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Buy it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Super Monkey ball is a great game. This was 6th game I got for Gamecube and let me tell you of those 6 games ( PacMan world 2, Tony hawk's pro skater 3, Simpsons Road Rage, Super Smash bros. Melee, Luigies mansion, and super monkey ball) it's the best. This game includes a little monkey trapped in a transparent ball your job is to move the floor to roll the monkey towards goal. There are three diffrent difficultys. Begginer, Intermediate, and expert. This game has a total of 90 levels. The game is easy to learn but hard to master. There are also 3 party games and three mini games. The three party games you can play right when you get the3 game but the three mini games you need to unlock. The three party games are monkey race, monkey fight, and monkey target which they can all be played in 1 - 4 players. The mini games are monkey bowling, monkey golf , and monkey billiards(pole). Don't worry the mini games won't take long to unlock. All an all this game is perfect. Graphics are great sound is great It's all great!!! Don't bother renting it... BUY IT!!!

Sorry Xbox this is Super Fun for Cube only!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I'm 30 something and enjoy the occasional video game, but never have been a really hardcore gamer. If I play anything more than occasionally it has to be good. My wife surprised me with the Gamecube and an assortment of titles including Super Monkey Ball for Christmas. Simply stated this title is what gaming (and the nintendo game cube) is all about.

I've logged a full Super Monkey gameday after work more than a few evenings consecutively. This game maybe on the stereotypical-cute-graphics-nintendo-bashers' hatelist but it does allow the title to appeal to both the young and old. Make no mistake, this game is as addictive as they come regardless of your age and has no learning curve (but does take coordination and practice to master, if you ever do beat it. I don't mean basic, try advanced then expert courses). This is one I can play with my 6 year old daughter, and then for hours after she goes to bed! I can invite the guys over, or couples we hang out with -- and the same title entertains! Monkey ball is a mixture of puzzle, racing, strategy, and sports. Well rounded is an understatement. An achievement is more like it.

Nintendo is back doing what they do best in hardware and Sega - what can I say other than thanks? The animation is very smooth, the sound track impressive. Everything is amazingly detailed in its simplicity. I've played this game so much this evening I can barely type - no kidding - best stress relief I've found in a long while. With all of its levels - starting so simple and getting so incredibly hard while maintaining its simple demeanor is reason enough to buy the hardware. For the college age xbox demographic, this isn't just for kids (note the hint. . .party games. ..try it after a few drinks and everything is just that much more outrageous!)

Hours and hours of fun in over a hundred levels and multiple party/mini games, some worthy of their own disc, make this title worth every penny. For one player or several. This is a must have. Undoubtably one of the signature games on the cube, already here - no need to wait!

not for kids who want to win

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I had never heard of the Gamecube title called Super Monkey Ball before I walked into my friend's bedroom to find it sitting on the shelf. I proceeded to inspect the game case and eventually realized my friend was actually playing the game at the time. So I sat down and watched him for a bit before he eventually asked me if I'd like a go. I said sure and within 24 hours I owned this mother of a gem.

If you've never played this game or it's sequel, you are missing out on some serious fun.

For starters, there is a pretty good amount of things to do in this game, from the basic story mode, which is insanely difficult for the most part, to the mini-games, like bowling and flying. The games are fun and addictive, espescially with a friend or two. You will find yourself going round after round, rolling down a huge ramp only to be shot off the end and launched into the clear blue sky. You then open your ball up and use it as a glider to navigate your monkey through the air and try to land of score specific targets floating in the water. If you miss, you fall in the water and get nothing except a whining monkey, who is also drowning for a brief period of time.

I can't really say too much about this game that isn't just praising the fun level of it. There really is no story, you are just a group of monkeys and for some reason they are in balls. I really don't know the story behind that.

So go out and buy this game, or have a swarm of angry, monkey-toting balls on your hands...wait a minute, that doesn't sound right...

Lots Of Fun for More Than One

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: August 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Any animal rights activist will tell you, there is nothing funny about a monkey trapped in a ball... until now. Super Monkey Ball is Sega's first attempt on the Nintendo GameCube and it quickly became a must have at system launch. What is the premise of Monkey Ball? Well you have this monkey in a ball, add a crazy and dangerous floor. At first glance, you assume you control the monkey, but you do not. You control the tilt of the floor. It makes for some nail biting scenes, and some awful monkey deaths.

