Super Monkey Ball Adventure

Super Monkey Ball Adventure
PAL region PlayStation 2 cover art
Developer(s)	Traveller's Tales
Publisher(s)	Sega
Composer(s)	Simon Forster
Series	Super Monkey Ball
Platform(s)	GameCube PlayStation 2 PlayStation Portable
Release	PlayStation 2 PAL: June 30, 2006 NA: August 1, 2006 PlayStation Portable PAL: June 30, 2006 NA: August 29, 2006 GameCube PAL: July 14, 2006 NA: August 1, 2006
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Super Monkey Ball Adventure is a video game developed by Traveller's Tales in association with the division Traveller's Tales Oxford and distributed by Sega in the Super Monkey Ball series, released on June 30, 2006. This game was not released in Japan.

Super Monkey Ball Adventure is a departure from the series in the sense that the puzzle-based gameplay is replaced by a more traditional 3D platform game world. Traveller's Tales has retained some of the mini-games, however, and integrated the features into the gameplay. Some new mini-games are also integrated into the adventure world.

This is also the third game Sega and Traveller's Tales collaborated on, the first two being Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R.

Plot

On Jungle Island, Aiai meets Prince AbeABE of Monkitropolis and Princess DeeDee of the second proportion of Monkitropolis, the underwater city of Kongri-la.

Here, before Aiai has completed quests by monkeys around Kongri-la and Monkitropolis, The two cities both blame each other for their problems in their cities. This causes the monkeys to be rivals, including the parents of the Prince and Princess. Since the parents are in different cities, the rivalry between the parents causes both Prince Abeabe and Princess Deedee to be apart. Aiai has to complete different tasks to make both areas happy again and not to blame each other for their problems.

After Aiai successfully does all the quests, Aiai must complete the rest of the quests at Jungle Island to set up the wedding of the Prince and Princess, so the King can pronounce them as married.

Gameplay

Story Mode

There are five main worlds, or "Monkey Kingdoms", through which the player progresses: Jungle Island, Moonhaven, Zootopia, Monkitropolis, and Kongri-la. The goal of the game is to unite the feuding kingdoms of Monkitropolis and Kongri-la. Follow the normal story and complete over 60 quests from the monkeys around the Monkey World, using up to three different files.

There are on average, four sections to each world. To enter a different section, the player must wait several seconds. During that time, the game depicts the entire level from a high angle, showing everything in the level in an animated style. The same style shows up when Aiai teleports to another level. It depicts the four main monkeys blasting off into the sky while loading the level.^[1]

Although the player has to bring peace back to the five islands, there are some monsters, called "Naysayers," trying to stop them. These Naysayers are monsters that are formed from sorrow, as the peace had become disturbed. In order to advance to the next world, the player must complete at least 60% of missions in each world. Some missions are simple, while others are more lengthy and challenging.

Challenge Mode

Re-visit puzzle stages that have been unlocked in the game and compete for high-scores (possibly to win bananas that can be used to unlock new items). Unlike the previous games, SMBA has no practice mode to practice levels that were previously completed by the player. These levels are contained in story mode. There are six continues of three lives, totaling 18 lives altogether.

Like all games in the Super Monkey Ball franchise, the player must control their selected monkey of the four main characters (Aiai, Meemee, Baby and Gongon) with the analog stick to cross platforms, to reach the goal in a time limit of a minute. The goal is a circle-shape with a party ball on above a banner reading "GOAL". The monkey must pass through it to move on, breaking open the party ball and celebrating. Falling off the platforms or letting the timer reach zero causes the player to lose a life. Fifty bananas are required to gain a life, which are usually placed in corners of levels and hard-to-reach and risky places.

The monkeys have unlimited lives here, with the choice to give up and return to the game. The levels are themed as the same as the main Monkey Kingdoms, depending on the difficulty (ex. Jungle Island's color, green, and backdrop is used for the beginner levels). Also a feature removed is that there are no extra stages added on to the Beginner, Advanced and Expert modes. There are 49 stages; 12 beginner, 20 advanced and 17 expert. Stages have several random music tracks playing, some from previous Monkey Ball games.

During Story mode, these levels are in areas of the Monkey Kingdoms. In order to unlock new areas of the Kingdom, Aiai must complete a majority of the levels to progress. Stages come in bunches of four to ten stages per area.

Party Games

There are six different available mini-games, complete with multi-player support, with 20 selectable characters to choose from. Additional features beyond the basic ones are unlocked through an NPC-Store using bananas gathered during adventure mode.

Development

Where as previous Super Monkey Ball games focused mainly on innovative gameplay, Sega emphasized plot in Super Monkey Ball Adventure as a move to make the game more accessible.^[2]

Critical reception

Super Monkey Ball Adventure received negative reviews from critics. This was due to the confusion of goals (the significant difference compared to the other Super Monkey Ball games), the lack of character control (causing a lot of falls, especially in water), repetitive and long loading screens, sound glitches, and other various game glitches and crashes.^[3] Super Monkey Ball Adventure obtained a rare ranking of zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes' video game section.^[4] Nintendo Power gave the game a 5.5 out of 10 rating and it, along with many other sources, claimed it was the worst installment thus far in the Super Monkey Ball series. X-Play gave it a 1 out of 5.^[5] IGN gave the game a "Bad" rating at 4.8 out of 10, stating that "We just want to play the damned puzzle mazes." The game's soundtrack, however, was highly praised.

References