A screenshot from Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania. | Image: Sega
As a kid, I remember spending hours playing Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2 on the GameCube with my sister. The games are lighthearted and colorful, have fun single-player and multiplayer modes, and the monkeys feel like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. I haven’t touched the series since, and I figured Banana Mania would be the perfect nostalgia trip for me. While it is a lot of fun, I also found it surprisingly frustrating.
Banana Mania is a remaster of the first three Super Monkey Ball games: Super Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball 2, and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. If you’re not familiar with the series, the Monkey Ball games are mostly about rolling monkeys in translucent balls through increasingly challenging…
