Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!
- S U P E R _ M O N K E Y _ B A L L _ 2 -


Super Monkey Ball 2 is a lot like its predecessor, only with updated monkey movements and different forms of the mini-games. Not to mention six all-new and different mini-games. That gives you a total of 12 mini-games, totalled with the six old mini-games from Super Monkey Ball 1! I'll go into more detail about each of the games later in the review. In the main game, there are 150 stages you can battle through in order to claim to be "Super Monkey Ball 2's Best Friend", as Aiai puts it.

First of all, you can choose between the 1-player Story or Challenge modes to get into the whole "stage" thing. Six of the mini-games are already unlocked, and you can unlock the other six by cashing in your earned points from either Story or Challenge mode.

Story Mode

Any first-timers may want to start out with the story mode. It's fairly simple and offers a background to what you do in the game. This is a new feature that the original Super Monkey Ball didn't have.

The Evil Dr. BAD-BOON has stolen all of the bananas from the happy little village Aiai and friends live in. Enraged, Aiai, Meemee, Baby, and Gongon give chase to Dr. BAD-BOON in order to get their bananas back. But it doesn't seem like that's the only part of his evil plot. Dr. BAD-BOON is also planning on using a ray gun to make the rest of the bananas on planet Earth taste like Tofu!!! That's not a joke. The story mode takes the main character (you), played as Aiai, through ten different worlds composed of ten stages. The worlds are a separate blend of an ocean, a volcano, a forest, an amusement park, and even inside a whale. Each of the ten stages in a world require you to reach the goal while passing obstacles. These include: swings, holes, valleys, bumps, see-saws, bridges, gaps, falls, and slides, just to name a few. You may find fast forward, play, stop, and rewind switches on certain stages that allow you to alter the moving parts of that particular stage.

Challenge Mode

This mode lets you go through 10 of the beginner stages, 30 of the advanced stages, or 50 of the expert stages consecutively. You start out with three lives per continue, and five continues. You use up all of your lives and continues, and the game is over. But you can always go back and play again. If you manage to get through any of these modes without using a single continue, you'll be treated to ten extra bonus stages. And if you make it past those ten extra stages in expert mode WITHOUT using another continue, you'll go on to the ten extremely extra (lol) "Master" stages. These, my friends, are hard. I've gotten past them, but not without using quite a bit of continues. If you're worried about how you can make it through using only three lives in one continue, read below to find out how you can add on A LOT of extra lives to each of your continues.

Monkey Points

Points are earned for the completion of stages in either Challenge or Story mode. The harder it is to get to the goal in a certain stage, the more points the stage is worth. I think the Master stages that come after the expert mode are worth 500 points each! After rounding up a bunch of these points, you can unlock various mini-games. Each of the mini-games are worth 2500 points. Once you've unlocked all of them, you can then unlock "gifts" from the options menu. Gifts include movie scenes from Story Mode (1000 points each), the banana-collecting credits mini-game (1000 points), and the best one yet: More lives for each continue. Each life is worth 500 points. Rack up a bunch of points, use them on lives, and rack up more points. Eventually you'll get a high enough number (and enough experience) to pull yourself through Expert Mode without using a continue! That will a very good accomplishment, indeed.

Movement

Movement in the game is not something I'd like to call common, and you may not even notice the difference unless you're an avid player or have read about this somewhere else on the 'net. In Monkey Ball 1 and 2, you actually control the stage, not the character. The monkey in the ball reacts to the degree of which you tilt the stage. It may sound difficult, but the game plays as if you are controlling the monkey, not the stage. Again, it sounds like a complicated concept, but you won't notice the difference (then again, you'll see the sides of the stage tilt up and down when you move the control stick.)

Description of Various Mini-Games

The Mini-games are the second part to Super Monkey Ball 2, and they can be stand-alones for even a whole 'nother separate Monkey Ball game! That's how much fun they are. Bring in three other people and have Super Smash Bros. Melee with you, and you've got the ticket to an all-night Video Game party. Challenge mode also supports a four-player mode, but that doesn't compare much to the humorous and challenging mini-games.

