Super Monkey Ball's Fake Redemption Arc
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- Опубликовано: 3 фев 2024
- This is all I think about
Patreon: patreon.com/SodaCrab
Credit for gameplay:
Super Monkey Ball Jr: • [TAS][GBA] Super Monke...
Super Monkey Ball Touch and Roll: • [TAS] DS Super Monkey ...
Super Monkey Ball Gaiden: • 【TAS】Super Monkey Ball...
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz: • Longplay of Super Monk...
Banana Blitz HD Party Games: • Super Monkey Ball Bana...
Hey guys, I have a quick correction to make for a pretty significant mistake I made in the video.
At 26:56, I used Coaster as a comparison for the games' sound effects, and that was definitely not the right decision.
27:17 In the originals, you spend most of this level up on the wall if you're going fast enough like I was, so you don't actually get the rolling sound effects I was trying to illustrate, just the banging sounds and Monkey vocalizations for constantly bouncing off the wall. Granted I still think these are good sound effects, but given that they're much quieter than the dynamic rolling sound effects, it makes it kind of confusing given that the sound effects being quiet is a complaint I'm trying to levy at Banana Mania. You still hear a little bit of the rolling sound effects I was referencing at 27:29, when the monkey comes rocketing out of the tube onto that small stretch of ground at the end, but it definitely muddies the comparison and is made confusing because of the language I used to describe the problem. That was a mistake on my part.
For the sake of clarity, I'll go into a little more depth about the sound effect comparison here. The problem in Banana Mania isn't that the sound effect itself is too quiet; the issue is that the game as a whole feels like it's lacking sound effects and is too quiet, because there is exactly ONE rolling sound effect, the little "boop" sound that can be heard over and over in the Banana Mania part of the comparison at 26:56. On most levels where you aren't moving particularly fast, this sound effect plays infrequently, and there's no other feedback for your speed or movement, so the game feels awkwardly silent. Even on a level like this where you're moving fast though, the fact that it's one really dinky sound effect playing over and over again feels very cheap and unpolished. So while I still maintain my position that Banana Mania's sound effects are too quiet and generally inferior to the originals' fantastic sound effects, I definitely botched the comparison in the video, and that is on me.
Actually I think the impact sounds of the ball in the tube do the comparison justice. Sure a stage like Gravity Slider would've been a better comparison point for the rolling sounds. But Banana Mania just flat out lacks the addition noises that the ball makes against surfaces, beyond the sound of your ball hitting a hard surface really fast, but even that's diminished compared to the original.
also at 8:34 you mispronounce Camus, his name is pronouned Ca-moo (for real)
@@Mijzelffan I know it's supposed to be Ca-moo, but counterpoint, I hate that and will continue to pronounce it Ca-mus
@@SodaCrabthe level of interaction between viewers and creators when they are smaller is what keeps me on RUclips! Love the video and love the work put into each one you release!
@@SodaCrabnew game confirmed 😅
Ever notice how Super Monkey Ball went into a steep decline the moment it stopped shilling Dole? Really makes you think.
I don't think getting some white farmers to illegally annex another island nation is gonna save monkey ball
(The founder of Dole was one of the leaders of the absolute shit show subjugation of Hawaii)
Big Fruit was powerful enough to install corrupt leaders into South America and throw full blown coups so it wouldn't surprise me if the development budget went poof after Dole was no longer on board.
Dole is the reason why SMB was good. Super Magnificent Bananas.
The only ad in gameing that makes the game better (ok pikmin 2 also)
@@Markm8 You referring to the Duracell battery?
"I really love bananas"
-Aiai
Super Monkey Ball 2 is one of my favorite games.
Bananas are one of my least favorite foods.
I need help.
He would say that! What a quirky guy!
Crazy when you realize Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 were made by the F-Zero GX devs
Also you know Banana Mania was a false redemption because they forgot the most important thing: THE ORIGINAL ANNOUNCER!!
He was originally on board ever since that Nick Robinson video. Heck, it's what got the Monkey Ball hype started around that time. Unfortunately I think he lost the job because he couldn't keep his mouth shut about plans for the new game, which leaves us with the current dull announcer.
Banana Mania is a downgrade from the originals in almost every single way. The only thing it has that's an improvement is that it's in HD. That's it. Everything else is worse:
- Controls
- Sound
- Graphics
- Art style
- Minigames
- UI and menus
It literally would have been better if they just took SMB Deluxe and put it in HD. Unfortunately that 2ill never happ3n because this exists. Why rebuild the games from the ground up just to make it worse in every way?
All I want from a new Monkey Ball game is new floors with the old physics. Instead we got the same floors again 20 years later with new, WORSE physics. Thanks SEGA.
Goober your videos are god-tier, thank you for your research, one hardcore monkey ball fan to another 👍
Then play the romhacks because that's exactly what you get
Right like it wasn't that hard the same game maybe have the story mode have some redesigned levels/stages maybe add a few new party games to the already existing list (me personally I think they dropped the ball by not adding some type of pinball based mini game but I digress) a few small cosmetic changes and bam you got what most super monkey fans would have wanted but alas in the 2020's most of the brands operate under the premise "the consumer can have no nice things smh"
We can't have the same physics though. The old engine is outdated. Be happy we finally get a good super monkey ball game
@chantellethecool1 not true, you can use the source code and update it, I'm a romhacker/developer
i suspect the reason banana mania feels so bad comes down to Modern Game Engine Syndrome. why bother coding custom physics when the engine you're building the game in comes prepackaged with colliders, physics materials, and momentum calculations? better to just make the boss happy and get to building levels ASAP. i don't know exactly what's going on under the hood in the original games, but you're almost certainly not controlling a true sphere, it feels more like a frictionless cylinder
Interestingly enough people have started to mod banana mania due to unity being an easy engine and they found that a lot of the code for the game is a Frankenstein abomination of the original game’s code mixed with some new code. People already fixed the physics for the main game and even added new characters, which is one thing that mods to the originals actually still haven’t been figured out.
