I’m just glad the rom hacking scene for the originals is pretty decently sized, actually due to it being relatively small pretty much every level pack released is made by those dedicated enough to ensure the highest quality and frankly better than everything we’ve gotten since 2
So overall, sort of a good epitome of what SEGA is known for these days; Nostalgia-Baiting, and fucking up things that should have been an easy win. Sort of the Sonic Colours Ultimate of Monkey Ball. That sort of thing where you just stand there and think "...how could you POSSIBLY fuck this up?" It's sort of why I'm quite...concerned about that "Power Surge" project they announced. Like, a new Jet Set/Streets of Rage/Golden Axe/Crazy Taxi, cool! ...But will they be GOOD?
Yeah agreed on the power surge project especially, Sega will have to earn our trust back with those games as I am not giving them the benefit of the doubt based on their last 20 years of history
Banana Mania has been one of my favorite party games in a while, but for all the wrong reasons. My friends and I always play a few rounds of Monkey Baseball, losing our minds every time the announcer yells "OOOT!!"
I do have a ton of mixed feelings about banana mania, but it's obviously the fault of sega trying to rush these games out to meet a deadline and give the devs no time to make something substantial. Idk what has gone down during the development for this game, but i feel like they had little to no time to polish anything at all. one interesting thing about the game is that it reuses code for the physics for the original games but idk why they changed how the game controls but the psychics as close to the originals as they can.
Banana Mania doesn't even have the respect for the originals to get the stage animations right. Alternative and Wave Master have broken cycles. Trampolines sometimes hits you too low to reach the next level up. Within 15 minutes of playing bowling my first time (which is ruined so it would have been my last time regardless) it gave me some weird glitch. I had a decent enough time with it beating all the stages, but even then, I didn't feel like I really beat the stages because I knew the worst ones were made easier for this game. Looking back on it - there was too much disappointment in this game. Monkey Ball fans make content that better respects the legacy of the two originals. There are hundreds of custom level packs for SMB1 and 2 now and a select few of them like 651, Gaiden, Monkeyed Ball, Stardust reuse and build upon the design philosophy of the originals in their own ways that make them classics in their own rights. There's also Rolled Out which is essentially a Monkey Ball clone that controls very similarly and will be getting its own version of online competition mode and stages designed for multiple players rolling on the same stage. So I agree with you on every point regarding the quality of this game but I don't think I agree with you that this is the future of Monkey Ball. It might even be for the best that all the skill and passion for designing Monkey Ball stages now rests essentially in our hands, the players who grew up with the games, instead of a company who has let us down for 2 straight decades.
Competition Mode is the best thing ever. And you could play every single level in it, not just a pool of levels-up to five per "grand prix" or whatever you want to call it.
Playing challenge mode with friends is the most fun you can have playing monkey ball. Im confused why the new games don't have multiplayer challenge mode.
I’m really glad I stumbled upon this video. Banana Mania was such a huge disappointment for me, though in hindsight I’m not sure why I let myself get so hyped for it. I should have seen it coming, given it’s from SEGA. I remember seeing a lot of CZcamsrs say they enjoyed the game when it came out, saying the controls were a bit different but easy to get used to. I really thought that I was being picky or ungrateful or something but the controls were a dealbreaker for me. Levels that should have been easy or at the very least only take a few attempts ended up taking me multiple. It was only made more frustrating in story mode when I had to complete that level in order to progress. I ended up quitting after world eight on PC and seven on switch, I just couldn’t do it anymore. And also, I hate to sound like a bitter hateful person, but the minigames look horrendously ugly and I’m tired of seeing nobody mention that, so thank you for bringing that up. When I opened up monkey target for the first time, the appalling visuals had me at a loss for words. Every single mini game (that I actually played) looked and felt unfinished. It’s so tragic and just goes to show SEGA care more about short term sales than their integrity as a company it feels like. At least we have the originals, but it would have been nice to have an easy to boot up GOOD monkey ball game for PC or switch. I hope this video gets some more traction soon, because this game is a terrible remake and an insult to fans and it’s not talked about nearly enough.
No seriously, I felt like I was being gaslit seeing so many videos like "How Banana Mania saved the franchise!". It never felt like a step forward for the series to me, it just felt like they just brought 1 and 2 down to Banana Blitz's level.
in a similar way, i was really excited for the crash team racing remake that you mentioned in the intro. that game was riddled with microtransactions and battle pass style gameplay loops that just completely ripped the soul out of my favorite childhood game. at least the racing mechanics held up to the original, which is better than banana mania can deliver. my brother and i had super monkey ball deluxe for the ps2. i dont think we ever beat the story but we put countless hours into the party games. it's sad to see another great series sullied by corporate greed. well researched and delivered as always!
I got the game day 1 and as you talked about here, I was one of those guys who went straight to monkey target. It was such an awful time. Other then, well the game not working at all, the thing I noticed more was how ugly it was. Especially the water, the water in the OG is so good looking! How is the water in the new game so ugly? shouldn't this be a thing that gets better as CGI gets better?
subbed & definitely going to binge watch your entire channel. The production is insane man!! the fact that you don't have over 100k is fucking criminal
Looks like you had a ball making this by monkeying around with the game. 70 bucks is a great deal for all those skins! On an unrelated note, I am now craving Dole bananas. No other brand of banana. Only Dole. That is the most appealing.