Graphically, the monkeys are bright and cartoony, and the Dole bananas (that can be collected for 1-ups) actually look better than the ones that are typically available in the supermarket. The level designs are complex to get the monkey through, but not graphically complex. The game is not revolutionary in terms of graphics. I can see this running on the Dreamcast as well, but the power of the GameCube does shine through in the detail. In levels with water, the water effects are top notch. The monkey in the ball never becomes clouded, all of the lighting effects stay solid, and of course, there is a solid frame rate.

The sound in the game very simple and not at all engaging. It never hinders the game, but it lacks a certain spice to make it interesting or memorable. In Mini-Games the sound is extremely simple, sounding like 4 chords on a synthesizer. There are few short tunes that repeat in the one player modes. Despite the soundtrack, the sound effects are top notch and save the game in this category. The wind as you hurl your monkey over the ocean... the harsh crack as your monkey ball crashes into a wall... It all gets you into the feeling of rolling monkeys around in balls!

The controls in the game are absolutely beautiful. Ultra responsive and smooth. You will never ever blame the controller for your monkey falling off the level. It's also extremely simple. All you need is the control stick for the main game. For the mini games, L and R come into play for games that include tilting the ball. Let's say you get Super Monkey Ball, but you only have one controller. What do you do when friends come over? Well, Super Monkey Ball lets you alternate the one controller for most of the games. Obviously, you can only use this feature during turn-base games. This game has GameCubes best Control and Control Set-Up so far.

The main game in Super Monkey Ball is divided into three difficulties: Beginner, Advanced, and Expert. Ninety boards await you in this mode; 10 in Beginner, 30 in Expert, and 50 in Expert. If that wasn't enough, there are bonus levels after you complete all of the floors in the difficulty level. Of course, you can't use a continue. Just you try to get bonus stages in Expert, we dare you! When you play single player, you acquire points to use to unlock Mini-Games.

Initially available are the three Party Games available to play: Monkey Race, Monkey Fight, and Monkey Target. Monkey Race lets up to four players race on six different tracks. The concept sounds pretty simple, but to mix it up a bit, players can collect special items, including bombs and ball morphs (ie, turn the sphere into a cube). In Monkey Fight each monkey has a large boxing glove attached to his ball via a spring. The monkeys then roll around for a minute at a time, trying to punch their opponents off of the platform. Again, power-ups make it all the more fun and some of the power-ups here are just plain wacky! In Monkey Target monkeys roll down a long ramp and fly into the air. Once airborne, pressing the A button will open the ball to form a pair of wings. The monkey can then be steered toward the targets floating in the water, and dropped onto them by hitting A again. Its not as simple as it sounds, add in the wind factor, power-ups and the Wheel Of Death (!), and you got yourself a great party game. All three of the party games are an absolute riot to play, especially Monkey Target; not only are they well done, but for the record, what is funnier than seeing a monkey rolling in a ball at 500mph.

As if those weren't enough, players can unlock three additional Mini-Games by accumulating Play Points in the main levels. These three games include Monkey Billiards, Monkey Golf, and Monkey Bowling. Again, these games are pretty much exactly what they sound like; Billiards presents the monkeys in a classic billiard setting, and Golf puts them through 18 holes of miniature golf. Monkey Bowling is hands down, the best of the Mini-Games. It may take you a little while to get used to the idea behind controlling the monkey, but it makes bowling on a screen fun. The idea is to tilt and spin the monkey as much as you can to get it into the center of the pins. It becomes a science as you lightly squeeze L and R to put the correct spin on the monkey. The responsive controls are absolutely perfect.

Better is on the way

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Super Monkey Ball is huge. The single player mode is set up in platform fashion where we guide a monkey in a ball through hundreds of varying puzzles. Puzzles range from embarrassingly easy to rupture-your-spleen hard. This is a challenging and long mode, but it not only gets frustrating, it gets somewhat old after a while. That's why Monkey Ball has a basket full of party games. These range from bowling, pool, golf, fighting, flying, and racing. However, these, to some degree, are very reminiscent to old Mario Party games. While creative, fast, and fun, their concepts are extremely simple and lack a lot of sub-levels. Even the clever bowling and pool mechanics can't be topped by games that dedicate the whole cartridge to the sport. Super Monkey Ball is a fantastic example of what kind of power the Gamecube has to offer. This is a highly original title bursting with party games and iced with many puzzles for single players. Yet--- better is on the way. If you get frustrated and bored easily and you don't have any friends to play with, then maybe you should skip this game and wait for Gamecube's ultimate lineup.

