Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble

Genre: Arcade / 3D Platformer / Party Game

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen / Local Wireless / Online), 2-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen / Local Wireless), 2-16 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

The Super Monkey Ball franchise is a series of family-friendly Arcade-style 3D Platformers with strong Party Game elements where players tilt the world to roll a ball around various mazes and obstacle courses to try to reach a goal. Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble, released in 2024 on Nintendo Switch, is the third game in the series on Nintendo’s hybrid console.

Banana Rumble releases at an interesting time for the franchise. The Super Monkey Ball series has a pretty enthusiastic fanbase, but that same fanbase generally tends to agree that the series has never managed to recapture the magic of the first two games in the series. Perhaps because of this, the series has kinda’ been trying to figure out how to move forward, when its fans seem to only want to look back.

Of course, there’s one surefire way to respond to that sort of desire, and the last few entries in the series have exclusively been remasters and remakes of past games, culminating in 2021’s Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, a full remake of the aforementioned revered first two games. This was an absolutely delightful return to form for a series that had been in the dumps for a while (I nominated it for multiple awards in the eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards), but it was still, in the end, going back to the past rather than a truly new game.

But in terms of actual new games, the series hasn’t seen anything since 2014’s Super Monkey Ball Bounce on mobile devices. if you want an actual full-fledged console release you need to look back even farther, to 2010’s Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll on the Wii, with the next two years getting an Arcade game and a few releases for handhelds.

With at least a decade since forging new ground, and with a history of diminishing returns and disappointing sequels, one would have good reason to be skeptical of a new release. Yet at the same time, the success of Banana Mania lent some hope that Sega had finally gotten a grasp on what made this series great to begin with. So… after all that buildup, the question remains: Is Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble a worthy successor to those highly-regarded original games? Do we finally have another great game in the series?

Yeah, I think so.

To be fair, it’s not without its issues, and I think the main area deserving of criticism here is the presentation, or to be more precise, the performance. As per series norm, Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble features colorful but relatively simple 3D visuals with the aim of ensuring that the resolution and framerate remain clear and smooth. Most of the time the game succeeds at this, but there are definitely occasional hitches here, particularly when playing in multiplayer, even online multiplayer, which strikes me as odd. I also noticed some aliasing in that online multiplayer that didn’t seem present in the single-player game modes.

The sound once again features a lot of cutesey high-pitched voice over gibberish for the monkeys, cartoony sound effects, and energetic music. I liked the soundtrack to this game, but don’t think it was quite as good as what we saw in Banana Mania. Still, there were some good tunes here, like Menu Theme, Rose Garden, and Golden Temple.

The core gameplay of the series is well-represented here, with some fun physics and no jump button, a controversial addition that the series has toyed with in the past. Banana Rumble does add one noteworthy gameplay element though, and that is a new “spindash” button.

Despite the name of this move and the presence of Sega’s blue hedgehog in the game as paid DLC, it doesn’t really act in the same way as the move in the Sonic games. Rather, at any time players can charge up a speed boost in any direction, albeit one that only really works on the ground and has a brief cooldown before you can use it again. The limitations this move has keep it from being overpowered, but I can certainly see a skilled player making use of this to absolutely dominate speed runs, and there are definitely levels where skilled use of this move can help you skip past entire sections of the level.

However, I think the place Banana Rumble really shines is its creative level design, with levels that continue to delight and surprise throughout the game’s campaign, whether you’re moving through an undulating field of platforms, pushing a massive manhole cover into a hole to reveal what’s underneath, or speeding through a giant sideways half-pipe. What’s more, there are multiple bonuses to earn on each level: one for completing it super-fast, one for collecting as many bananas as you can and exiting before the time limit is over, and one for finishing the level after collecting a special golden banana.

Another bright spot here is the multiplayer mode, though Banana Rumble largely gets away from the wildly disparate minigames of past entries, here focusing on gameplay modes that make use of the game’s core gameplay, including a race, a collect-a-thon in an enclosed arena, a team-based mode where you’re trying to claim the most gates by racing through them, a mode where you’re trying to bash into giant robots by speeding into them, and a version of hot potato. I found most of these game modes to be a blast to play, despite the aforementioned performance issues. What’s more, the ability to play with up to 16 players online is an absolute riot, and made for a delightfully chaotic time that has been one of my favorite multiplayer moments on Nintendo Switch this year.

Overall, I don’t think I enjoyed Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble quite as much as Banana Mania, but it’s not too far behind its predecessor. If the performance issues were addressed, and if it had a great soundtrack on par with Banana Mania, this could have been the best game yet in the series. Still, even without these fixes, Banana Rumble is a superb entry in the series with wonderful level design and fantastic multiplayer, both online and off.

tl;dr – Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble is a fantastic entry in this family-friendly franchise of Arcade-style 3D Platformers about rolling monkeys in balls toward a goal. This release struggles with some performance issues, but its superb level design and excellent multiplayer both online and offline make for an absolutely delightful game well worth getting, and a must-have for fans of the series.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Platformer, Best Arcade / Party Game, Best Sequel, Best Game for Kids and Casual Players, Best Multiplayer, Most Underrated

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