I bought mania as my first ever monkeyball title (preorder it cuz of nick robinson hyping it up), and after playing for like 20 minutes in versus mode with a friend of mine I haven't played it since. Might be worth looking into the originals more lol.
I honestly kind of like Banana Mania, but a whole lot less than the originals because of the jank controls and how the camera moves in Banana Mania. I never see myself returning because of how good the originals feel to this day. One thing I agree on 100% is those original skins though. I don't know how they ruined those models, but they did. I've always been offput by them and I'm glad to see others agree.
26:04 With the TV thing, it makes me wonder, why not just rip the original cutscenes and have them play on the TV? There's already a layer of separation with the TV format, who cares if it looks different? It could also make the characters watching the TV feel more coherent, they're feeling nostalgic for that adventure and want to revisit the levels.
Great video and perfectly summarizes my thoughts on Banana Mania. I've been playing the original two games since I was a kid, and I can say, with confidence, Banana Mania is a pretty awful remake. I'm glad some people like it, but it doesn't hold a candle to the originals. The biggest sin committed by Banana Mania are the completely jank physics. I can forgive the new graphics, music, voices. But the physics being fucked with really makes this game awful. The only thing this remake is good for is buying the jump button and seeing how the original levels can be broken. Beyond that, I will stick with my Gamecube titles.
man the removal of live systems in remakes is honestly so bunk. i get it it can be old and archaic and at worst it ruins otherwise well designed finales or is entirely redundant when continues are infinite and also return you to a checkpoint. but when an experience is crafted around the punishment of death in mind then removing it removes the skill progression of mastering easier sections to gain more trys at what just killed you, it removes the tension a death brings when you lack continues, and otherwise paradoxical choices like requiring skill to gain extras feeds back into mastery, pushing the player to experiment more in easier sections and possibly find tricks which could help where they're struggling. its why i find full game runs of sonic so fun because easier levels still demand skill and is why i'm especially critical of easier 2010 games because the skill expression is just gone with easy S ranks and levels so short death isn't a penalty. like even in games where continues bring you to the beginning of a stage, the challenge is doing a minimal death run of a 3-5 minute platforming gauntlet. obviously this is a massocist gamer perspective on lives, there's losing an inventory, there's trading level progress for permamant upgrades or simply using a ranking system to encourage retrys. for me these alternative systems never beat the simple loss of progress beyond a save, losing items which helped you sends you into a death loop trying to retrieve items you're not equiped to grab, permanant progress systems slow down considerably and end up even more punishing with less chance to learn patterns and ranking systems only really affect completionists. i don't expect live systems to make a mainstream return, most players are casuals that's true of any hobby but i wish remakes and sequals would stop removing them without filling the void, even something as simple as mario oddessy placing moons in extra life locations replaces the thrill of finding a one up, though at the expense of downgrading the main collectable. though that said, don't replace lives in remakes, while it is "outdated" it's apart of the core dna of the game which you will always have to keep in mind while playing, you can't just remove a feature like that.
@@eeeeeeee9084 i mean it was pre microtransactions so you still had to spend some time playing and learning earlier levels to then have the added tries.
The problem is a huge part of the appeal of the original Monkey Ball games is the arcadey aspect of it, but Sega completely got rid of it in Banana Mania because they see arcade style gameplay as inherently "dated" design.
super nostalgic about monkey balls on the game cube. Lots of co op games with my siblings and it was the only game that my dad ever pretended to tolerate.
one thing you forgot to mention is that many youtubers got sponsored my sega to talk positive about the game including the relatively niche Jonni Vee who is known as a MASSIVE fan of the og monkey balls
Jonii is my friend, those opinions in their first reaction are real. A lot of us got free codes, myself included, and we were all a lot more positive on this game initially. Especially when there was still the hope of updates.
I got myself Banana Mania for Christmas a couple years ago because I was interested in Monkey Ball. I didn't really like the controls so I thought that I just wasn't good but it makes me glad to know that it's more of the game being weird to control. If I could just download Monkey Bowling and Monkey Billiards by themselves I would sell my copy, not like those were enough to convince to play it again for a long time so far.
I would highly recommend the first two GameCube titles if you can afford them, it is a night and day difference and I think you would really get into them if you're interested in the franchise.
There's gotta be some mandate at Sega completely against life systems or something. They removed them from existing Sonic games with Origins and Colors Ultimate and designed Sonic Superstars without them, which lead to the trial and error BS bosses everyone hates about that one. Hell even that shitty House of the Dead remake has way too many lives by default compared to the original HotD ports, which forced you to actually play the game first before unlocking more credits each time you died. Tbh they gotta reexamine their roots desperately. They somehow got the idea that arcade design they used to be known for is somehow bad and needs to be reinvented.
Yeah it's weird, I skipped Origins because of that. Taking lives out of arcade-styled games built around them ruins the gameplay loop and improves nothing. The fun of a game like Sonic 2, like Monkey Ball, comes from trying to see how far you can get before succumbing to a game over. It's what makes beating them so rewarding to beat, it can take years. When you take that way, you're left with an hour long game that has little replay value.
@@GregCubed yeah like, they don't work in every game (Kirby removing lives in favor of currency you loose is actually more punishing than previous entries due to how many they used to give you, and how you actually want to use the money) but there's this weird idea especially in the indie scene that they're an obsolete mechanic. At least Banana Mania has the in-game missions you can screenshot if you want, including ones for doing marathons under a certain number of deaths and hitting the secret goals, but it's not quite the same. I am kinda worried about how Banana Rumble is gonna handle it, because I heard a rumor they're doing the Sonic Frontiers physics sliders and that does not sound like it would work at all. Would kill any leaderboard standardization they had left.