@@hexbug101Where can I find this?
@@psychie8625 it was shared in the discord server where banana mania modding is being discussed
Played 2 my whole childhood and just learned Baby is from the future. Bonkers.
Yeah I heard GonGon is the father and AiAi the "mother" (it was an anal birth)
Play the rom hacks that were briefly mentioned in this video, they’re phenomenal
I played monkey ball 3d and they really make it apparent
I've only just noticed that Bad-Boon's henchman wears rollerskates.
I didn't even know that 2 had a story mode.
37:20 "Some of my fellow Super Monkey Ball connoisseurs may have noticed that I skipped over a game earlier in this video."
Yeah, Banana Splitz for the Vita. You should check it out if you haven't played it. I haven't played any other Monkey Ball game since the GCN days, but it felt like a proper SMB game to me.
Indeed. Banana Splitz is the best game in the series since its golden era. The levels are interesting, enjoyable and challenging and the physics are fine enough from what I remember. It controls well enough considering that it is on the VITA and I remember some of the minigames being alright too. It's not as good as the first two games, the menus have forced touch screen controls which are annoying, the music isn't particularly good and the VITA's analogue stick isn't the best for Monkey Ball but compared to everything else that came out after 2005, it was absolutely a step in the right direction for the franchise (and a good one at that, it’s a good game). If there is any game in the series that deserves a second chance, it's Banana Splitz. The game coming out exclusively on the VITA and during Monkey Ball's period of mediocrity really prevented the game from making a splash. Simply re-releasing the game on modern platforms would remove some of its downsides caused by being stuck on the VITA.
@@bigbangbot-SuperSqank I seem to recall there is a course creator, but it was really limited and used your camera to come up with something random based on what it detected in the photo?
its interesting that he skipped over that one
Probably because it was released after Step and Roll/3D (2 of the worst games in the series) and that it was on the VITA. I assume he didn't play the game at all.
What do you mean? He features it on screen at 18:06 when talking about the handheld games.
"What was Gongon up to?" Therapy, he went to therapy
Okay, but we would totally watch "Super Monkey Ball Adventure: An Unbridled Rage".
fr i wanna see that game ripped in half. nobody ever talks about adventure so it would be a great catharsis
Bro I am so sorry you willed a new game into existence
So fun fact; part of why Monkey Target sucks so bad is because, for some weird reason, what would NORMALLY be neutral actually counts as pointing all the way down. In order to get the most out of the gliding you actually need to hold right between fully back and neutral on the stick. Once you get a hang of that it controls way better, but it just begs the eternal question of *_why?!?!?!_*
Edit/Anecdote: I think the most depressing thing about the fate of Super Monkey Ball as a whole is the fact that there is PROOF that they can build off what's there and it'd still work. Between full Indie titles like Rolled Out and rom hacks like Monkeyed Ball, it's clear there's a lot of room for the formula to go, but SEGA just... WON'T for some reason.
oh my god how did they fuck that up so badly
I haven't personally played the original but my sister and I enjoyed some rounds of Banana Mania's Monkey Glide. I thought it actually felt... good? to try and keep it balanced. It keeps you engaged as you glide and provides a decent challenge. It doesn't feel like an accident to me
@@hahasamian8010 Oh yeah don't get me wrong, once you DO get a hang of the weird analog controls it's perfectly fine and pretty fun, but the original version of it just controls that much better since it's more about maneuvering in the air than it is balancing the stick.
Sounds like you just trash at it lmao.
I recently played it again and actually got an decent score.
The thing you said about Banana Blitz Wii's OST being its redeemable factor. Pretty much all of the level songs aside from the boss fights are remixes from Touch & Roll.
I mean even with that, it's still the redeeming factor of the game. Even if... for the most part, I prefer the Touch & Roll versions. Regardless, both OSTs slap harder than they had any right to.
You know whats actually insane?
I think the absolute killing blow to banana mania is the sound design. The audio feedback in the original game is half of what made it so satisfying to play.
Meanwhile the audio in banana mania feels gutted, incomplete, like they forgot to program more than one ball rolling sound.
And now, all eyes are on Banana Rumble to hopefully set things right
My oldest brother dropped out of college his freshman year because of Monkey Target, now he's a tenure professor.
You wanna elaborate?
I hate how the camera works in Banana Mania. In the Gamecube games, while it could get caught at weird angles, you could learn how to easily manipulate it with slight movements of the stick to get it to turn around, for example. In Banana Mania, the fact the camera doesnt always turn when you try to turn throws me off so much in levels like Exam-C, and other levels I usually do fine in the original. I don't know how to explain the problem but I hope you know what I mean.
Banana Mania could've been good if they had actually supported it post-launch. Instead they abandoned it, delisted some of its DLCs, and never spoke about it ever again.
