Challenge Mode (Version 1, Version 2, Version DX) 3. Ability to switch between the physics engines of SMB 1 and 2 4. The ability to post replays on social media and RU-vid 5. Ability to play both versions of the characters (Original and Cartoon) 6. Level creator 7. Ability to change the music and the scenery of the stages in Challenge Mode 8. 4K graphics 9. A remake of Marble Madness with the Monkey Ball characters as a bonus game If the game sells well, then they should remake Banana Blitz with a Challenge Mode (Beginner, Advanced, Expert, Master) along with the Story Mode as well as Multiplayer. I would also like to see a movie and a TV series based on the games. Sorry for the long comment, I am just a fan of the franchise, and I would love to see it return in the best way possible.

I've played none of the Monkey Ball games other than banana blitz, and I never finished that because when you get to the lava world, there's a point where the take away the guard rails and introduce really narrow slopes without it feeling like they'd adequately prepared you to understand how to handle that. The order of the levels didn't seem to ramp up difficulty or mechanics in a way that trained the player. If they were to make a monkey ball maker game, a built-in level pack to appropriately prepare new players to handle other players' custom levels would be an absolute necessity.

11:43 eh he wasnt trying to take a bath _with_ Meemee, he was just taking a bath lol Still weird but much less so

I do think Monkey Ball Adventure is a solid entry in the series even if its absolutely a step down from the previous games. Other than that I agree with this a lot!

I see you are a man of culture yes? You use GonGon just like I do.

Liam you toasted my ass with that ending bit, the eyes part holy crap. Also, ye, that recommendation at the end was well done, cool way your lead up to it. Bless you

This video is balls to the walls

I’m kinda late and I’m sure it’s been said before, but there’s actually a fan game coming out called Rolled Out, definitely worth checking out!

This video really makes me want to try these games (really just 1 and 2).

22:00 Same. I'm sure I could recognize some of the stages from Banana Blitz, Touch and Roll, and 3D if I would see them, but I could tell you just about ever SMB1 stage without needing to see it.

I used to have a crush on my neighbor cause she had this game 🤣🤣🤣

Super Monkey ball needs the Sonic mania treatment

I actually really like Adventure. Nostalgia's definitely a notable factor, but I also really like the music, and the chill atmosphere.

Awesome video. My friend recommended 2 for me a while ago, and it's since become one of my favourite GC titles. I really like marble games in general, so I was really happy when fans ported Marble Blast Ultra to PC. But yeah, it'd be nice if Sega started caring about the series again. If they could achieve those graphics on the GameCube, IMAGINE what they could do on PS4 or PC. or they could release Gongon Adventure 3 Racing Transformed, from what I hear that would sell enough copies to fund a new mobile Sonic endless runner

This video is making me hyped up again for Banana Mania. I can’t wait to retry out these levels that I couldn’t beat all those years ago. Great video, even if this is 3 years old by now lol.

I'm gonna say my favourite Monkey Ball is Touch and Roll. The originals had two major problems: the presentation and the controls. I know you praised them quite a bit here but I've always had a major issue with the controls: the physics, level design and the way an analog stick works get in the way of each other. The game requires a ridiculous amount of fidelity in quick succession, but the analog stick just isn't cut out for that because as a physical mechanism, it hinders you by pushing back. It's very easy to determine the direction you need to push it but it's extremely hard to estimate the force with which you have to push it, meaning there will always be a bit of lag between you pushing it, noticing how fast the monkey accelerates and reevaluating how much you need to push the stick, and that all in the tiny space that the analog can move in, while you also have to estimate how the physics of the monkey in the game act towards the ledges. It's two chained thinking processes that the game demands of you in an impossible time frame sometimes and that makes the game pretty frustrating in the long run. The touch screen on the other hand allows for a lot more space to more accurately predict how far the monkey moves depending on how far up you touch the screen. Force is entirely cut out of the equation and the space is so much larger that it entirely eliminates the first of the two thinking processes, making the input feedback entirely dependent on the game physics rather than both them and the real life physics of the stick. Similarly, Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2 Sakura Edition on mobile also mitigated this issue with the tilt controls as you don't have pushback like the stick does. All you do is tilt as far as the game physics require using a a consistent amount of force. That and the presentation made me love the newer Monkey Ball games a lot more. The first two games had this constant clock ticking sound playing over the music with no way to turn them off and the music and art style were nothing to write home about. Since Touch and Roll the music has gotten more melodic, memorable and pleasant to listen to, the stages have become more colourful and varied aesthetically and more consistent across the game and that carried on to all the later games. There's a lot to be said about any of the other shoehorned gameplay styles and controls, but I'm gonna say Touch and Roll and Mobile Monkey Ball 2 Sakura Edition easily beat out the first games in terms of overall quality and were tremendous improvements across the board. I realise this is a hipster opinion but I honestly do believe that Monkey Ball is better off with tilt controls than a stick. Bigger range of movement means more precision and free movement without pushback interference greatly helps to achieve the required precision.