@@2011supergamer there’s also (unbalanced as hell) character stats, no lives, no score and no challenge mode so I’m not very optimistic for banana rumble lol. The physics slider is a horrible idea, it defeats the whole purpose of mastering the physics because you can just change them to whatever you want. Also it kinda defeats the purpose of character stats? I don’t get Sega…
The issue with the lives reminds of the Thousand Year Door Remake. While the vast majority of that game is a great remake, the addition of the ability to retry battles when you die instead of being sent to the last save point completely defeats the purpose of the Pit of 100 Trials.
I remember when news outlets rumored a 4 player coop experience in the game before it released, only to see that challenge mode gutted the multiplayer aspect and locked it to the party games. THANKFULLY Banana Rumble stepped up that aspect, giving us a coop experience I wanted ever since I first discovered competition mode, 20 years ago. It's a real shame that Banana Mania couldn't live up to its expectations, but it's at least accessible enough for people who never played a Monkey Ball game before. Great video, GregCubed!
While I didn't grow up with the originals, I have played both of them on emulator, and I have to say I vehemently disagree with you on this one. I had a blast playing this remake, and thought the new challenge modes were really fun too. Plus a ton of missions to go for.
I've been playing SMB2 on Dolphin with a mod installed to turn it into Deluxe. This is the definitive way to play, in my opinion. You get all the content of the OG pair, plus the extras from Deluxe, running on 2's engine instead of the gobshite PS2/Xbox one (30fps lock REALLY hinders monkey ball).
Only things you forgot to mention was the iconic Super Monkey Ball 2 intro and the lack of an online multiplayer (not like that would save the game anyway though). Other than that, you've pretty much covered everything.
Got is for 15 at Walmart so I don't feel robbed, but if I bought this for the 40 they want i'd be upset. I LOVED the mini games as a kid and seeing how they've ruined them all really hurts. I was really looking forward to playing them with my GF who's never played a SMB game and I don't want that to be her first experiance. Espically monkey baseball, idek how they fucked it up so bad but after playing like 5 games I only manged to score once while the bot also struggled with me it was laughably bad. Also love your lil nitpick about the Icons and accessibility overall a lot of kids who still cant read play games I did it, making them as simple as a soccer ball or them flying was ingenious.
I think I was a little overly positive in my video, I agree with most of this minus a few nitpicks and critiques. Still think the classic skins were really good and I personally liked them and nothing will change my mind :-) Great video though.
Im crossing everything that Banana Rumble is a good game. It looks pretty promising so far but my hopes are so fucking low so I don’t get shattered by the high probability it will be another flop🗿
I really don't like the aesthetics of it, since it goes even harder in the Banana Blitz direction than Banana Blitz did. However, the gameplay looks to be pretty solid, and they finally care about multiplayer. There was at least one level shown in the trailer with some thin wires like the first two games, so it may be challenging again.
Ah yes the new menus, or what I call the chore list. Glad I never bought it and I'm keeping my finger crossed for the next one but I'm also not buying unless there's 100% proof that it's not SMB but worse. And I hate the Banana in the names as well, can't imagine how many people will buy Blitz instead of the game they want by mistake.
As a CZcamsr myself I fell in love with your SpongeBob music video. I didn’t realize you had ever posted again and only saw this through a super lucky circumstance. You have a unique look I would recommend putting your face in the next thumbnail of your future videos or even editing your current thumbnails to include your face. Your last two videos may have come up on my sub feed but I missed them simply because I didn’t realize they were your videos. Just a thought since I love the content and you as a creator. Not sure what your goals are with this channel but good luck dude 😊
Anyone have similar feelings about Banana Rumble? It looks completely awful, but all of the reviews that are out currently act like it's better than smb deluxe *eyeroll*
I haven't even bought it, it seems to have all of the same structural issues I outlined in this video and I still am not a fan of the cutesy aesthetic. Not to mention completely gutting the party games for online battle modes that were dead on arrival. I'm glad they've learned to design interesting levels again, but that's about all I can really give it personally.
Sega was moving away from arcade style games during the franchise's conception, so what happened to franchise was inevitable. Even creator Toshihiro Nagoshi lost interest in the series. That's why he started up the Yakuza franchise before he eventually left.
