I spent every evening last week catching up with a dear old friend. Super Monkey Ball and I were inseparable back in the GameCube days, but we drifted apart when the series traded its perfect blend of fiendish challenges and finely tuned physics for bland level design and imprecise motion controls aimed at a more casual audience. So you can imagine my apathy when the initial announcement of Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble focused so heavily on the unbridled chaos of its 16-player online battles. But I’ve never been happier to be proven wrong, because hidden within Banana Rumble is the largest set of traditional Super Monkey Ball levels the series has seen since the GameCube originals, backed by tight mechanics that give me the total control I needed to overcome its demanding endgame obstacles. Monkey Ball is finally back, and now all I want to do is roll.
Banana Rumble’s impressive 200-course set is divided into 20 cartoonish worlds, each containing 10 stages. In classic Monkey Ball fashion, the setup is delightfully simple: you have 60 seconds to roll your monkey from start to finish, but the obstacles between these points change dramatically over the course of the adventure. The early stages aren’t too difficult, cleverly familiarizing you with Banana Rumble’s mechanics so you’re ready to go when the heat rises.
As a certified Super Monkey Ball 2 master, I had no trouble with the first 80 or so levels. But they’re still a blast to play through, as I had to contend with curves, ramps, rails, switches, and bumps reminiscent of the level design seen in the excellent Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2. Plus, speedrunning is a classic element of the originals, and it was a lot of fun seeing how quickly I could get through levels that didn’t require too much precision, like levels where you can blast into the goal with a perfect launch right from the start if you know what you’re doing. I realized pretty quickly that Banana Rumble was a return to form for the series, and I had the time of my life running through the early levels while bouncing around to the wonderful GameCube-inspired soundtrack.
That light-hearted feeling didn’t last long, though, as Banana Rumble doesn’t hold back in its second half. The 10 EX worlds unlocked after completing the main story delivered every Monkey Ball challenge I’d been begging the series to bring back. Suddenly, I found myself faced with grueling stages that truly tested my monkey mettle, from crazy rotating contraptions to invisible tilting seesaws to the narrowest of catwalks you have to carefully tiptoe across. Banana Rumble is constantly introducing new challenges and clever twists on old ones. Some of the later levels took me dozens of attempts to complete, and there’s nothing quite like the feeling when my main monkey AiAi finally reaches that elusive goal. In fact, I got so wrapped up in completing every stage that Banana Rumble has to offer that one night I couldn’t even be bothered to get up to turn on the lights after dark, so I sat in total darkness rolling my monkey around until well after midnight. It was totally worth it.
Chaos, controlled
This fantastic stage design and variety means nothing if it is not feels That’s right, and Super Monkey Ball pulls it off for the first time in decades. While it may seem like you’re directly moving your orb through each course, Super Monkey Ball is actually about controlling the level, not the monkey. At its best, the control stick is aligned 1:1 with the angle of the level, giving you very precise control over the slope of the terrain—and therefore, how your monkey rolls across it.
2021’s Banana Mania (which remade every level found in Super Monkey Ball 1, 2, and Deluxe) should have been a masterstroke as it returned to the best levels in the series’ history, but the controls were so slow and imprecise that they made them frustrating at best and nearly unplayable at worst. Precise controls are a must for the more difficult levels, and Banana Rumble handles so well that every time I fell off the stage, it almost always felt like it was my fault, which encouraged me to improve on the next playthrough. Banana Rumble even offers plenty of control options for the stage and camera, so I pushed every possible setting to the max and found it gave me the expert level of control I was looking for. The physics aren’t entirely perfect – sometimes I didn’t get the level of bounce I expected when falling off a high ledge – but it’s still by far the most enjoyable Super Monkey Ball since the first two.