I don't remember if I already commented this, but I had a PSVita and Banana Splits as a kid (still do today, although I never use my Vita these days and haven't played Banana Splitz in years as such), and as someone who always loved to make my own levels whenever a game allowed me to, this and the it being a Super Monkey Ball game on the Vita when I actually cared about it were large selling points for me, and I can tell you that Banana Splits' level editor is by far the most limited I ever used; while other level editors let you actually create and edit the levels themselves, the sole purpose of this one was to show what the Vita's camera can do, and I know this because the way it works is that you take a picture of something and the game tries to turn that into a stage. That's level editor. If I remember correctly, you couldn't even edit the actual stage, and the game didn't even translate the photo you took into a stage well; I think the closest to the original photo was an NES controller, likely because it's pretty much entirely rectangular in design, and even that felt like they level design was generated almost completely randomly. You could probably make a better stage if you actually drew one on paper and then took a picture of that, but I never tried that, so I can't say for sure.

Banana Mania has given us what we finally wanted and I’m hyped

huh I never noticed you made a monkey ball retrospective video! It was very good

Great vid, I've always wondered why the monky's feet roll like wheels when they're running it looks kinda gross, and I always thought the extra modes in Banana Blitz were Garbo because they didn't have enough depth in my opinion.

I wish to get the chance to play the first two games again 👏

Underrated af. Great review

Have you ever tried any of the mobile monkey ball games? They're probably the best the series has gotten since Deluxe... even though the controls are pretty poop.

I remembered my brother and I liked playing Super Monkey Ball Adventure when we rent it at blockbuster and when we wanted to buy it at the store we accidentally picked the original one and we still had fun playing it and got the 2nd one as well and I remembered I used to dislike the 2nd one but now I can appreciate it a lot

If someone were to pitch to SEGA on making a new Super Monkey Ball game, it’d probably be similar in concept to Sonic Mania, having 60% of the levels be from the first two games, and 40% of the levels be completely original and like something Amusement Vision would do, And be a huge throwback to the first two games.

I LOVED these games when I was a kid. Gamecube was an amazing console!

Unpopular opinion: I actually really enjoy Banana Blitz's main levels, but I agree the motion controls are a bit weird. I'm looking forward to Banana Blitz HD because they took away the motion controls. This should hopefully make the game feel more like the GameCube ones.

It might be a weird thing to take away from the video but I think the precision of the analog controls in this game are a great example of how disappointing the joycons on the switch are. I don't know if it's just the games I've played or if it's actually the hardware, but has anyone else noticed there's virtually no precision or even input between the 8 main directions? In a lot of games it honestly feels like I'm using an 8 directional d pad rather than an actual joystick

"SEGA killed Super Monkey Ball and SEGA isn't interested in Super Monkey Ball anymore" Banana Mania: "What"

I have a fond attachment for Jr and I loved Banana Blitz back in the day, but I still wish it had an option to play the main game with the nunchuck and the levels later on had the difficulty of the Expert levels from 1 and 2 (even with the jump ability)

So this is like 2018 but they STILL have the ride instead of fall because super monkey ball is now on Nintendo switch since 1 day ago

I regret selling the first game now

Man, thanks for this. As a pre-teen I got Monkey Ball 2, got up to World 4, and misunderstood the physics engine completely and dropped the game after beating the world because I thought Launchers was RNG-based. I dismissed the titles as requiring too great a skill floor rather than experimenting further and stopped, thinking that 'gimmick' levels ended up causing the game to falter compared to traditional and enjoyable labyrinths. And then Banana Blitz was just making that but for grandmas buying their Wii's along with copies of Boogie. Thank you for proving that conception wrong, letting me plug in a Gamecube controller again, and trying it out. It's fun messing around with this again now that I have an appreciation that makes sense. And damn you for making me want a Monkey Ball Maker, as that sounds hella fun.

Great video! The only correction I'd make is that you don't tilt the stage. You tilt gravity. This is key to allowing midair maneuverability and is part of why the game controls so great.

I think Sega should let a bunch of Super Monkey Ball fans make a new game (on the same level of quality of 1 and 2) Kinda like what they did with “Sonic Mania”

New game that was announced at e3 looks good!

I guess Midna got sick? But this was one of my favorite on Game Cube!

Sega is running a survey for a new super monkey ball game. The link is in scrap651’s channel, and there’s one in mine too.