Saying Monkey Ball 2's challenge mode retains everything that made 1's so deep and rewarding is disingenuous given the unlockable lives. The entire design ethos of 2 vs. 1 seems to be a byproduct of the existence of story mode. Monkey Ball 1 compiles a bunch of moderately hard levels with a hugely punishing system surrounding them; Monkey Ball 2 challenge mode compiles lot of individually difficult levels with a moderately punishing system surrounding them. The former asks a lot more care from the player, as any given attempt at any given level is extremely valuable. 99 lives lowers those stakes tremendously, and choosing to use just 3 an _extreme_ challenge, as a lot of the levels are clearly designed with lenience in mind. Monkey Ball 1 Expert is largely difficult through aggregate. Its levels are often not particularly challenging on their own - the real difficulty in Expert and Expert Extra is maintaining composure and smooth execution. Master is an outlier in that regard, and my distaste for it is likely partially related to that fact. To me, SMB2 feels closer to a series of challenges to be taken one at a time, same as SMB1 Master. I actually think these differences make for an interesting case study, and if it weren't for my troubles in sticking to projects I'd have made a video about this very subject (and Banana Mania) two years ago. Monkey Ball 2, to me, does not feel that far removed from BM's more egregious changes to format and difficulty. It's like a half step to it, although far more palatable. Neither 1 nor 2's approach is worse than the other, but they're definitely different. Anyway, I agree with a lot of points and sentiment here, but overall this video is a fairly transparent display of personal frustration which should have been more filtered and measured. It's okay to be upset about this game, but there are ways to provide scathing and actively disapproving critique without delving into exaggeration, invoking uncritical frustration, and indulgent ranting. shoogles makes a great case for more or less this same subject at 12:18 of his Brilliant Diamond video, in response to an attitude that manifested in his earlier work. That is of course an 11 hour video, but the relevant bit is just 3 or so minutes long. (It's also timestamped as "Visuals and Controls" in its description.)
Your points are valid, but they don't contradict what I already said in the video - that SMB2 was built from the ground up for a console experience and took a step away from being an arcade game. I didn't exaggerate anything there. I mentioned the unlockable lives, you don't have to use them. It's an accessibility option, if you want to play SMB2's Challenge mode just like it worked in 1 you can, and I've personally had just as much fun doing it that way. The problem with BM is that it doesn't give you an option at all, it forces you to use unlimited lives even in the SMB1 challenge modes. Also, yes this was transparently my own frustrated opinion, that is the point of the video and I was open about that many times lol. Anyways, thanks for the comment and I do encourage you to make that video comparing 1&2, it would be a very interesting watch!
I'm a long time fan of the original games, speedrun them a lot alongside romhacks. And I agree with everything in the video. But I'll be the first, and maybe only to say it, I like the new character designs more. I'm sorry 😢
Your complaints about the UI are funny to me, because what you're describing is basically idealized Japanese design: sure, simple and to the point, very corporate.
WOW!! These Monkeys were done so wrong!! I... Have a Wii gaming so I will play properly from now on. Cheap on the used market surprisingly....tried to buy maid fighting game... $100 can you Believe this?... monkey game is a 20...quite reasonable if you ask me 🍌 banana.
I wonder if they do this just to manipulate any form of tax related laws/copyright related laws. In the United States for example, a good, quality animated show would be created, but unceremoniously be axed in order for some kind of backdoor financial chicanary regarding tax or business write offs... And there's the recent whole thing about Steamboat Willy now entering public domain. Maybe its not just that they don't care, but they're intentionally hurting it, over and over, just to attain whatever else they can from the carcass of the property.
fun fact, banana blitz was remade due to sega not giving rgg studios a small budget and not much time. according to the director, Masao Shirosaki, they chose banana blitz since it was the most reasonable choice given their resources and the best selling game in the series.
When the things that are changed are things directly tethered to the identity of the game, and what made fans of the original love it, obviously fans of the originals are going to be disappointed.
That's not how that works in the slightest, fundamentally have major changes to gravity,control,music,sound design,graphics, & even changes to how exactly the minigames feel to play (often worse & less intuitive) Like a new model of a car that LOOKS the same but is for all purposes not equivalent at all the stellar classics quality & feature completeness
At this point, I'm pretty much ready to assume anything starring anything other than a human or containing playables other than humans will be garbage.
am i crazy? i don't see anything wrong while playing someone in the comments claimed this is the colors ultimate of monkey ball when that couldn't be further from the truth
Lives are outdated. If banana mania had lives, i wouldn't have gotten to the master stages. There is a reward for beating story and challenge modes. You complete missions, you also can complete marathon modes in under 99 lives if you want a challenge
Super Monkey Ball truly is the Star Fox of Sega IPs.
They fr did baby dirty in the new design too
I feel that way about Meemee. She looks she's about to kill someone or already has.
Agreed. I did a blind preference test with some of my random family, and they all agree, old baby and even old meemee, were infact more cute.
I’m just glad the rom hacking scene for the originals is pretty decently sized, actually due to it being relatively small pretty much every level pack released is made by those dedicated enough to ensure the highest quality and frankly better than everything we’ve gotten since 2
So overall, sort of a good epitome of what SEGA is known for these days; Nostalgia-Baiting, and fucking up things that should have been an easy win. Sort of the Sonic Colours Ultimate of Monkey Ball. That sort of thing where you just stand there and think "...how could you POSSIBLY fuck this up?" It's sort of why I'm quite...concerned about that "Power Surge" project they announced. Like, a new Jet Set/Streets of Rage/Golden Axe/Crazy Taxi, cool! ...But will they be GOOD?
Yeah agreed on the power surge project especially, Sega will have to earn our trust back with those games as I am not giving them the benefit of the doubt based on their last 20 years of history
I wouldn’t be too worried about human-starring games.
colors ultimate of monkey ball
yeah sure, you keep telling yourself that
Banana Mania has been one of my favorite party games in a while, but for all the wrong reasons. My friends and I always play a few rounds of Monkey Baseball, losing our minds every time the announcer yells "OOOT!!"
the baseball mode is my favorite in the game, including the main game 😂 its so good
I do have a ton of mixed feelings about banana mania, but it's obviously the fault of sega trying to rush these games out to meet a deadline and give the devs no time to make something substantial. Idk what has gone down during the development for this game, but i feel like they had little to no time to polish anything at all. one interesting thing about the game is that it reuses code for the physics for the original games but idk why they changed how the game controls but the psychics as close to the originals as they can.