Banana Rumble also ditched the series’ poorly implemented jumping mechanic (if I tilt the level and my monkey is stuck in a ball, why would he jump?) in favor of an exciting new spin dash, which takes inspiration from Sonic the Hedgehog and lets you charge up and unleash a quick burst of speed. While jumping was never more than a gimmick in previous games, the spin dash is a brilliant evolution of Monkey Ball’s core mechanics. It’s only mandatory in a handful of levels, but nearly every level has some sort of shortcut or exploit that’s only possible with this new ability.
A well-aimed sprint can catapult your poor monkey across the map in the blink of an eye, and it’s every speedrunner’s dream to discover all the ways to take advantage of this clever addition. Banana Rumble rewards players who understand the mechanics and level design with optional routes hidden in plain sight that require expert skill to reach, and it adds a lot of replay value to an already packed adventure.
Banana split screen
Multiplayer has returned to the main game, something that was surprisingly absent from the last two games. You can tackle the 200 levels with up to three other players in local split-screen multiplayer or online co-op. Playing with other players online is pretty smooth—I played the entire campaign online with a friend and we never had a disconnect. Banana Rumble also runs at a very good 60 FPS when playing solo on Nintendo Switch, and it maintains that level of performance when you add online play into the mix. The frame rate takes a slight hit in split-screen, but not so much that it makes the game unplayable.
Playing with other players turns Banana Rumble into a surprisingly strategic co-op experience. Everyone starts the level at the same time, and only one player needs to complete it for the group to advance to the next level. This also makes it easier to complete each level’s optional missions: Each level tasks you with collecting a certain number of bananas, completing it in under a certain number of seconds, and finding the hidden golden banana, which often requires high-level technique to catch. Assigning one person to complete the objective as quickly as possible while the others search for bananas adds a fun layer of planning to the overall experience. I even had fun tackling levels online with random players, as I helped Monkey Ball newbies complete easier worlds and worked with others to catch tricky golden bananas in later levels, using emotes and cheering phrases to encourage my teammates. I only wish Banana Rumble also included a more traditional Challenge mode where you take turns and go through all the levels individually at your own pace.
One of the problems with online multiplayer is that it kicks you all out of a party after you finish a world, so I had to share a new lobby code with my friend every time we wanted to continue playing. Additionally, when working through the online adventure mode, Banana Rumble doesn’t show you the story cutscenes, meaning that if you want to know what’s going on with AiAi, MeeMee, Baby, GonGon, and their new friend Palette, you’ll either have to play locally or catch up on all the cutscenes in the gallery after the fact. I don’t play Monkey Ball for the story – and the story here is extremely basic and minimalistic anyway – so I preferred to skip the cutscenes so I could skip ahead to the stages, but this feels like an odd omission.
Banana Rumble’s biggest wish is its aforementioned Battle Mode. Longtime Super Monkey Ball fans know how iconic board games like Monkey Target and Monkey Bowling are, but nothing here held my attention for more than a few minutes. The five modes all feel extremely shallow and uninspired, with so few rotating maps that I felt like I’d seen it all after less than an hour. There’s generic racing, banana collecting, and bomb-slinging that feels like cheap imitations of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s Battle Mode. I’m guessing others feel the same way, as it took me several minutes to find a full 16-player match just days after launch. Performance also takes a serious hit in Battle Mode, reducing Adventure Mode’s smooth 60 FPS to a stuttering slideshow at times. Local multiplayer comes with its own set of limitations, as you can’t play Online Battle Mode with two people on the same system, and three or four player battles aren’t even a local option.
But even if you ignore Banana Rumble’s undeveloped battle mode entirely, there’s still so much to do here. I’ve already completed all 200 levels, but I’m far from having completed every mission in the level—some of them still have me scratching my head trying to figure out how I’m supposed to catch dozens of bananas and reach the goal in time. There are also hundreds of cosmetic items you can purchase with in-game points to style up your monkey. I’m a simple guy, so I bought the classic orange AiAi t-shirt from the original games and thought it was okay, but it’s cool to see how many outfits and accessories are available for Banana Rumble’s 12 playable characters (or more, if you get the optional SEGA Pass that adds Sonic the Hedgehog and friends to the mix).