Finally I can now own and play a proper Super Monkey Ball game. I've always wanted to play the mainline games for years and all I've played prior had been the spin-offs which used portable specific features which I felt wasn't the true experience. Seeing SEGA decide to remaster/remake
Super Monkey Ball,
Super Monkey Ball 2 and
Super Monkey Ball Deluxe all into one big collection is greatly appreciated. And don't forget - this franchise was directed & produced by Toshihiro Nagoshi, aka the guy who helped create the Ryu ga Gotoku (Like a Dragon) series and let alone, this collection was developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio.
This game is massive. You have a bunch of modes available and you have tons of stages to tackle. The general concept of Super Monkey Ball is that your aim is to reach the goal within 60 seconds and if possible collect the bananas that are spread throughout the stage. The stage can vary from simple straightforward layouts all the way to the ridiculous and complex **** you will ever see. This game will be hard when it wants to, so I don't blame anyone for giving up half-way through.
I started off with the Story Mode which has 10 worlds with 10 stages each. The first half was a breeze but the challenge comes in around the half-way point and it is not easy at times, because you're also dealing with precision to navigate a tight path and moments where you could lose your balance and fall off due to the path moving about side-ways in all angles. That said, it is very rewarding when you do manage to beat a stage.
One thing that I have noticed with this game is that there is no harm dying multiple times, as you basically have infinite lives all across the game, which I recall was not a thing in the previous instalments. Either way, the fact that you have multiple chances makes the game way more tolerable and room to breathe during tough stages. Missions are also available for completing a stage or doing something at a faster pace, and the bananas you collect will provide points which do carry over if you die in a stage and had to start over. Those points can be used to purchase more modes, more characters and customisation. Speaking of characters, you can also play as Sonic the Hedgehog, Kiryu Kazuma from Like a Dragon, and Beat from Jet Set Radio.
In addition to the Story Mode, you also have Challenge modes available with stages from each game compiled together so you can tackle them from Casual all the way to the hardest difficulty. I personally only focused on Casual and Normal as I know that the harder difficulties will be painful. There's also multiplayer modes available but I didn't touch them as I have no one to play with for that.
Overall I found Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania to be a fun game and very challenging with some of its stages. While this isn't a 100% completion run it's at least sorted for the story mode and two of the difficulty challenges for SMB and SMB2 stages.
Here's some additional highlights: