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Super Monkey Ball
North American box art
Developer(s)	Amusement Vision
Publisher(s)	Sega
Director(s)	Toshihiro Nagoshi
Producer(s)	Toshihiro Nagoshi
Composer(s)	Hidenori Shoji Haruyoshi Tomita Sakae Osumi
Series	Super Monkey Ball
Platform(s)	Arcade Nintendo GameCube N-Gage iOS Windows Phone
Release	Arcade error: {{nihongo}}: Japanese or romaji text required (help) GameCube
Genre(s)	Platform, Party
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Super Monkey Ball is a game developed by Amusement Vision and published by Sega. The game debuted in Japan in 2001 as an upright arcade cabinet called Monkey Ball (which featured a banana-shaped joystick) and was released in November later that year as one of the launch titles for the Nintendo GameCube. Since then, many sequels and ports have been created (see Super Monkey Ball).

Modes

Super Monkey Ball has three main modes: Main game, Party games, and mini-games. The mini-games must be unlocked by earning 2,500 play points in the main game.

Main game

The objective of the main game is to guide four playable monkeys, (AiAi, MeeMee, Baby and GonGon) character encased in a transparent ball across a suspended series of platforms and through a goal. As the player moves along, a timer will run for either 60 or 30 seconds. The main game is very simplistic; the only control required is the directional analog stick. By moving the stick, the player tilts the entire set of platforms that make up the level, called a floor, and the ball rolls accordingly. The ball follows the rules of gravity and momentum. While moving across the floor, the player can collect bananas by rolling the ball into them. The bananas award extra points, and extra lives. If the ball falls out or if the timer reaches zero, the player loses a life. There are three difficulty settings; the levels increase in complexity and become less navigable on higher settings. Beginner difficulty is 10 easy stages long, Advanced difficulty is 30 normal stages long, and Expert difficulty is 50 harder stages long. For each of these levels of difficulty, players can access extra levels as long as a certain criteria is met. To get to the extra levels (3 in Beginner, 5 in Advanced and 10 in Expert), a player must go through all of these levels without using a continue (in the Japan and European versions, in the American version it must be beaten without losing a monkey with the exception of Expert). After passing the Expert extra stages without using a continue, there is a 10 more-difficult Master stages.

Party games

Party games consists of three games – Monkey Race, Monkey Target and Monkey Fight. In monkey race, players race on several different laid-out racing levels, competing for the best rank. Only four players, including AI players, can play at a time. In the Monkey Target mode, players roll their monkey down a large-sized ramp and open their ball to fly, allowing them to land on any of the three islands in that game, and there are three level layouts. In Monkey Fight, players win points by punching other monkeys until the time runs out. Whoever earns the most points, wins.

Mini games

There are three unlockable mini-games which must be purchased with points earned from the main-game. These include Monkey Bowling, Monkey Billiards and Monkey Golf. Each of them is based heavily on a real-life sport, using the 'monkey ball' as seen in the main game.

Development

Super Monkey Ball was developed by Amusement Vision, a branch of the Japanese video game publisher Sega that was created in 2000 and composed of about fifty people. Amusement Vision president Toshihiro Nagoshi, who had previously worked under Sega AM2's Yu Suzuki and been credited as the creator of the arcade titles Daytona USA and Virtua Striker, devised the concept of rolling spheres through mazes based on his desire to move away from realistic simulations and instead create a game that was instantly possible to understand and play. Prototypes involving a plain ball or a ball with an illustration were considered visually unappealing due to difficulties in perceiving its movement, so after a series of revisions monkey characters previously created by a female Amusement Vision designer were placed inside the ball, with their appearance being altered to include their "distinctive" ears. Intended to feature a "cute" aesthetic and accurate physics engine, the game debuted at the 2001 Amusement Operator Union trade show as Monkey Ball, a single-player arcade cabinet controlled with a distinctive banana-shaped analog stick.

In early 2001, Sega announced that it was discontinuing its Dreamcast home console and restructuring itself into a "platform-agnostic" third-party publisher. As a result, an enhanced version of Monkey Ball dubbed Super Monkey Ball was released for the Nintendo Gamecube as a launch game in Japan on September 14, 2001 and North America on November 18, 2001. The Gamecube version was demonstrated to the public at E3 in May 2001 and at Nintendo's Space World show in August 2001; Sega confirmed that it would arrive in time for the Gamecube's launch at the June 2001 World Hobby Fair. As the first Sega game developed for a Nintendo console, Super Monkey Ball was considered a milestone for the company. Although Monkey Ball had been developed for Sega's NAOMI arcade board, which shared technology with the Dreamcast and was optimized to ensure games could be easily ported between the two platforms, Nagoshi commented that Ninendo's young demographic made the Gamecube an even more fitting console for the title. According to Nagoshi, Amusement Vision staff felt more comfortable with the Gamecube than Sega's own hardware and this ease of development contributed to their decision to focus on the system over the PlayStation 2 or Xbox; he also joked that Nintendo was the only hardware manufacturer the staff did not "hate". Out of a team composed of ten to twenty individuals, it took four Amusement Vision employees between several weeks and two months to port Monkey Ball to the Gamecube. Its graphics were enhanced with new background details as well as reflections and particle effects. Moreover, the developers spent an additional six months incorporating six extra modes into the game, with an emphasis on multiplayer competition and the introduction of GonGon as a fourth playable character.

The bananas in the game display the Dole Food Company logo, but this was removed in Super Monkey Ball Deluxe due to a licensing dispute. A theme song called "Ei Ei Puh!", which was arranged by Cheru Watanabe and featured vocals by Yu Abiru, was created for the Japanese version of Super Monkey Ball but removed from its U.S. release.

Reception

Super Monkey Ball was commercially successful upon release and remained one of Sega's best-selling titles in the U.S. through much of 2002, with total sales of the game and its sequel estimated at over one million units. While it sold well in all major territories, Nagoshi was disappointed by the game's performance in Japan, where he had expected it would be most successful; weak Gamecube launch sales were cited as negatively impacting its performance in the country. Released to positive reviews, with aggregated scores of 87/100 on Metacritic and 88.7% on GameRankings, some journalists considered Super Monkey Ball the highlight of the Gamecube's launch lineup.

Official Nintendo Magazine ranked it the 89th best game available on Nintendo platforms. Edge ranked the game #39 on its list of "The 100 Best Games To Play Today", stating "Seeing its sturdy physics model being used to perform incredible acrobatic feats shows just how finely honed it is."

See also

• Marble Madness
• Neverball

References

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• 2001 video games
• Amusement Vision games
• Arcade games
• IOS games
• Mobile games
• N-Gage games
• Nintendo GameCube games
• Sega arcade games
• Sega video games
• Super Monkey Ball games
• Video games featuring anthropomorphic characters
• Windows Phone games
• Video games developed in Japan