Banana Mania doesn't even have the respect for the originals to get the stage animations right. Alternative and Wave Master have broken cycles. Trampolines sometimes hits you too low to reach the next level up. Within 15 minutes of playing bowling my first time (which is ruined so it would have been my last time regardless) it gave me some weird glitch. I had a decent enough time with it beating all the stages, but even then, I didn't feel like I really beat the stages because I knew the worst ones were made easier for this game. Looking back on it - there was too much disappointment in this game.
Monkey Ball fans make content that better respects the legacy of the two originals. There are hundreds of custom level packs for SMB1 and 2 now and a select few of them like 651, Gaiden, Monkeyed Ball, Stardust reuse and build upon the design philosophy of the originals in their own ways that make them classics in their own rights. There's also Rolled Out which is essentially a Monkey Ball clone that controls very similarly and will be getting its own version of online competition mode and stages designed for multiple players rolling on the same stage.
So I agree with you on every point regarding the quality of this game but I don't think I agree with you that this is the future of Monkey Ball. It might even be for the best that all the skill and passion for designing Monkey Ball stages now rests essentially in our hands, the players who grew up with the games, instead of a company who has let us down for 2 straight decades.
Competition Mode is the best thing ever. And you could play every single level in it, not just a pool of levels-up to five per "grand prix" or whatever you want to call it.
Playing challenge mode with friends is the most fun you can have playing monkey ball. Im confused why the new games don't have multiplayer challenge mode.
Honestly I'm surprised this only has less than 1k views. The production value is high. Love the video man. Keep up the long form content lol
I’m really glad I stumbled upon this video. Banana Mania was such a huge disappointment for me, though in hindsight I’m not sure why I let myself get so hyped for it. I should have seen it coming, given it’s from SEGA.
I remember seeing a lot of CZcamsrs say they enjoyed the game when it came out, saying the controls were a bit different but easy to get used to. I really thought that I was being picky or ungrateful or something but the controls were a dealbreaker for me. Levels that should have been easy or at the very least only take a few attempts ended up taking me multiple. It was only made more frustrating in story mode when I had to complete that level in order to progress. I ended up quitting after world eight on PC and seven on switch, I just couldn’t do it anymore.
And also, I hate to sound like a bitter hateful person, but the minigames look horrendously ugly and I’m tired of seeing nobody mention that, so thank you for bringing that up. When I opened up monkey target for the first time, the appalling visuals had me at a loss for words. Every single mini game (that I actually played) looked and felt unfinished. It’s so tragic and just goes to show SEGA care more about short term sales than their integrity as a company it feels like. At least we have the originals, but it would have been nice to have an easy to boot up GOOD monkey ball game for PC or switch.
I hope this video gets some more traction soon, because this game is a terrible remake and an insult to fans and it’s not talked about nearly enough.
No seriously, I felt like I was being gaslit seeing so many videos like "How Banana Mania saved the franchise!". It never felt like a step forward for the series to me, it just felt like they just brought 1 and 2 down to Banana Blitz's level.
in a similar way, i was really excited for the crash team racing remake that you mentioned in the intro. that game was riddled with microtransactions and battle pass style gameplay loops that just completely ripped the soul out of my favorite childhood game. at least the racing mechanics held up to the original, which is better than banana mania can deliver.
my brother and i had super monkey ball deluxe for the ps2. i dont think we ever beat the story but we put countless hours into the party games. it's sad to see another great series sullied by corporate greed.
well researched and delivered as always!
*rittled
@@ProjectRedfoot
No, it's "riddled", it's derived from the Old English word _"hriddel",_ which means "sieve".
I got the game day 1 and as you talked about here, I was one of those guys who went straight to monkey target. It was such an awful time. Other then, well the game not working at all, the thing I noticed more was how ugly it was. Especially the water, the water in the OG is so good looking! How is the water in the new game so ugly? shouldn't this be a thing that gets better as CGI gets better?
subbed & definitely going to binge watch your entire channel. The production is insane man!! the fact that you don't have over 100k is fucking criminal
I love the enthusiasm of the speed runner! Reminds me of myself lol.
Great video, guess ill have to bust out the wii again and load up some smb2 later
Looks like you had a ball making this by monkeying around with the game. 70 bucks is a great deal for all those skins! On an unrelated note, I am now craving Dole bananas. No other brand of banana. Only Dole. That is the most appealing.
I think you mean aPEELing, good sir ;)
I bought mania as my first ever monkeyball title (preorder it cuz of nick robinson hyping it up), and after playing for like 20 minutes in versus mode with a friend of mine I haven't played it since. Might be worth looking into the originals more lol.
I honestly kind of like Banana Mania, but a whole lot less than the originals because of the jank controls and how the camera moves in Banana Mania. I never see myself returning because of how good the originals feel to this day.
One thing I agree on 100% is those original skins though. I don't know how they ruined those models, but they did. I've always been offput by them and I'm glad to see others agree.
26:04 With the TV thing, it makes me wonder, why not just rip the original cutscenes and have them play on the TV? There's already a layer of separation with the TV format, who cares if it looks different? It could also make the characters watching the TV feel more coherent, they're feeling nostalgic for that adventure and want to revisit the levels.
