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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.

The staff of Edge praised the main game as "absorb" due to its high level of difficulty, noting that the trial and error required to complete challenging levels forces one to learn the nuances of its "reductive control system" and eventually enables the player to perform seemingly impossible tasks with increasing ease: "Once a level falls, the mysticism around it vanishes. It's beatable; it's an afterthought on the route to your next impossible hurdle." Writing for GameSpy, Ben Turner commented on the "excellent progression of difficulty" engendered by three distinct difficulty modes and thoughtful stage design, expounding "most levels introduce some new idea or concept to the game" and "every single level played adds to your skill." IGN's Matt Casamassina commended the "great level variation", with "well created mazes and puzzles that must be completed using a combination of physics calculations, careful planning and a huge helping of patience." Turner complimented the frequent introduction of incentives to keep playing such as additional continues and hidden levels, adding that a high "ceiling of mastery" enhanced the game's longevity through a "simple but well conceived" scoring system and the ability to test strategies in practice mode. Edge and Casamassina thought similarly, with the latter stating "there are shortcuts that can be carved out by the crafty player, physics to be considered when navigating and more." N-sider's Tim Knowles pointed out that "the latter levels in the game get extremely difficult and you will often get frustrated", while Casamassina felt "it may be a little too difficult for the casual gamer." However, N-sider's Mark Medina called the learning curve "perfectly spot on": "Any falling off the platforms feels entirely your fault and at the same time, you always get the sense that you're just that little bit closer to that elusive goal. You always have the feeling that just one more go and you'll be able to pass that level". Edge and N-sider's Jason Nuyens and Will Stevenson agreed with this sentiment, with the latter emphasizing the addictive quality of the gameplay. On a technical note, GamePro's Four-Eyed Dragon faulted the camera system, which "can get out of position, making it hard to maneuver in tight spots." In The Japan Times, Steven L. Kent described the game as "a test of nerve" requiring "advanced eye-hand coordination." Turner reflected on the game's ability to evoke feelings of "nervous excitement", "intensity", and "electrifying, stomach-wrenching fear": "It's a thrilling feeling to be winding down a paper-thin path with ten seconds on the clock, hoping against hope that you can keep your balance for just a few more seconds and make it to the goal before time expires." Edge opined that the game is "defined" by "unrefined and angular" emotions: "Every second brings another jagged spike of highrise elation or freefall despair, and that's what makes the game so superb ... when you finally beat a maze on your 15th try, on the last life of your last continue, it's all worth it. If that experience could be distilled into a single word, it would be euphoria; reducing Super Monkey Ball to one word is simpler. It's genius."

On the party and mini games, Kent asserted "All of the activities ... were designed with an unerring eye for quality", Edge contended "none are half-assed throwaway rewards", and the staff of Nintendo Power remarked "each one is a fully realized activity that you could play for hours." GameSpot's Ricardo Torres called Monkey Race "a solid little racer", and Casamassina recounted it felt "polished and finely tuned." Stevenson "loved Monkey Fight", while Casamassina and Kent highlighted the use of a crown to identify the player currently in the lead as encouraging "players to gang up on each other." Casamassina hailed Monkey Fight as "a thing of beauty", but Turner dismissed it as "a dud, as it's too much frantic button smacking and not enough skill or thought." Monkey Target, lauded by Kent as the "most addictive interactive activity of 2001" and considered "the most complex" of the party games by Turner, was complimented by Casamassina for its "simple and brilliantly intuitive" control scheme and "careful science of when to use an item and when to forgo it." Nintendo Power and Medina, respectively, described Monkey Billiards as "a full-blown pool game" and "a very fun alternative to the real game"; Casamassina applauded its "ultra-realistic physics engine that perfectly mimics how pool balls would react ... it all works just as good if not better than any pool simulation available to home consoles." Casamassina was further impressed by the physics of Monkey Bowling, elaborating that "when the pins break apart one would swear it's the real deal", but Turner criticized its physics as "slightly wonky". Medina singled out Monkey Bowling's "nailbiting" challenge mode as a personal favorite, while Nintendo Power considered Monkey Bowling "as good as tenpin gets" and Kent wrote it "is one of the most robust bowling simulations I have ever played." Finally, Four-Eyed Dragon conveyed that Monkey Golf provided "a humongous challenge" with "crazy, lopsided miniature golf course", while Kent called it an "absolutely infuriating ... test your aim and your logic."

Although "not extremely complex or technically impressive in the way that many other launch titles strive to be" Turner believed the graphics were "extremely well-realized and perfectly suited to the game." According to Torres, "while the four selectable monkey models and the various levels are simple in design, they are generously modeled with well-textured and shaded polygons and have a very rich look." Four-Eyed Dragon spoke highly of the "hilarious" monkey animations, "sharp reflections and cool water effects". Likewise, Casamassina enjoyed the dances performed by the monkeys after winning a match and cited the water effects as "particularly incredible". Described by Turner as "colorful" and "crisp" and by Torres as "cartoony" and "clean", Edge likened the game's aesthetic to Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, concluding "Every surface is bright and solid and shiny, every aspect impeccably presented." Casamassina, Turner, and Torres all praised the consistent framerate, with Casamassina emphasizing "it truly, always runs at a full 60 frames per second." However, Four-Eyed Dragon noted the visuals were "not greatly detailed" and Casamassina observed "there isn't much geometry being drawn at any single point in the title and the backgrounds are often barren, whether it be for power or stylistic purposes." Moreover, Casamassina was disappointed that the three difficulty modes reused level themes and by the absence of progressive scan support. Torres regarded the game's sound as "good" but "probably weakest aspect", calling the music "catchy" but finding the monkey noises repetitive and the remaining sound effects "unspectacular." Conversely, Blue-Eyed Dragon was favorable to the "boisterously entertaining monkey sounds that can be heard once a chimp hits a wall or falls off a ledge" as well as the "eclectic mix of instrumental tunes". Turner "thought the music ... set the mood perfectly, but some may find it annoying".

Kent named Super Monkey Ball "the best party game of all time." Torres opined that the game "makes a strong case for the power of simple yet incredibly addictive gameplay." Knowles stated it represented "Sega at its pure best." The staff of Famitsu "liked the mini-games in addition to the regular modes." Nintendo Power hailed the game as "one of the ultimate party games" and "the best in serious gaming, too." Turner declared it "that rarity of rarities: a perfectly-realized launch title", with a "bounty of extras" that set "a new standard for arcade to home conversions". According to Medina, "probably the greatest thing about this game is that it's so unassuming, in that you are genuinely very surprised at its extremely high quality."

Due to its complex physics engine and abundance of possible shortcuts, Super Monkey Ball has been popular with professional speedrunners. A 2006 study conducted by the Beth Israel Medical Center found that surgeons who played the game for 20 minutes prior to performing a surgical drill finished slightly faster and made fewer mistakes. In 2006, Nintendo Power ranked it the 38th best game available on Nintendo platforms, commenting "who knew that such cute characters with cinnamon roll ears could be the source of so much tension (when the clock is ticking) and so much relief (when they finally break the ribbon)?" In 2009, 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." Writing in 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, Christian Donlan described Super Monkey Ball as "one of Sega's grade-A triumphs."

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