Super Monkey Ball has been around since the launch of the GameCube, crossing over to other consoles and later on taking a portable jump onto the GBA. This time, Sega brings the monkey business to the Nintendo DS.
Super Monkey Ball Touch & Roll starts out with a hilarious naughty bit: you have to touch the monkey’s butt to begin the game. After this funny yet a little disturbing encounter, you get to discover the various options that compose the game.
The main game is a series of 100 maze courses, where you roll collecting bananas and trying to reach the goal before the timer runs out. These levels range from fairly easy to insanely difficult, each offering a series of obstacles such as moving platforms, narrow passages, stairs, ramps and holes that will require precision to move safely through. To control your monkey ball, you can use either the stylus and touch screen or the D-pad. I’m sure opinions will diverge as to which one is better, but I didn’t find either particularly easy to use.
Aside from the main challenge, there’s the party mode. This mode has six mini-games that you can play by yourself against the CPU or by using the wi-fi feature to play against other people. I was particularly fond of these mini-games, which totally break the frustration of the stressful gameplay from the main game.
Monkey Bowling is pretty straightforward: you aim your monkey ball and draw a course to try to knock down all the pins. Unfortunately, you can’t alter your course while the monkey ball is moving down the bowling lane. Bowling offers regular 8 or 10 pin matches, or you can choose to play the puzzle mode where the pins are arranged in crafty ways.
The mini-golf game (Monkey Golf) offers a pretty decent challenge, but unfortunately there is only one course to play on. The course is composed of 18 holes of increasing difficulty, the stages including ramps, platforms and holes. You use your stylus to adjust the way you want the ball to go, then drag the club around a circular meter to adjust the power and finally pull it forward towards the ball to hit. Think of it as a pendulum motion that simulates a real swing.
Monkey Fight is a boxing match of sorts between four players that is played with the stylus only. Your monkey ball is armed with a giant boxing glove and the objective is to knock your adversaries off the platform while trying not to fall off yourself, pick up some power-ups and score the most points, to win the number of matches you have previously set it for. It’s actually pretty fun and pretty hectic too, but it only cycles through four different platforms.
Monkey Race is not overly impressive, it’s something like a Mario Kart game. You pick your monkey, pick your track and race around a course stepping on boost pads and picking up items to help you win. You can’t use the D-pad for this one either.
The other two party games are the newest additions to Super Monkey Ball, and they happen to be my other two favorites aside from Bowling and Fight.
Monkey Hockey turns your DS into an air-hockey table, making use of both screens. You can play a Classic game where you use a round pad, or you can pick Line Smasher where you draw your pad with the stylus. There is a twist though, you can use special items during the game. On each field there are two item spots that change color and icon. Depending on the color and icon, you or the opponent will suffer the effect. Some of these include opening or closing the goal slot, shrinking or enlarging the pad, and extra ball. Lifting the stylus will make you lose control of your pad, so keep it touching the screen at all times.
Monkey Wars is a hoot. It’s basically a first-person shooter where you run around in a maze using the D-pad to move and the stylus to look and shoot. There are several different hilarious power-ups such as cream pies to block your opponent’s vision, watermelon seeds that work like a machine gun, and pineapple grenades.
All six party games support up to four players in wireless play, with Monkey Wars and Monkey Hockey having the advantage of being able to be played through DS Download Play. I’m sure they all would be great to play with friends, but I haven’t managed to connect to anyone yet.
All in all, Super Monkey Ball Touch & Roll is a fun and challenging action/puzzle that gives a whole different meaning to monkeying around.
Special thanks to Jennie Sue and Sega for providing a copy of this title.