Great video and perfectly summarizes my thoughts on Banana Mania. I've been playing the original two games since I was a kid, and I can say, with confidence, Banana Mania is a pretty awful remake. I'm glad some people like it, but it doesn't hold a candle to the originals. The biggest sin committed by Banana Mania are the completely jank physics. I can forgive the new graphics, music, voices. But the physics being fucked with really makes this game awful. The only thing this remake is good for is buying the jump button and seeing how the original levels can be broken. Beyond that, I will stick with my Gamecube titles.
man the removal of live systems in remakes is honestly so bunk.
i get it it can be old and archaic and at worst it ruins otherwise well designed finales or is entirely redundant when continues are infinite and also return you to a checkpoint.
but when an experience is crafted around the punishment of death in mind then removing it removes the skill progression of mastering easier sections to gain more trys at what just killed you, it removes the tension a death brings when you lack continues, and otherwise paradoxical choices like requiring skill to gain extras feeds back into mastery, pushing the player to experiment more in easier sections and possibly find tricks which could help where they're struggling. its why i find full game runs of sonic so fun because easier levels still demand skill and is why i'm especially critical of easier 2010 games because the skill expression is just gone with easy S ranks and levels so short death isn't a penalty. like even in games where continues bring you to the beginning of a stage, the challenge is doing a minimal death run of a 3-5 minute platforming gauntlet.
obviously this is a massocist gamer perspective on lives, there's losing an inventory, there's trading level progress for permamant upgrades or simply using a ranking system to encourage retrys.
for me these alternative systems never beat the simple loss of progress beyond a save, losing items which helped you sends you into a death loop trying to retrieve items you're not equiped to grab, permanant progress systems slow down considerably and end up even more punishing with less chance to learn patterns and ranking systems only really affect completionists.
i don't expect live systems to make a mainstream return, most players are casuals that's true of any hobby but i wish remakes and sequals would stop removing them without filling the void, even something as simple as mario oddessy placing moons in extra life locations replaces the thrill of finding a one up, though at the expense of downgrading the main collectable. though that said, don't replace lives in remakes, while it is "outdated" it's apart of the core dna of the game which you will always have to keep in mind while playing, you can't just remove a feature like that.
To be fair they made lives less of a thing as far back as the 2nd game, when you could buy more and raise the amount by a ton.
@@eeeeeeee9084 i mean it was pre microtransactions so you still had to spend some time playing and learning earlier levels to then have the added tries.
The problem is a huge part of the appeal of the original Monkey Ball games is the arcadey aspect of it, but Sega completely got rid of it in Banana Mania because they see arcade style gameplay as inherently "dated" design.
super nostalgic about monkey balls on the game cube. Lots of co op games with my siblings and it was the only game that my dad ever pretended to tolerate.
one thing you forgot to mention is that many youtubers got sponsored my sega to talk positive about the game including the relatively niche Jonni Vee who is known as a MASSIVE fan of the og monkey balls
Jonii is my friend, those opinions in their first reaction are real. A lot of us got free codes, myself included, and we were all a lot more positive on this game initially. Especially when there was still the hope of updates.
babe wake up, new gregcubed just dropped
I got myself Banana Mania for Christmas a couple years ago because I was interested in Monkey Ball. I didn't really like the controls so I thought that I just wasn't good but it makes me glad to know that it's more of the game being weird to control.
If I could just download Monkey Bowling and Monkey Billiards by themselves I would sell my copy, not like those were enough to convince to play it again for a long time so far.
I would highly recommend the first two GameCube titles if you can afford them, it is a night and day difference and I think you would really get into them if you're interested in the franchise.
There's gotta be some mandate at Sega completely against life systems or something. They removed them from existing Sonic games with Origins and Colors Ultimate and designed Sonic Superstars without them, which lead to the trial and error BS bosses everyone hates about that one. Hell even that shitty House of the Dead remake has way too many lives by default compared to the original HotD ports, which forced you to actually play the game first before unlocking more credits each time you died.
Tbh they gotta reexamine their roots desperately. They somehow got the idea that arcade design they used to be known for is somehow bad and needs to be reinvented.
Yeah it's weird, I skipped Origins because of that. Taking lives out of arcade-styled games built around them ruins the gameplay loop and improves nothing. The fun of a game like Sonic 2, like Monkey Ball, comes from trying to see how far you can get before succumbing to a game over. It's what makes beating them so rewarding to beat, it can take years. When you take that way, you're left with an hour long game that has little replay value.
@@GregCubed yeah like, they don't work in every game (Kirby removing lives in favor of currency you loose is actually more punishing than previous entries due to how many they used to give you, and how you actually want to use the money) but there's this weird idea especially in the indie scene that they're an obsolete mechanic.
At least Banana Mania has the in-game missions you can screenshot if you want, including ones for doing marathons under a certain number of deaths and hitting the secret goals, but it's not quite the same. I am kinda worried about how Banana Rumble is gonna handle it, because I heard a rumor they're doing the Sonic Frontiers physics sliders and that does not sound like it would work at all. Would kill any leaderboard standardization they had left.
@@2011supergamer there’s also (unbalanced as hell) character stats, no lives, no score and no challenge mode so I’m not very optimistic for banana rumble lol. The physics slider is a horrible idea, it defeats the whole purpose of mastering the physics because you can just change them to whatever you want. Also it kinda defeats the purpose of character stats? I don’t get Sega…
Great video!
