by Philip Lop

Created on: September 12, 2010

Perhaps the most appealing thing about this game is its simplicity. Sometimes, you don’t want to play a game for hours on end, or successively pick up from where you last got stuck. Super Monkey Ball is a good old-fashioned “pick it up and play it” kind of game. As such, it is infinitely appealing to friends and visitors, who can watch you making a fool of yourself before doing the very same thing themselves!

The principal of the main game is really quite simple. You control a little monkey who, for reasons best left unexplained, is stuck instead a transparent ball. By using the various controls on the joypad, you make the little fellow move from left to right, backwards and forwards, faster and slower, and guide him around a variety of different assault courses. Needless to say, as each course is completed, you progress onto another, with each course becoming slightly more difficult than the last. The courses vary considerably in design and style, but they are all suspended in the middle of the air, so you need to stick very closely to the circuit or you will fall overboard, and the monkey will have to go back to the start again. Each course is timed, so you only have a fixed period in which to complete the courses. Initially, this is not a problem, but as the levels progress, beating the time becomes increasingly difficult.

If you are rather heavy-handed, then you will probably struggle with this game to start with. The slightest movement propels the poor chimp at a rate of knots, and before you can stop him, he’ll be hurtling over the cliff into oblivion. Take things quite easy from the outset and gradually accustom yourself to the controls and make use of the (initially) generous time allowed to complete the course.

As you progress around the course, there are a number of bananas suspended in mid-air, through which you need to roll. As you do so, the bananas will be added to your tally and your overall score will increase. For every 100 bananas you get, you earn an extra life. Although 100 sounds like quite a lot, some of the courses have quite a lot of bananas up for grabs, and you’ll be surprised how quickly they can mount up. Be careful though as the bananas are positioned in such a way that they will lead you into danger and difficulty.

When you first start the game, you go through a number of menu options to dictate how you play. There are three different levels of game play. Beginner has ten different courses,

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