Great for the preschoolers too!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: February 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

My four year old loves this game! My husband and I are addicted as well. Some of the single player boards can get frustrating for the little ones but if they keep trying they can get through them. The mini games (especially the boxing and racing mode are best for this age group).
Cristin

Don't Miss This One!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Super Monkey Ball is a very, very fun game. My experience with it is based on the Japanese GameCube version. In the main game, you start by selecting a monkey, encased in a clear ball, from a bunch of monkeys with different characteristics. You play by navigating your ape through a increasingly challenging series of mazes. This game plays like a super-smooth and much improved version of the arcade classic "Marble Madness", so it's appropriate for all ages of gamers. The more advanced levels are very challenging, as you move through fiendish multi-level environments, where all one's joystick skills are challenged. It features a variety of competitive multi-player party games, including a racing game reminiscent of Diddy Kong Racing, a funny fighting game resembling battling jack-in-the-boxes, and a wild game where the object is basically ski-jumping into a minefield(no kidding!). The coolest part of the game are the excellent mini-games that you can unlock. The Monkey Pool and Monkey Bowling mini-games are two of the best variations you'll ever see on these classic games. Congrats to the excellent Sega team, the same one that brought us Sega's Daytona and Virtua Striker games for making such an excellent game, as their first GC title. Nintendo should be thrilled to have this Sega team developing for GameCube.

Fun minigames, but infuriating main game is required to unlock them

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game came highly recommended to me and got good reviews, but I have to say that this is one of the most infuriating games I've ever played. Yes, 2 of the 3 mini-games that are initially unlocked are fun, but to get the other 3 mini games you have to play the main game, and the main game is infuriatingly not fun. Actually, the first 5 or 6 levels or so are pretty fun, but then it rapidly, and painfully, gets difficult. It's a lot like Marble Madness, except for the fun part. A key difference between the way Marble Madness worked and the way this works is that in Marble Madness, if you fell off an edge you lost time, but were placed roughly back where you were before you fell off. In Super Monkey Ball, if you fall off you have to start the level entirely over again. Combine that with levels involving balance beam precision and what you end up with just isn't fun.

I made it through the easy levels, but decided I'd had enough only a short way into the medium difficulty levels. An hour into it and I was only less than halfway to unlocking one mini game. It's just not worth it. My advice would be to only buy this game if you have an Action Replay to unlock all the mini games right away, or if you have friends/family who have a save with all the mini games unlocked that you can copy to your memory card. The mini games are fun, and SMB should have been entirely mini games.

never thought i could have so much fun playing with a monkey

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

this game is simply the best, sega proves us again that they are the king of arcade's PURE entertainment.
as the title says, you play with a monkey trapped inside a seethrough ball and using the analog stick AND only the analog stick you'll tilt the different levels in order to move the ball to the goal... Sounds easy but if beginner's mode is fairly easy with its 10 levels, advanced and expert modes get harder and harder, with respectively 30 and 50 levels.if you'll finish advanced within 2 weeks, you'll have to unlock unlimited continues in order to finish expert mode...
there are enough challenges for you to keep on coming back to this extremely addictive game.
starting off with 5 continues and 3 locked mini games (monkey billiard, monkey bowling and monkey golf) you'll earn points by playing the main game solo which let you firstly, unlock the 3 mini games and then earn more continues...
As you can see you have plenty of hours of gameplay before you finish this game, if you ever finish it!!!
I personnaly would like to here the person that finished expert without loosing a single life, which apparently should unlock a master mode!!! But don't even think about it as you'll barely manage to finish advanced mode without loosing once...
1 main game + 6 mini/party games, more than enough to keep you busy for the next few months...

nerve wreking, but fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

i just got this game for Christmas, and its one of the most funnes games i have played. you basically half to get the monkey through a course without the monkey falling off the course, the trick is that you half to tilt the course to make the ball roll. you half to have alot of patience for this game. the graphics are cool and the techno music is awsome. but if you are photosensitve (having sezurs because of flashing lights) you may not wanna play this game.

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