Why would it have been supported? It's a remake, all it needed to do was have everything from the previous games + more, what else would they even do?
@@metalandmagic1424 Updated it with further patches to refine the gameplay, additional cosmetic DLC... Maybe even additional stages or remixed stages, or different challenges at least. If not additional party games/modes.
the delisting is because the rights ran out
@@nate567987 Yeah - but normally those would be maintained for longer.
@@nate567987Doesn't sega own atlas and persona, tho?
Another thing that you didnt mention is that same story mode, with the charming animations from monkey ball 2, was replaced by cardboard cutout theater so they can use the newer monkeys/models.
one thing I dislike about bannana mania is how they removed the goofy cutscenes from the storymode and replaced them with generic slideshows
Super Monkey Ball 3D is the sole reason I don’t have the ambassador games on my 3DS. I have never played a Monkey Ball since, although I’ll admit that I had fun with the game before the incident
Incident?? What did Monkey Ball 3D do to you??
@@SodaCrab Homie filed a police report 😂
@@SodaCrabI’m guessing they bought it as a launch title and then returned the game and 3DS before the price drop 😭
@@JoeDennisMusic I don't think he returned that 3DS, unless by returned you mean returned to the Earth.
@@SoIstice They returned it to it's maker
Y'know, on reflection, I deluded myself into liking Banana Mania for the longest time. I tried my best to not let its numerous shortcomings get in the way of me showing support for the game and the series, but a lot of that was perched on the hope that they would actually make another game. The only thing that was really keeping me on in any way was that playing Banana Mania on Switch was a more convenient way to experience the games portably than the options I had for emulating Dolphin on my phone at the time. Even then, I was playing the originals on PC way more often than Banana Mania overall, and after I got a Steam Deck, I almost never touched the remake again. Sega seems to have felt similarly, as they seemed to have absolutely nothing lined up for future games or even to fix this one; Banana Mania's director left Sega in 2022 and RGG Studio has switched back to Yakuza mode.
I feel like an idiot for not being more critical of Banana Mania back then.
38:49 Holy crap I forgot how bad 2021 was for video game remakes; I thought of 4 examples off the top of my head and still didn't guess right for what you picked at 39:02.
I pretty much went through the same cycle, played banana mania on switch out of pure convenience than as soon as I got my steam deck I set up the originals plus some rom hacks and never touched it again
For me, I played Banana Mania and I pretty much immediately noticed that it just wasn't right. It had similar issues to Banana Blitz HD and I immediately though to myself "this game did not have a high budget at all". I basically haven't touched the game since it came out. It is such a shame. Banana Mania could have been a fantastic remake if SEGA actually put resources into the game but they didn't.
And now Monkey Ball has no clear future with its final hurrah being an unspectacular remake of the first two games (Update: turns out there is a new Monkey Ball game coming. I’m not super confident with how it looks currently but we’ll see. I’m not particularly excited for it though and that is an indicator to me that this IP just isn’t what it once was).
@@hexbug101 god damn, I'm in the same boat!
On an related note: got a steam deck for christmas and it's just truly crazemazing, for lack of a less stupid word. I'm surprised how many games it plays with no problems.. I've been playing Armored Core 6 with no real slowdowns to speak of (took a little tinkering, but not bad at all)
The 'ten years' Nishiki jumpscare really got me lol
Fun fact rgg studio who makes the like a dragon games were the ones who developed banana mania
I've always been dumbfounded that the people who brought us the Yakuza series, a series that constantly pumps out great mini games and side modes, were able to so thoroughly screw up the mini games in Banana Mania
@@SodaCrab I feel like it was mainly Sega and a lack of budget that made it turn out that way
Banana Mania had a small budget and development time, so they didn't get to perfect everything. At least the main gameply is solid.
@@pikachuchujelly7628 Well, Yakuza games have always had small budgets and development time.
@@SodaCrab because monkey ball was never successful in Japan, they just don't get it. happened with sonic. yakuza success in japan makes them more tuned in with the audience
I’m just glad that the modding scene for 2 has gotten pretty big, even some of the weaker releases are still miles better than anything that came after the originals
i think it's so fascinating that they removed multiplayer in a party game. What a baffling fucking decision.
like yeah i know you can still do party games but that's like if you could race your friends in mario kart and could only do fucking balloon battle
Super Smash Brothers but the only multiplayer mode is fucking Smash Tour
RUclips comments if they were created by vivziepop 😂
As a life long Monkey Ball fan, this really encapsulates my feelings on the franchise. From Jr. being ok, to Baseball and Target being the goated mini-games that they are, to Banana Mania being the first video-game my household ever returned. This video understands the soul of the franchise, and when it departed.
Ironic this was recommended to me after the new monkey ball was announced
as a kid who borrowed monkey ball 1 to play on my wii, then immediately bought banana blitz, this video speaks directly to me
Banana Mania is the skinwalker of Monkey Ball. From a distance or intial reveal we were excited to see them again, but then you look closer you start to notice how off... this remake was
I’ve been looking for the term where a franchise gets a sort of “revival game”, but the game itself wasn’t that great to begin with and doesn’t actually revive the series. Thank u I’ll use “Failed Redemption Arc” more often!
Glad I'm not the only one who finds the visual style of the post-Banana Blitz games to be really generic and lame. MB1+2's environments had like an ethereal aura to them, and they just replaced it with the most basic looking cartoony style imaginable.