The issue with the lives reminds of the Thousand Year Door Remake. While the vast majority of that game is a great remake, the addition of the ability to retry battles when you die instead of being sent to the last save point completely defeats the purpose of the Pit of 100 Trials.
Ty was just an HD remaster and Kao was a 4th game
I remember when news outlets rumored a 4 player coop experience in the game before it released, only to see that challenge mode gutted the multiplayer aspect and locked it to the party games. THANKFULLY Banana Rumble stepped up that aspect, giving us a coop experience I wanted ever since I first discovered competition mode, 20 years ago. It's a real shame that Banana Mania couldn't live up to its expectations, but it's at least accessible enough for people who never played a Monkey Ball game before. Great video, GregCubed!
Im still mad they took out competition mode
While I didn't grow up with the originals, I have played both of them on emulator, and I have to say I vehemently disagree with you on this one. I had a blast playing this remake, and thought the new challenge modes were really fun too. Plus a ton of missions to go for.
He's done it again!
Crash 4 was Wrath of Cortex.
I dunno why they still numbered the game since it wasn't a reboot.
We got too many remakes...
Fellow Wrath of Cortex truther
Due to 1&2 being on GCN and Deluxe (the port of 1&2) being on Xbox & PS2, The newest system to legally play them is Xbox 360 & Wii.
Dang
I've been playing SMB2 on Dolphin with a mod installed to turn it into Deluxe. This is the definitive way to play, in my opinion. You get all the content of the OG pair, plus the extras from Deluxe, running on 2's engine instead of the gobshite PS2/Xbox one (30fps lock REALLY hinders monkey ball).
Just playing SMB2 on my GameCube and wow its infinitely better than BM.
I think it spoke 1 nonillion words on the quality of Banana Mania when Nick Robinson could even be bothered to make a video on the actual game itself.
I like the game ❤
still waiting for the gregcubed remake
Sega has two sides: One where they know what their fans want and give it to them, and one where they outright disappoint them.
Only things you forgot to mention was the iconic Super Monkey Ball 2 intro and the lack of an online multiplayer (not like that would save the game anyway though). Other than that, you've pretty much covered everything.
I did cover the lack of multiplayer in it's own section near the end lol
@@GregCubed I know, I was exclusively talking about online multiplayer though.
Got is for 15 at Walmart so I don't feel robbed, but if I bought this for the 40 they want i'd be upset. I LOVED the mini games as a kid and seeing how they've ruined them all really hurts. I was really looking forward to playing them with my GF who's never played a SMB game and I don't want that to be her first experiance. Espically monkey baseball, idek how they fucked it up so bad but after playing like 5 games I only manged to score once while the bot also struggled with me it was laughably bad. Also love your lil nitpick about the Icons and accessibility overall a lot of kids who still cant read play games I did it, making them as simple as a soccer ball or them flying was ingenious.
I like the cheated speedruns for Monkeyball. Those are the best
I think I was a little overly positive in my video, I agree with most of this minus a few nitpicks and critiques. Still think the classic skins were really good and I personally liked them and nothing will change my mind :-) Great video though.
Im crossing everything that Banana Rumble is a good game. It looks pretty promising so far but my hopes are so fucking low so I don’t get shattered by the high probability it will be another flop🗿
I really don't like the aesthetics of it, since it goes even harder in the Banana Blitz direction than Banana Blitz did. However, the gameplay looks to be pretty solid, and they finally care about multiplayer. There was at least one level shown in the trailer with some thin wires like the first two games, so it may be challenging again.
@@pikachuchujelly7628 The artstyle and aesthetics is actually a mix between classic and modern.
Ah yes the new menus, or what I call the chore list. Glad I never bought it and I'm keeping my finger crossed for the next one but I'm also not buying unless there's 100% proof that it's not SMB but worse.
And I hate the Banana in the names as well, can't imagine how many people will buy Blitz instead of the game they want by mistake.
As a CZcamsr myself I fell in love with your SpongeBob music video. I didn’t realize you had ever posted again and only saw this through a super lucky circumstance. You have a unique look I would recommend putting your face in the next thumbnail of your future videos or even editing your current thumbnails to include your face. Your last two videos may have come up on my sub feed but I missed them simply because I didn’t realize they were your videos. Just a thought since I love the content and you as a creator. Not sure what your goals are with this channel but good luck dude 😊
Anyone have similar feelings about Banana Rumble? It looks completely awful, but all of the reviews that are out currently act like it's better than smb deluxe *eyeroll*
I haven't even bought it, it seems to have all of the same structural issues I outlined in this video and I still am not a fan of the cutesy aesthetic. Not to mention completely gutting the party games for online battle modes that were dead on arrival. I'm glad they've learned to design interesting levels again, but that's about all I can really give it personally.
Sega was moving away from arcade style games during the franchise's conception, so what happened to franchise was inevitable. Even creator Toshihiro Nagoshi lost interest in the series. That's why he started up the Yakuza franchise before he eventually left.
I think I would rather put up with SMB Jr’s poor depth perception than bother with Banana Mania.
