SUPER MONKEY BALL JR. (GBA)


Chimps in nappies... Where do I sign?

By OLIVER Von TRAPP III

Haven’t played Super Monkey Ball on the Gamecube? Doesn’t matter.

Sega and THQ have done an office whip around and managed to jam the odd game involving monkeys trapped in large plastic spheres in abstract landscapes onto the Gameboy Advance. Joy!

The first thing I liked about this game was the "cute", if you are a kid, and "odd", if you are not, fact that grown men designed this game’s overall presentation. I think its funny. Monkeys called AiAi who sound like something very different to monkeys…

The aim of this game is to guide your Monkey Ball around a tiltable landscape and get him to the goal, and also bick up the bananas dotted around each of the seventy levels.

Its just like those old fashioned wooden maze games where you have to guide the ball-bearing around the maze while avoiding the holes. Except pretty obviously it is monkeys this time around.

I swear the Japanese must compete with each other to come up with the weirdest, strangest premises for video games. "What if there was a Monkey wearing a nappy who gets around inside a perspex ball?"

"Great idea Mr Tanaka, I’ll ring Nintendo straight away!"

Must just be strong coffee over there.

Animal cruelty jokes aside, this game rocks. Probably one of the best GBA games I’ve played. Its just so addictive trying to keep AiAi from falling off the edge screaming. This is a perfect game to own. You can save the game anywhere, so you can have a quick blast on the bus, board-meeting, where ever.

There are unlockable minigames; golf, bowling, monkey duel and monkey fight. Even the end credits is a game in itself… The music is really cool, too.

The graphics are also fantastic full 3D, rotatable, tiltable environments. But the thing is, despite being a technical marvel, the graphics need to be this good, other wise the gameplay would completely suck.

So instead of marvelling at the graphics I got sucked in and started swearing at my Gameboy, turning it off in disgust as yet again my nappy-clad bubble monkey fell to his death, running out of my last continue and missing out by one banana on unlocking monkey golf.

The multiplayer is awesome in this game. For instance you can play some of the minigames by taking turns (remember that?). No need for extra game paks or even GBA’s.

But if you have mates who have copies of the game, you can play monkey duel and monkey fight, where you duel and also, strangely enough, fight. Which is up to four players. Very cool.

All up I would say this and Golden Sun are my favourite ever GBA games. But Golden Sun never had nappy-wearing chimps, so this wins.

ORIGINALITY 95%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 80%
PLAYABILITY 90%
ENJOYMENT 90%
OVERALL 95%