I know right?? The areas had this surreal, almost dream-like feel to them. There was this air of mystery to things like the buildings on the mountains in Sky High, or the cities hanging over the ruins in Inside the Whale. Even more generic ones like SMB1's ice area still felt interesting, like with the penguins jumping between the igloos.
@@SodaCrabI was so upset when they butchered the design of the hanging cities inside the whale, alot of other areas suffered from that lack of detail too
i totally forgot how hard the multiplayer modes went
How could you ever forget that
Comparing Banana Blitz to Hotel Mario doesn’t really work since Hotel Mario had little to no influence on future Mario series
The comparison in the video is between Hotel Mario and Monkey Ball Adventure :)
@@SodaCrab well never mind then
@@gooeydude574 Plus, Hotel Mario is fondly remembered for SOMETHING. (RUclips Poop)
@@caskoch.3260 hey, banana blitz did have one good thing; it was the first time Hideki Naganuma worked on the series. Smooth Sherbet's OST slaps hard
@@cdm966 You know what? I can't argue with that.
Well it seems the game did sell well cause theres a new monkey ball
Thank you so much for this video - I tried to play Banana Mania and was so disappointed and couldn’t quite tell if the physics was different but this validates me so much
A trustworthy sega leaker confirmed that sega is making a new monkey ball game but for whatever reason sega is making it an Apple Arcade exclusive
This is why you take leaks with a grain of salt, folks.
Well they got it 1/2 right, I guess. There is a new game coming out. Though as you already know by now isn't an apple arcade exclusive game. Btw What was your opinions on the trailer?
For me I felt like I should have been excited as an old fan but with the continued downfall and the betrayal with Banana Mania (A friend bought it day one and invited me and buddies over for the party mode, only for us to be extremely pissed in the end.) I couldn't feel any true hype for the new game's announcement.
@@TheMagic1412 not a fan of the character redesigns but I’m excited for the game, it’s the first fully original new monkey ball game in over a decade at this point, and they did just remake the original games so they’ll probably be taking cues from those games in terms of gameplay hopefully
The leaker I mentioned in the original post mainly covers sega’s atlus games and mobile stuff so I’m not surprised this game was mentioned. I still think they’ll probably do a iPhone monkey ball game but I’m glad that it’s not the only monkey ball game being made
@@TheMagic1412 Understandable. When I saw the trailer, I was more so hopeful of the potential, rather than excited for it. Everything it's touting sounds good on-paper, but who knows if it'll result in a worthy sequel to the first two games. They dropped the ball hard with Banana Blitz and Mania, so can the devs be trusted with making brand new levels?
I liked what I saw from the trailer, but again, SEGA's burnt so much good will for me, not just with Monkey Ball, but their other franchises now (Sonic, Like A Dragon, Megami Tensei, and even their awful localization of 13 Sentinels and Unicorn Overlord). I can't trust SEGA as far as I can throw them, no matter who they get on the project. They're already selling character-passes for a game that's not even out yet.
It Banana Rumble turns out to be everything I've wanted in a proper sequel, then great. But there's no way I'm buying it at launch, not until I see some reviews from Soda Crab and Liam Triforce.
At least based on what we can see in the trailer, they're not relying on walls everywhere, so I'm very cautiously optimistic
Banana Splitz wasn't mediocre, it was really damn good. I even bought a Vita just for that game. Of course Sega would release the only worthy follow-up to the originals on a console nobody owned. It's sad to see people overlook that game for that reason.
Also, I didn't really feel like Banana Mania was made without love. There are some fun extras and things in there that I feel they could've easily gotten away without adding. I do agree it's very underdeveloped though but I think that's mostly Sega's fault for providing a very small budget, rather than the developers not caring about the product.
Thank you for your mania complaints. These shilled and nostalgia blinded reviewers said this was a good game. So when I played it for the first time I wanted to see what I was missing this whole time, and when I played it, well I didn’t care for it. A couple years later emulating the originals and my god night and day difference, now I’m a fan, banana mania didnt make me a fan, it made me think everyone was crazy
jesus and I thought Sega was incompetent with sonic alone
Are you a crav that likes soda or are you a soda made out of crab?
The algorithm fed me this video, and I’m glad it did. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who feels this way about Banana Mania. While I actually don’t mind the visuals generally (I think it’s more cohesive and less dated than OG SMB’s gradient/stroke/shadow effects on the text overlays) and some of the soundtrack I think is okay, the physics are definitely off and the ball sound effects completely take me out of the experience. If you did more videos like these in the future, I’d definitely check them out!
OK thank you for this. I thought Banana Mania was a garbage, soulless retread that lost all the charm that made the original games so fun. You're the first person I've seen share this sentiment with me.
The Mario sunshine bit was really confusing to me because I’ve only ever heard that Sunshine’s controls are one of its best aspects, how tight and responsive they are (which I agree with). We must come from different corners of the internet I guess!
yea sunshine plays great. usually people complain about the physics/collision, which can be very very iffy
I'm glad I put that part in the video even if my take on it was wrong about the general consensus, because it's very validating for me to hear praise for Sunshine! I've been part of a lot of discussions where I've been the lone Sunshine defender and everyone else has been dunking on the controls, the level designs, the physics... everything, really. I think Sunshine is one of those games that goes through the nostalgia cycle, it fluctuates every few years between being the worst Mario game or the best Mario game. My position on it has never changed though, I love that game to death.