I like Baby because his name makes me laugh.

I saw the thumbnail for the video and got flashbacks to my earliest memories involving videogames

I played Super Monkey Ball Deluxe on PS2 and enjoyed it I played the entire Super Monkey Ball Adventure game and I liked it alot too, although I think it really needs some polishing if it's gonna be released like Super Monkey ball Banana Blitz HD and Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania Nice review

Super monkey ball oh my god i love the first 2 games so much they are so fucking creative and challenging and the soundtrack holy shit its so damn good i remeber back in the day one of the first 2 games for the gamecube i got were super monkey ball 1 and 2

This is a living prove of how Sega was the rival of nintendo back to the 90's; even this is so simple, so "childish" not any hardcore, it has sooo much quality put into it. Ypu can be an expert of quickscope or build wood platforms like a machine, but once you play with "real life" physics, plays are done. Thanks to the game I realise how important, dangerous, but also funny are physics, nowadays I see my world based on physics. So yes, I believe in gravity xDD

I like most of the old Monkey Ball games. I like Deluxe more than 2 because it has more levels, and I can unlock the extra levels of the first game as well. Super Monkey Ball Touch isn't bad and has some nice music (Thunderstorm), but mostly it's just levels from the first game. Adventure was really cool, they had nice levels (I liked the air level most), and some nice abilities (like the magnet ball). And it has one of the best minigames ever, and I still like to play it with friends: Cannon. You build your own tower and try to destroy towers of other people, and when you're still alive, you can try to fix your tower with the blocks you got from other players, and it gets very huge.

Music is so good in Banana Blitz cuz it's the same guy who composed Jet Set Radio

Growing up my three sisters and I would all play monkey Ball 2 together and we probably put hundreds of hours into that game because we didn't have a memory card and had to restart every time we turned it off. I remember we got monkey Ball adventure and a memory card and unlike monkey Ball 2 it got boring so we quit. But still to this day I will go and play monkey Ball 2 with them from time to time. Probably one of my favorite games of all time next to bad dudes vs dragon warrior and skate 3.

5:45 I know that feel. Also great video! I'd been waiting for this since the podcast with KingK. Super Monkey Ball remains to be one of my favorite games of all time. Are you a fan of other marble based games?

New game got announced... Time to replay smb 1/2

Looks like a new Super Monkey Ball is coming our way after all.

I have an idea. How about a "Super Monkey Ball" title for the Switch which not only could let you customize levels, but you could also customize the mini-games like Monkey Racing, Monkey Target, Monkey Fighting, and most of the mini-games from "Super Monkey Ball 2" and the two Wii games.

Smooth Sherbet sounds like Sonic Rush's you raise me up. Probably Hideki Naganuma

There is a game on the game boy advance that I can't think the name of but you basically play as a line or a 2x4 and it spins in a circle and if it touches a wall you instantly die and that game kind of reminds me of this game but in 2d form

This video is bananas

"I don't think Sega's interested in Super Monkey Ball anymore..." Well, they are now! 😭✊ (Also great video, obviously)

I used to play Super Monkey Ball Adventure a lot because our Monkey Ball 2 disc was scratched 😥

Word, how cool would an updated Monkey Ball 1 & 2 be for the switch with better textures and *THE EXACT SAME CONTROLS* wow I’d buy that shit immediately

If you want a good ball game with motion controls, play "Marbles! Balance Challenge". It would have been nice if that game was able to recognize horizontal rotation correctly and let you control on the ceiling, but at that time, wii motion plus didn't exist yet... They should make a new game. Maybe a VR game like that would be nice :)

Good times

I think the real reason that they toned down the difficulty with the later games was to make it more accessible to people, especially for kids. Because believe it or not, there are people who want Super Monkey Ball to be easier and less challenging......and it pains me to say that I'm one of those people. Or rather used to be. I now respect and take on the challenges of the first two games. And I enjoy them. I can only hope SEGA learns from their mistakes with the upcoming new SMB Mania game

I enjoyed the Super Monkey Ball series too. The first game was always my favorite. I ended up losing interest after Super Monkey Ball 3D because I felt that they were running out of ideas. I jumped back into the series after playing Sonic & All stars Racing Transformed and listening to some of Step n Roll's vocal tracks for a while. I want to get Banana Splits on the Vita. I enjoyed the demo, but I need to invest in a second memory card for the system in order to get it. I hope that Sega can hire new blood to make a Super Monkey Ball game similar to the early ones.

I can not count the number of times this game frustrated me with levels so much I wanted to pull out my hair

Aw but I like Adventure. It's a good plot and needs a place on the wiki.

