Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble (25th June 2024)

[Julius]

Switch exclusive! 

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Hold on to your bananas! and friends are back in the first all-new Super Monkey Ball game in over 10 years. Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble rolls exclusively onto Nintendo Switch on June 25, 2024!

For the first time in the series' history, up to 16 players from around the world can now battle it out online across multiple game modes! Be the first to the finish line in Race, grab the falling bananas in Banana Hunt, team up to take down robots in Robot Smash, and more. Hungry for even more? Grab your favorite bunch and slip into a wonderfully crafted story in an a-peel-ing new Adventure mode. Journey through 200 all-new stages, featuring support for up to 4 players in local or online play! With over 300 ways to customize your character and their Monkey Ball, along with a new Spin Dash technique, you can bounce, tilt, roll, and now dash past the competition in style as you aim to become Top Banana!

Experience thrilling gameplay that is easy to pick up and play yet challenging and fulfilling to master. Go bananas with your favorite bunch and drop into online multiplayer for up to 16 players or local multiplayer for up to 4 players! Slip into a wonderfully crafted story either locally or online in the all-new Adventure mode, where you will journey through 200 newly crafted stages either in 4-player co-op or solo. Show off your style by customizing your character with over 300 fashionable items to choose from. Use the new Spin Dash technique to sprint past rivals or create new shortcuts to victory!

 

[Dcubed]

Not overly impressed with the level design that we've seen so far; it all looks very wide and seems to lack the intricacy seen in the original two GCN games.  But I'm still cautiously optimistic about this one, I'd hope that SEGA would've learnt a thing or two after remaking the GCN Monkey Ball titles.

At least it seems to be bereft of the incessent barriers that ruined the previous post-GCN Monkey Ball titles; that's a good start

With the new spin dash, I bet that jumping is going to be a big element of the gameplay... that sucked in Banana Blitz, so we'll see if it's done better here...

[nekunando]

My impressions of the first 2 worlds have just been OK so far.

Navigating the stages has been zero challenge so far (something that will inevitably change later) but the objectives of collecting certain numbers of bananas, picking up the gold banana and clearing the stage within a set time is what makes things more interesting.. but is that what I want..?

These tasks have been welcome up to now and the lack of lives allows you to experiment and take risks without a severe penalty. I do, however, miss the pressure of having to be careful in every stage back in the original Super Monkey Ball 😕

We'll see how it goes the further I progress but it isn't particularly pleasant on the eye. The muddy grass of the first world was succeeded by, to me, the very visually unappealing Rose Garden.

Not feeling overly positive or negative so far, though!

[nekunando]

Almost half way through World 6 today and I'm unsure what I make of the structure of the game right now.

Whereas in the original Super Monkey Ball I'd beat a level (trying not to lose too many lives) and instantly be moved onto the next, I'm finding myself focusing on the secondary objectives in Banana Rumble.

I can appreciate the push to make the series more accessible and also provide the freedom to constantly take risks and experiment with different routes and tactics but it kinda goes against what I want to be playing the game for.

I feel similarly with racing games that have to just take on one race separately at a time instead of the much more preferable system of having successive races grouped together where you must perform across the entire series to succeed.

With the jeopardy of failure largely removed (up to this point, at least), there are so many careless deaths and also lots of hoping that you'll hit certain parts of a stage at just the right speed and trajectory to either grab a golden banana or beat the target clear time. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to chase the even more difficult times that become known.

Like I say, the game allows you the freedom to go nuts and try to find any which angle and shortcut you please but when it feels like you'll need large amounts of luck to go along with the required skill, that challenge will eventually become uninteresting to me.

I just hope the stages themselves become fun enough to navigate in their own right but we're generally not there quite yet!

[Cube]

It baffles me (the same with the remakes) that there isn't a "classic mode" with the traditional lives and points system.

It seems like such an easy thing to do.

[Dcubed]

5 minutes ago, Cube said:

It baffles me (the same with the remakes) that there isn't a "classic mode" with the traditional lives and points system.

It seems like such an easy thing to do.

It's almost like SEGA are purposely trying to move away from their arcade roots.  Even Sonic Origins removed the traditional Lives system from these classic games.

Meanwhile, Crazy Taxi Reboot seems to play nothing like the original game at all with its weird multiplayer focus.

Sad to see, but it is what it is.

[S.C.G]

Even a "Classic Mode" wouldn't change the physics though, even though an additional mode would be welcome.

To me, if it doesn't play exactly like the original Super Monkey Ball games on the GameCube, then I just don't see the point in playing it, at all.

If Sega and Nintendo were ever to put GC games on NSO, or just offer the original games, but emulated to a decent standard, I'd be more interested in that at this point.

[nekunando]

On 2/21/2024 at 2:50 PM, Dcubed said:

With the new spin dash, I bet that jumping is going to be a big element of the gameplay... that sucked in Banana Blitz, so we'll see if it's done better here...

Personally not really enjoying the spin dash so far and am a little concerned about how good I may, or may not, need to get with it later on.

I'm finding it tricky enough to judge how much power is required in addition to general tilting/movement to get the required height and distance to reach things in the air, be it bananas or even the goal!

It's mostly necessary for completing the stages within set times and fluking shortcuts but it has been required on another couple of occasions to get the golden banana. Maybe I'll get the hang of it but with the length of cooldown also seemingly dependent on how far it was charged in the first place, it's not immediately intuitive to me 🥲

5 hours ago, Dcubed said:

It's almost like SEGA are purposely trying to move away from their arcade roots.  Even Sonic Origins removed the traditional Lives system from these classic games.

Meanwhile, Crazy Taxi Reboot seems to play nothing like the original game at all with its weird multiplayer focus.

Sad to see, but it is what it is.

There are plenty of occasions where modern advancements and improvements in accessibility, or whatever else, is welcome but it certainly isn't always the case.

Hearing a recent NVC brought up certain franchises that they'd like to see return and it made mention of both Starfox and Wave Race.

Ultimately, I don't think they felt that the traditional structure for both of those franchises necessarily works in the modern day (and certainly at the price Nintendo want to charge) but, for me, to change or drastically expand what made those games special would ruin what it is I love about them.

There's nothing wrong with Starfox being a relatively short, highly relatable experience and Wave Race, particularly Blue Storm, works wonderfully with needing to score well enough to progress whilst also making your own choices of which order to race the courses based on the weather conditions. I love it and I'd just want that again, only with perhaps a few more courses 🥰

The same kinda applies to Super Monkey Ball. The first game got so many things right and they've just continued to deviate away from what was so fun to me about that experience. Even if the latest game still had things split into worlds with 10 stages each, there's no reason why it can't give you a set number of lives to beat each group of 10.

I understand accessibility options and not wanting to lock content away from the player but I often think there can be too many options. If there are things I can tweak, sliders to move up or down or other options I can turn on and off then I actually don't like that. I don't want to set my own difficulty parameters as I'll never know if I'm giving myself the right level of challenge or if I'll feel satisfied from beating something on the settings I've selected.. if that makes sense.

Maybe Super Monkey Ball would have run out of steam following the same path as the original game (heck, I even think Super Monkey Ball 2 kick-started the downturn) but I just never felt like they went the right direction with it and that's such a shame.

It could be one of the most fun franchises out there but it has just never got there!