@@SodaCrab I avoided it for years because I used to hear nothing but mixed to negative things about its tedious content on RUclips. Then a couple years ago i finally gave it a shot through a hack called Sunburn that lets you skip shines (you just need 70 total to beat the game, which ones you do doesn’t matter) and a few other quality of life fixes. And it immediately became my favorite 3D Mario game??? I’m confident that it would still be my favorite even if I had to do the shines in a set order because the levels, the controls, everything about that game bar a few select missions is top notch. The sirena beach hotel level may be the coolest platforming stage I’ve ever played, I’ve never seen anything like it. And as my motto for every game goes, if you don’t like the post-game 100% content… don’t do it? No one is forcing you?? (Crash 4 got way too much flak for having endless optional side content available imo)
@@SodaCrabsunshine is great, id definitely say it’s up there for one of my favorite 3d mario games
my mario hot take tho is that Odyssey doesn’t feel as good to me compared to SM64 or Sunshine, as well as several other issues but i don’t wanna get too off topic
@@jamminsilver I kinda agree with you on that Odyssey take, at least in some aspects. Thing with Odyssey is it's actually built off 3D World's foundation, and Mario's controls are tweaked versions of that games' that have been changed to fit more with the type of movement in 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy (mainly the first two in terms of fluidity, but Galaxy is still a version of that movement system even if it's slower and stiffer), but they...didn't do a perfect job of replicating that. There's still several aspects that adhere to the limited movement of 3D Land/World, perhaps the most apparent one being the Wall Jump, which is basically unchanged from 3D World other than corner-climbing being patched out, meaning it's pathetically weak and super stiff etc., significantly worse than the wall-jump was in 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy which all have at least twice the height and distance, as well as diagonal wall-jumping (which was best in Sunshine but also present in the other two). But I've now written a lot so I won't get into the other details.
The sad thing about Banana Mania is that all the hype surrounding it is truly in good faith, it honestly feels like people were deceived into liking this game just because it brought back something old and good. Ironically your idea of just porting Deluxe probably would've made people actually mad (ala the recent Metal Gear situation of the same vein) compared to the far worse remake that's ultimately considered a 'good' game. I don't think SEGA exactly have an excuse to make a poor rush-job remake without even bothering to pay for the Unity liscense for a beloved game series. The idea that they understand fans is complete bullshit when you factor how poorly they handle almost all of their beloved franchises. Make a new engine, make new levels and get people who understand sound design and music. It sounds like a lot of work until you consider that they did that already 20 years ago for a franchise that wasn't known or loved yet. The only advantage they had back then was a Dole sponsorship.
It's so weird to me that they invested in buying out Rovio for the sake of owning Angry Birds when they have so many franchises that people WANT and would BUY if they actually MADE them and made sure they were GOOD. They're barely even a triple A company, they're like a baby in the President's chair, they have so much power to make something good but don't do any of it. I'm not even that optimistic after the more recent Sonic projects, because I didn't think Frontiers was that great (still good) and could not bother to fork over just as much money for Superstars. But hey, 7 years ago they hired Sonic fans to make a Sonic game so I guess they're actually a good company, or something. Anyway, good video.
breh how do the graphics from 2001 look infinitely better than banana mania. I was never able to articulate why, so thanks for talking about it in the video. Early 2000’s games are so visually appealing.
Sammy doesn't care about the stuff they got from buying sega unless it's already mega-popular. It's not about making games that people will love and others will want to experience because of how good they are. It's about owning what's already out there and pushing out literally anything with it's name because your audience will buy it, convinced they'll never get a new experience alike what they had before unless they buy this crappy remake!! It's not like we the fans can make better and there's no such monkey ball romhacks that do that! Please! Keep buying SegaSammy's new output, they'll totally listen and not do the same thing again and charge us twice!
They just announced a bunch of old Sega Ip are coming back like Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe Streets of Rage and Crazy Taxi.
@@hammerkirby5243 You're right, let's hope all of those are good, maybe they'll turn themselves around
If anything, how they treat series like monkey ball makes me FAR more concerned about the new series revivals like JSR. They already don't look good. To be honest im expecting the worst, or most mediocre.
I owned super monkey ball 2 growing up, and my favourite thing in the whole game was the story mode cutscenes. They are sublime; cinema at its peak. I watched the cutscenes for banana mania, and… it was a PowerPoint presentation. Great.
39:28 Looks like someone at Sega cared enough
fingers crossed!
DID YOU JUST IMPLY GON GON DID 9/11 😭😭😭😭😭
possibly
The movement in Mario Sunshine is the best in the whole series, and that's the one thing people agree on that's good about Sunshine.
To say people give shit because it doesn't feel like mario 64, makes you sound like you are one of those old jaded players you were saying you weren't.
Believe it or not, I actually don't like 64 much at all and I'm a huge Sunshine defender. I thought Sunshine having bad movement was a popular opinion, hence why I said "people" give it shit. Apparently that's just the circles I've been in though, because I've gotten a lot of comments about Sunshine on this video that I 100% agree with. I didn't want to go on a whole tangent about my opinions on Sunshine in the video because it wasn't really the topic of the discussion, but yeah, the nebulous "people" giving Sunshine shit in this video are not me, I love Sunshine and will defend it to my grave. Probably should've been more clear about that in hindsight.