The problem with Mario Maker is, the good levels don't get popular. Most of these levels are not like typical interesting Mario stages, but mostly speedrun, riddles, automatic or music. But it would be nice to see a lot of complex automatic stages for Monkey Ball anyway :)

*FALLOUT!* Another great review, though with flaws. (insert a lame joke about balls) I like how you talk about Adventure, now that I see exactly the problem, but I still don't dislike it. Now I'm interested in SMB2.

I think game structure is at least as important as the level design. What good is Super Monkey Ball 1's awesome levels when literally half of them are locked behind the abomination that is Expert Stage 7 with limited lives? SMB2's story mode did the right thing with infinite lives to allow you to experiment. This is why, imo Banana Blitz is the second best of the series since it retained that. For some ungodly stupid reason, other versions like the DS one didn't have infinite lives either.

I used this game for my graduate capstone project

Gon Gon is king. Look at that face. He means business. He is the only one who realises how fucked his situation is.

you wanna hear something amazing? The only Monkey Ball game I've ever played is Adventure on PS2. My grandma bought it for me and I played the shit out of it. The racing mode was basically the Mario Kart for our house because we never had any Nintendo systems. Monkey Ball Adventure was basically a crazy fast and frantic racing game to me.

I personally cannot stand the art style of Banana Blitz onward. The original titles had that distinct “arcadey” look to them that fit the soundtrack so well, whereas Banana Blitz had that generic, cartoony, mobile game look to it.

Im excited for the spiritual successor, Rolled Out...plus i like hamsters more than monkeys

GameCube was pulling 60fps?

1:34. False. Monkey Ball arcade had an international release before the GameCube game. I’ve played it.

W video

I don’t see how super monkey ball 2 helped them increase precision for surgery. It doesn’t have any thin bridges like exam c, stamina master or bridge master.

Before recently I've only ever played the Xbox 360 game Marble Blast Ultra and im wondering how this game differs. There is an nes game called marble madness and it looks way to hard. Time limets should only be optional in games most of the time.

As a kid, I had Monkey Ball 2, then Monkey Ball 1, then Monkey Ball Banana Blitz. I didn't play much of Banana Blitz, but I didn't remember you could jump and boss battles. The game wasn't memorable at all.

So far I'm really enjoying this video, but if I were you I'd have chosen a different title - "Do's and Don'ts" makes it sound like this is a video with gameplay tips, not a video essay on the franchise's rise and fall from grace.

Free Fall is a free level but Arthropod is definitely the worst

Only monkey ball game I played was SMBA. I hated it so much I thought the whole series was trash. You have persuaded me otherwise. I’m buying SMB2 right now 👍🏽

The only games I've played are SMB2 on iPhone and Super Monkey Ball Adventure. I actually like Adventure more. Like a lot more. It's one of my favorites, as in it's one of my favorite games. I'm not gonna try to say it's objectively good or anything. But I still really enjoy it for what it is. I like the really sensitive controls for how accomplishing it feels to get a handle on them. I'm also a super big fan of 3D platformers. Particularly Collect-a-thons, and Mission Based 3D platformers. So Adventure helps bridge the gap for me. Actually I generally disliked the Challenge stages the most, but maybe that had more to do with the apparent lack of their quality, I do like a good few. I'd actually love to see another, but it'll never happen. :( SMB2 was just kind of meh to me. The controls were fine but the game just felt tedious. But maybe that was just cause I was playing on phone.

How we know this was early days for Liam... bit of a potty mouth in this script ;)

Super Monkey Ball Adventure actually would have been a solid game, if it weren't for some of the very repetitive and annoying tasks and the game crashing and glitching out once every hour.

ive always wanted to play these games, they look extreemely fun

I dont remember much about Banana Splitz other than the artstyle being awful, the level creator being randomly generated based on the camera mode and getting through 'normal' mode fairly smoothly. It must have had a lives system because I remember only getting 3 or 4 levels into 'hard' mode before having to start from the beginning. Also no YanYan so bad choice.

I feel like nostalgia got in your way with the first 2 games.

and then smbbbhd gets announced

Sees new Liam Triforce video pop up. Me: Finally hope Midna comes back. Watches whole video and Midna doesn’t show up. Me: 🐀

23:40 Best music from BB? I disagree. The best music came from Super Monkey Ball 2.

I've only completed banana blitz since I didn't care for the original games. Nevertheless, nice retrospect. Can I ask for billy Hatcher next?

So many f-bombs. Yikes.

Also i didn't really find step and roll a bad game. I thought it was a solid game, but a bad Super monkey ball game if that makes any sense at all lmao

Loud, repeated F bombs while discussing super monkey ball ... not a good look. Highly annoying, ruined the video.