QuintonReviews but gamer
Saying Monkey Ball 2's challenge mode retains everything that made 1's so deep and rewarding is disingenuous given the unlockable lives. The entire design ethos of 2 vs. 1 seems to be a byproduct of the existence of story mode. Monkey Ball 1 compiles a bunch of moderately hard levels with a hugely punishing system surrounding them; Monkey Ball 2 challenge mode compiles lot of individually difficult levels with a moderately punishing system surrounding them. The former asks a lot more care from the player, as any given attempt at any given level is extremely valuable. 99 lives lowers those stakes tremendously, and choosing to use just 3 an _extreme_ challenge, as a lot of the levels are clearly designed with lenience in mind.
Monkey Ball 1 Expert is largely difficult through aggregate. Its levels are often not particularly challenging on their own - the real difficulty in Expert and Expert Extra is maintaining composure and smooth execution. Master is an outlier in that regard, and my distaste for it is likely partially related to that fact. To me, SMB2 feels closer to a series of challenges to be taken one at a time, same as SMB1 Master.
I actually think these differences make for an interesting case study, and if it weren't for my troubles in sticking to projects I'd have made a video about this very subject (and Banana Mania) two years ago. Monkey Ball 2, to me, does not feel that far removed from BM's more egregious changes to format and difficulty. It's like a half step to it, although far more palatable. Neither 1 nor 2's approach is worse than the other, but they're definitely different.
Anyway, I agree with a lot of points and sentiment here, but overall this video is a fairly transparent display of personal frustration which should have been more filtered and measured. It's okay to be upset about this game, but there are ways to provide scathing and actively disapproving critique without delving into exaggeration, invoking uncritical frustration, and indulgent ranting. shoogles makes a great case for more or less this same subject at 12:18 of his Brilliant Diamond video, in response to an attitude that manifested in his earlier work. That is of course an 11 hour video, but the relevant bit is just 3 or so minutes long. (It's also timestamped as "Visuals and Controls" in its description.)
Your points are valid, but they don't contradict what I already said in the video - that SMB2 was built from the ground up for a console experience and took a step away from being an arcade game. I didn't exaggerate anything there. I mentioned the unlockable lives, you don't have to use them. It's an accessibility option, if you want to play SMB2's Challenge mode just like it worked in 1 you can, and I've personally had just as much fun doing it that way. The problem with BM is that it doesn't give you an option at all, it forces you to use unlimited lives even in the SMB1 challenge modes. Also, yes this was transparently my own frustrated opinion, that is the point of the video and I was open about that many times lol. Anyways, thanks for the comment and I do encourage you to make that video comparing 1&2, it would be a very interesting watch!
I still kinda regret buying the classic OST for this game… Lame.
Im from the Present, Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble looks bad. the series just climbed out only to shamble further.
Lol no it doesn't. It looks objectively good, definitely better than Banana Blitz HD and Banana Mania.
I'm a long time fan of the original games, speedrun them a lot alongside romhacks. And I agree with everything in the video. But I'll be the first, and maybe only to say it, I like the new character designs more. I'm sorry 😢
Your complaints about the UI are funny to me, because what you're describing is basically idealized Japanese design: sure, simple and to the point, very corporate.
2:07 And the 4 of them came from Poland xD
I heard the vita game was pretty good
WOW!! These Monkeys were done so wrong!! I... Have a Wii gaming so I will play properly from now on. Cheap on the used market surprisingly....tried to buy maid fighting game... $100 can you Believe this?... monkey game is a 20...quite reasonable if you ask me 🍌 banana.
no its not
I wonder if they do this just to manipulate any form of tax related laws/copyright related laws.
In the United States for example, a good, quality animated show would be created, but unceremoniously be axed in order for some kind of backdoor financial chicanary regarding tax or business write offs...
And there's the recent whole thing about Steamboat Willy now entering public domain.
Maybe its not just that they don't care, but they're intentionally hurting it, over and over, just to attain whatever else they can from the carcass of the property.
fun fact, banana blitz was remade due to sega not giving rgg studios a small budget and not much time. according to the director, Masao Shirosaki, they chose banana blitz since it was the most reasonable choice given their resources and the best selling game in the series.
Alot of your "criticisms" boil down to: "this game isn't how i remember, remakes bad". You simply didn't like it but that doesn't make it a bad game.
When the things that are changed are things directly tethered to the identity of the game, and what made fans of the original love it, obviously fans of the originals are going to be disappointed.
great video like like like like like like like LIKE great video LIKE LIKE
It's literally just remakes of the first games, so that must mean the first games are bad too now, this game was fun.
Gamers make no sense
That's not how that works in the slightest, fundamentally have major changes to gravity,control,music,sound design,graphics, & even changes to how exactly the minigames feel to play (often worse & less intuitive)
Like a new model of a car that LOOKS the same but is for all purposes not equivalent at all the stellar classics quality & feature completeness
At this point, I'm pretty much ready to assume anything starring anything other than a human or containing playables other than humans will be garbage.
am i crazy? i don't see anything wrong while playing
someone in the comments claimed this is the colors ultimate of monkey ball when that couldn't be further from the truth
You can skip levels and then go back to them later on story mode
Banana mania and banana blitz HD isnt even that bad....if someone would fine tune them theyd almost be perfect.
No lol
Lives are outdated. If banana mania had lives, i wouldn't have gotten to the master stages. There is a reward for beating story and challenge modes. You complete missions, you also can complete marathon modes in under 99 lives if you want a challenge
Lives aren’t outdated when used properly. They provide actual stakes.
Its not a bad game.