This reminds me of Final Fantasy X HD and the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters. Perfectly great ports/remakes, if you have absolutely no context for the original, or eyeballs. But to anyone who's played the original, it's utterly baffling how anyone can find it acceptable
We truly need Amusement Vision back 😔😔😔
They never left, they just rebranded.
They're just making the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games now. Their quality never left this earth.
Hey bro, just wanted to point out real quick that the text on the thumbnail is VERY hard to read, may want to fix that up!
Thank you for pointing that out! I swapped it out with another version I had made, let me know if you think that's more readable
@@SodaCrab it's better but I always make a point to add stroke to my text to make it really distinguished from background
Yo, fellow MonkeyBallTuber here! This was a nice coverage of the early series and the state of the fanbase around the time of BBHD's launch. And full-disclosure, you're not alone on the Banana Mania issues. Romhacker Twilight actually imported the old physics into banana mania and the difference between the two is visceral. Not that I play that way anyhow since I don't like the mania's art direction, but it does redeem the game a lot for PC folks. Not sure how much you've played of the romhacks, but I have a retrospective of everything released up to the time I made it if you want to get started!
I do not stand for the Sunshine slander. It controls far better than 64 and you are fucking insane if you think otherwise
I 100% agree with you. I'm a Sunshine defender to the grave, but I must be hanging out with the wrong people, because in my circles Sunshine gets shit on all the time
I love when profile pics add backstory to a comment
The new Monkey Ball game is hopefully going to be good. Designs look better and art style seems improved. Looks like there is actual challenge.
I'm not sure... The presentation still seems very much like a continuation of Banana Blitz. Hell, they gave Aiai pants! I don't think we'll ever truly see a return to form...
@@Anthestudios The 2nd trailer showed actual challenging looking levels.
There are bits of Banana Blitz and OG in the aesthetic. It's very much a hybrid between the 2. I'm hopeful
as someone that started the series with adventure, this is a very interesting video
The day I got Banana Mania, I quickly realized something was wrong. I put Super Monkey Ball for GameCube on the TV and Banana Mania on the Switch in handheld mode and played through the main games side by side. Levels that I could easily beat in the original were nearly impossible in Banana Mania. Everything about Super Monkey Ball was intentional, and Banana Mania shows how a rough approximation really doesn't cut it.
It's a different engine so of course the physics and controls are different
@@chantellethecool1 that is the problem, yes.
It’s so sad because there’s really no other game like it. If Mario died, we would have plenty of Mario-like 3D platformers out there to still play.
But there is no game franchise similar to Monkey Ball’s mechanics whatsoever. The only one I’m aware of is “Rolled Out”.
Rolled Out doesn't even stand a chance because they blew away their indiegogo money and barely update anything as I know of.
Yeah I saw the dev sunk 6,000+ hours in TF2 instead of updating the game.
@@thebigpig2364 LOL? This is why you don’t trust campaign funds for video games 99.9% of the time. Pathetic how someone does shit like that.
3D platforms are completely dead outside of indies, so unless you REALLY like Sonic, maybe Ratchet, Mario is really all we got
We have Spyro, Crash, SpongeBob, and Sackboy just to name a few. Mario-likes are far from dead.
But for Monkey Ball, we don’t even have indie games that copy it.
banana mania isn't an egregiously bad game to me, despite its issues. it definitely shows that sega really just was trying to churn out as many games that would get fans excited just to be met with something underwhelming... and banana mania was one of them.
the only recent game that came out in the series that tried to be as close to the first two was a release on the vita and that game isn't perfect but the Quality of it is something I wished they kept for the remakes.
This is a great vid but wow, I'm really shocked at some of your opinions on mania... as both a huge fan of the originals and a game artist and occasional UI artist, I love the way mania looks and I adore the menus, I've even used them as reference when working on UI at my job in the past. I think the vibrant remakes of the old levels themes look fantastic, I think the color choices are super appealing and on point- the original is a bit washed out IMO. And I actually think the banana blitz era character redesigns are really cute and, for the most part, a bit of an upgrade- I think they're p much the only good things to come out of that era. On all other points I agree with you, the physics are just a lil off and the sfx are vastly inferior (though I didn't quite realize it till you pointed it out lol.) I don't mind the new voice acting for the monkeys, I enjoy it. I love that I can play as Beat, cause I loooove JSR, but the total lack of sfx makes it feel empty, since he has no voice clips or anything...
Agreed that the new music kinda sucks, but the fact that you can get the original music is a godsend. I don't mind paying a lil extra since the base game is p cheap.
Oh! upon some investigation, there are lots of mods for the PC version of banana mania! there's ones that fix some of the issues this video brought up about the SFX, and there's ones that bring the controls closer in line with the originals! There's also a mod that adds voice clips for the guest characters, which I super appreciate!
I get the sense that _Monkey Ball_ fans who've been around since the first games tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater - they don't like the newer games and what they stand for, so all their difference facets (e.g. the art style) become disagreeable by proxy.
The original _Monkey Ball_ games have that early-2000s “3D without art direction” look - pseudo-photorealistic textures and plain lighting just for the sake of it - that you'd also see in games like _Mario Party 8_ or _Sonic '06_. It's a charming aesthetic, especially with how “of its time” it is, but the newer games' considered color scheme and consistent art direction are lovely choices!
