Growing up as a kid, video games were one of my biggest places to escape and find entertainment. Although video games often get bad rep (albeit for fair reasons), they have been a huge part of my childhood, and in some cases changed my life. Some of my personal favorite games that provide huge nostalgia now are Minecraft, Tony Hawk Pro Skater (2x & 4), and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. Super Monkey Ball Deluxe in particular has its own backstory.
I never had the game in my inventory. Back in the early 2010’s I used to always watch youtube videos of walkthroughs and speed runs, and it was a game I desperately wanted to play for myself. In 2017, I finally received Super Monkey Ball Deluxe as a birthday present, and it instantly became one of my personal favorite and most fondly remembered games.
A few years later in 2021, big news hit the gaming community. When SEGA announced it’s remaster a few months ago, titled “Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania,” words were not able to explain my excitement. I did have some doubts of whether or not the game would live up to its potential, but when it was released and I was able to try it out, I was pleasantly surprised. In summary, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania was an absolute success. It perfectly encapsulates the nostalgia and old school feeling of Deluxe, while improving its design and gameplay mechanics. Let’s go further in depth, and create a full review for Banana Mania.
For those who do not know what the Super Monkey Ball series is, you are quite literally a monkey trapped inside a ball, who needs to clear a collection of stages in order to complete different difficulty modes. In Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, you had a set number of lives, in which you could choose up to 99. There were “Extra stages’ ‘ in each mode, and if you used all 99 lives, you could not continue on to them. In Banana Mania, however, a new alternative for extra stages was added: The helper feature. It will slow your game down and assist you in completing stages. If you use the helper feature, you cannot continue on to extra stages. This is one thing that makes Banana Mania’s gameplay superior over Deluxe. Lives were a trouble for players back then, but now you have infinite lives, and a good alternative for extra stages, making the game way more fair than previously.
Banana Mania generally has the same physics and controls as Deluxe, but another nice thing about the new game is the amount of consoles and ports you could play on. The remaster is now open to PC, Nintendo Switch, and Mobile devices. Super Monkey Ball games were only ever on Gamecubes, Xbox, and Playstations, but adding in new options for devices and consoles to play on will help the game in sales, and will create a much larger community surrounding the game.
Moving on from gameplay and mechanics, the design of the visuals are very appealing. This was one of the biggest factors of making Super Monkey Ball a nostalgic series for me. The remaster completely ramped up the visuals while still sticking to an older formula, which is another reason why Banana Mania is a great remake.
When it comes to stage design, they are still just as fun to play as they were years ago. Super Monkey Ball Deluxe is a combination of Super Monkey Ball One and Two, meaning all of the levels from both games are in Deluxe. While the remaster didn’t change major things in the stages, in general the gameplay is as fantastic and engaging as it was years ago.
Although I have a ton of praise for Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, one of the very few turnoffs for me was the music, one of the key components that defined the series. During my first run of the new game, I was hoping that the older music from Deluxe would still be in, and turns out all of the music was remixed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the new soundtrack, but as some say, “The old is gold.” That is what my take on the music for this game is.
Of course that does not mean I do not like the remaster just because of one small detail. Overall, I think that Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania is an almost perfect revision of Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. It brings back all the nostalgia and old school vibe that Deluxe had, while completely revamping the design of both the visuals and gameplay. I have just started playing this game about two to three weeks ago, and although I am not too far into completion, I am excited to complete the game, and looking forward to what the future holds for the series.
