Leave it to Nintendo and Sega to make a game that looks "kiddie" yet is very fun and really hard in the end. In the vein of ChuChu Rocket! for being so misunderstood, Super Monkey Ball is way deeper than a screenshot can tell you, or is it?
The entire premise of the game is that monkeys love bananas, and these monkeys in particular are on the hunt for Dole® bananas. They like them so much that they'd go really high up in the air and risk their lives for them. And it's your job to keep your monkey alive to the finish line while trying to get bananas that often lean on the edge of high cliffs.
In a game like this, naturally you'd say that control would be most important. This was my biggest anxiety before buying this game because Amusement Vision was partially responsible for the Dreamcast racer with the worst control, Daytona USA.
But not to fear, the control is dead on perfect. Initially, though, I wished I had the longer N64 joystick, but a few levels of practice will calm that down. The only problem is that the camera is a little too responsive. Sure it sounds weird but once you lose a few continues on the last corner of advanced level 15, you'll catch my drift.
OK it's a kiddy game, and one with a simple premise too. So does it really need all of the Gamecube's graphical muscle?
Of course not, this game's hi-res graphics could've easily been done on Dreamcast and maybe even N64 with expansion pack. That's why Sega went the extra mile and started throwing polygons everywhere. You don't just see the level you're playing on, you can look in the background and see other levels. The next level is always hovering above you too. But the most impressive thing to me graphically is the big spinning colessium-looking floating island that's there for no reason when you're playing on levels 6-9. But the whole time, the Gamecube's not even breaking a sweat.
As for the sound, it's not as Japanese as ChuChu and that's a good thing, but it's nothing to write home about. It's not like you'll be paying much attention to it anyway.
If you can see past the cute monkeys just trying to get a banana (in the intro, you just have to see the baby monkey crossing a desert just to get a Dole® banana) you'll soon be a helpless addict to Super Monkey Ball's gradually more sadistically designed levels. It'll reward you way more than ChuChu!