Definitely some of his complaints were nitpicks, but some of his problems were real problems.
- Controls, need to feel good
- and party games need to be presented as if they can’t stand on their own from the main games
- would be cool to hear a better rolling sound affects
Something about old money ball feels so stylized, like they had to get creative with their ideas on how to make the game look good on such limiting hardware and it really showed. The levels were incredibly basic in design but you wouldn't be able to tell if you just played and enjoyed the game, the levels were also intentionally designed to invoke a sense of creativity among the player, how they'd cleverly hide hidden level skip paths for people who were skilled enough at the game, and in general it just felt like they did their best.
With newer monkey ball it feels like they just took generic assets, slapped some default post-processing effects on it, added what they THOUGHT people may enjoy from monkeyball without actually understanding it then decided to release it that way. I think I played the 3ds monkey ball awhile back and nothing about it felt memorable or interesting, I didn't hate it but I also didn't remember anything about it, it was just boring. Meanwhile I play the OG monkey ball 2 and I'm like "aw heck yeah" even though I never played that one as a kid so they're both brand new experiences to me.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the ball rolling sound in mania was horrid, I never heard anyone else bring it up!
I feel the same way with Banana Mania. It's.... okay. But it's just not the same.
I also didn't know they put the music behind a paywall, I just didn't care enough to look lol. I never finished it. It had potential, was hyped to see the announcement and I'm pretty sad about the outcome.
I liked the new music, but I agree it didn’t sound like it fit with the environment at all.
And yeah, paywalling MUSIC is complete trash.
This video is excellent.
It feels like people shutdown a lot of Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania criticism shortly upon its release and I wouldn't doubt a lot of it stems from the fear that poor reception will lead to the series being placed back in the vault.
Overall though we shouldn't as fans just become complacent and normalise mediocrity and you hit the nail on the head. The Banana Blitz physics translate so poorly to many of the stages and it's just overall a huge downgrade to Deluxe. It's frustrating to see so many examples of two steps forward, three steps backward. I was gutted to see how poorly implemented the mini games were. It's such a soulless and corporate game not helped by the DLC practices. It was fun to play on Switch for a few weeks after its release but now I just go back to the originals for the tight responsive controls and quality sound design.
Great video, subscribed in a heart beat.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed the lack of sound effects and feedback in Banana Mania. Things like sparks coming off the ball and the rolling sounds did a lot to emphasize the movement and physics. It's frustrating how often remakes tend to omit these little details.
Great video. I felt like I was taking crazy pills reading reviews for Bananamania. It was really clear that people reviewing did some combination of barely playing the game before reviewing and never playing the originals. I mean the mini games were outright broken.
Pyoro about to end this video's entire carreer. 😂❤
dang
I played step and roll recently and I think it’s worth checking out for world 5 specifically. It’s definitely held back a good amount by the motion controls but world 5 has one of the coolest level themes in the series (especially due to the music. Seriously, it has such a cool vibe) and the level design feels like it’s from an actual monkey ball game, at least a little. At the very least anyone reading this should listen to the ost, It’s what got me to want to try the game out. I could not picture how such beautiful sounding music was used in a monkey ball game.
yeah, I remember being really excited for banana mania, but halfway into world 1 it just didn't feel the same so I dropped it
Please make a video about 10 YEARS IN THE JOINT 🎉🎉
Sunshine has better movement what are people smoking.
I'll be honest I never played monkey ball as a kid, and then I only played the Gamecube version a few times with my friends via online multiplayer wizardry, but I did like it enough that I thought it'd be really fun to have on the Switch, so I bought Banana Mania, and I do enjoy it and I don't regret my purchase even if it is pretty much the objectively inferior game. I like playing singleplayer, and my family and I played some of the multiplayer minigames together and mostly had a lot of fun (I recall us going a little feral over pool).
Great video! My only criticism is that a lot of these monkey ball retrospectives don’t really acknowledge the Super Monkey Ball Rom Hack Community in depth and how they’ve been keeping the series alive.
Edit: There is a Rom hack currently in beta of Super Monkey Ball Deluxe in Super Monkey Ball 2 for GameCube, it has the full challenge mode experience with story being worked on currently, also, pressing Z allows you to switch between SMB1 and SMB2 camera.
while glorious, the banana joystick is rough. it's loose and the longer curved handle makes precise movements harder
yeah but funny banana
As someone whos loved SMB basically my whole life, it's sad that Sega seems to really not care about the series. Banana Mania wasn't perfect, the physics were flawed and some of the levels felt like they were remade pretty poorly (long torus from 2's master mode comes to mind, in the original game it was a fairly easy level, but in BM it was one of the worst levels in the whole game due to the bad physics and the cycle of the levels rotation being totally messed up), but it was a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it seems Sega doesn't really care enough to continue on from there. The original SMB1/2 is one of those games i can always count on when im bored and it feels like theres nothing to do; practicing beating expert-master deathless, high score runs, going for speedrun tricks, theres always something fun and stimulating to do in the game so it's crazy that Sega would throw away such a beloved series full of potential.
Luckily, the fans have kept the game alive; romhacks like launch, invasion, gaiden, the community level packs, and so much more are fantastic and really help scratch that monkey ball itch when i dont feel like replaying the levels from 1 or 2 for the millionth time. If anyone is a big fan of the series and hasn't tried any romhacks i HIGHLY recommend them, theres an entire wiki listing (almost) every hack made with download links.
Nice video and some really great points here, but I feel like some parts kinda dragged on a bit. I also understand not wanting to use others' gameplay footage, but since you eventually did (like banana blitz, smb jr. etc.), you may as well have gone all out and got some smb1 master gameplay, and maybe some speedrun tricks to really show how far the game could be pushed.
Not a bad video though, I feel like the more discussion about this topic, the more likely we are to get true monkey ball redemption.. maybe someday?
p.s. just pirate photoshop if you need it 😈
I just couldn't ignore a title like that
Just seeing his now, love seeing different people see the Gaiden TAS :))
Great video, never saw the point in buying banana mania when it has the same levels but worse physics, especially since the levels were designed with the better physics in mind.
Funny you should mention the physics and sound effect problems of Banana Mania because two of the most popular mods on GameBanana for Banana Mania are a physics/controls modifier and a sound effect changer, both for more closely emulating SMB2.
I'm still amazed that Traveler's Tales were handed the keys to the franchise, and immediately made an RPG (Action-Adventure Platformer, whatever, it has RPG elements). Didn't make like a simple game to tide people over until Banana Blitz, didn't make like a mini-game collection, no, straight into RPG, with "puzzles" that are just bad Super Monkey Ball levels. And they also used every take of Brian Matt saying "GO" for a reason that escapes any kind of theorizing beyond "they were lazy and slapped all of them in there"
and it's kind of funny that Banana Blitz gave me such severe wrist pain that it's actually pretty close in which of the two is my least favourite Monkey Ball game.
I am so glad you said what you said about Banana Mania, I feel the exact same way... I always tell people to just go emulate the originals
As soon as you showed Monkey Target, I realized that it was probably where the design for the Dream Long Jump minigame in Mario and Sonic DS came from. No doubt some of the same staff were on that game.
very entertaining video! one thing i will say regarding deluxe, is that i always prefer to play the gamecube versions of it just because of the gamecube controller, the notches on it just work for monkey ball as it allows me to know for certain im inputting directly up or directly left or whatever, just makes it feel more snappy and tight.
if i could give one critique on the video, its that the audio balance when switching to gameplay footage was a little off sometimes, just being a tad too loud by comparison, other than that, great work all around
As someone who grew up with Monkey Ball 1 but not 2, I was considering getting Mania, but never got around to it. Glad I skipped it now! Might end up emulating 2 or maybe trying to buy a used copy if I ever get the funds.
Subbed. Enjoy watching the number go up!
Seriously though, if you did a video like this once a month, that would be amazing. Just pick a game topic and do a video like this. The length was great, editing was pretty good too. Not really anything to critique negatively. Good job.
I don't really know how to evaluate any of the points you're making since you are drawing on subjective experiences of your own and then saying you don't know how to explain it. I'll have to play myself to find out , or read/watch reviews by other people I guess!
Bro literally changed the description to cope that his video aged like milk.
I was extremely excited for Banana Mania's return to form, especially after seeing all of the characters and customization options. After booting the game up, I learned that to play a level in multiplayer, you must beat it in Story Mode first, unlike the original Super Monkey Ball, which is the only one I played (other than the GBA Monkey Ball Jr). Never has one simple feature being absent completely pierced through a game's enjoyability and left me so viscerally let down.
This is one of the Super Monkey Ball videos ever
real
Mario Sunshine's controls are way tighter than in Mario 64, even tighter than Mario Galaxy. Only Mario Odyssey has surpassed it imo
There is a mod for banana mania called "Accurate Controls," it doesn't fix it but its much closer and feels a lot better
Fantastic video - subbed!
Super Monkey Ball was one of the games me and my mates would always play.
Golf, Target, Race 👌
Banana Mania always looked (and especially sounded) off to me, so I I never bothered with it.
It's crazy how hard Sega dropped the ball.
Banana Rumble makes it look even worse in retrospect.
I always love to hear and see more discussion about this series even if it is about how bad its new entry's "fallout" (pun intended) problem is.
when the first two games came out, I used to hang out in a game shop. my friend owned it (we played in a band together) and I knew all the employees and regulars. It was a good time. I was the only one who managed to make it to master mode on the first (let alone complete it), so one of the guys who worked there asked to copy my save file. I said, sure, he wanted to show it off in the store, so that's cool. Apparently everyone else got a copy from him, because when 2 game out, tons of people were asking me if I finished it yet. I eventually did, but it took me much longer than the first!
I bought Adventure the day it came out and still have never finished it. Maybe I should. Maybe.
I actually really liked Banana Blitz when I was little because I didn't have the original two, and now that I've seen the charm of the originals i can see why i was probably one of Banana Blitz's only fans
monkey ball is back baby!! with Banana Rumble, can you do a video over the two trailers from Sega and Nintendo direct and what you feel about them
Hey I think this is a fantastic video. However, what are you talking about at 38:49 ? What's this "other 2021 remake" you're talking about here? I have no clue what you're referring to, and I think in future videos it would be a good idea to at least put a picture of what you're talking about on-screen so people have a chance of understanding your comparison.
Ok I am glad I'm not the only one who was disappointed by banana mania. Sega even had the nerve to charge way too much money if you wanted the original music and art style when that should have been free. It''s just a mediocre remake of games we've played a bunch with an aesthetic that the most of fans don't like as much. That's not even mentioning the presentation and mobile game menus