The descriptions of each of the games are located below.

Monkey Race 2: 6 completely new courses and a batch of new items. Need I say more? Ah, of course I do. There are two beginner, advance, and expert stages that are each original in their own ways. I'll tell you now - you'll love the expert stages! Even the music is cool:). The game has kept the banana, ice cube, polygon, boost, and bomb, and added the missles and a glass that slows you down dramatically. There's a new feature that allows you to kick off the effects of these items fairly quickly. It's the toggle option - move the control stick back and forth really fast to get your monkey back on track.

Monkey Fight 2: This game is amazingly like the original - which makes it good. Even better, actually. The items for Monkey Fight 2 are: The Iron Fist, Rotating Fist (the one we all love so much ;), and Extended Fist. You whack the opponents with A, and a new feature allows you to build up power by holding the B button. You play on three different stages in one of two modes. One is the regular mode where you have to win 1-5 matches, and the other is Survival mode, which makes the stages crumble and ultimately gives you a harder time to stay on.

Monkey Target 2: Monkey Target 2 has taken a giant leap from the original Monkey Target. In one player mode, you can choose whether you want to play through 3 or 6 rounds, and if you want to play alone or with four other monkeys. The other four monkeys will mirror your moves and can be set into different formations to get the most out of the points earned on the field. Items are not obtained by collecting bananas - they're found in the air and can be used when any of the monkeys pass through them. Bananas can be collected for extra points. The wind feature is kept, but that spinning "wheel-of-fortune" thing has been removed.

Monkey Bowling 2: This game is a lot like the older version, only with crazier lanes. Play with three other people to get the most out it! And don't forget the fact that you can move the monkey left or right at the beginning before you set the direction of which you want the monkey to go to hit the pins. The option to add spin on the ball has been added, and how much spin to add to the ball is determined by the amount of pressure to place on the L or R buttons.

Monkey Golf 2: I haven't played much of this game in either SMB or SMB2, but the SMB2 version has been spruced up and polished to the point that it could be a whole separate game on its own. Works like real golf O_o.

Monkey Billiards 2: Everything the older version of Super Monkey Ball was missing has been placed into its sequel. Choose from three different games of billiards and two different modes.

Monkey Boat: Monkey Boat is, um, a "boatload" of fun! Yeah. Once you get the controls down. You steer your monkey by alternately hitting the L and R buttons all the way down. Take my advice: DON'T HIT THEM AS FAST AS YOU CAN! Your fingers are going to hurt, majorly, so just don't do it. Instead, take your time and hold one of the two buttons down until the meter at the bottom gets maxed out, then switch. All right. You've got the accelerating and going straight part down okay, but now you've gotta learn to turn. To turn left, you hit the R BUTTON a few times. The more you hit it, the sharper your turn. Hit the L BUTTON to turn right. Those are not typos. To this day Monkey Boat remains one of the hardest mini-games to play in SMB2 because of the controls. But it's incredibly fun!

Monkey Shot: Kind of like a first-person shooter. You only see your cross-hairs on the screen, and you use those to shoot a bunch of enemies that get in your way. Some of these enemies will shoot missels that you've gotta shoot down. Your monkey starts out with 5 lives, and if one of the lives is taken away, it can be "refilled" by finding a banana and placing your cross-hair over it. Power-ups such as more ammo, a larger cross-hair, and a stopwatch add more fun to the game. Once any of the levels have been gotten through, a boss must be fought at the end. The difficulty of the boss reflects the difficulty of the stage chosen from the main screen.

Monkey Dogfight: Fly around and shoot other people down. Accelerate with the R button and slow down (to make sharper turns and pick up items) with L. In survival mode, shoot down everyone as fast as you can so you can claim victory! You've got the machine gun set to the A button and homing missles on the B.

Monkey Baseball: Play Ball! It's a team of monkeys against... another team of monkeys! This game plays by the exact rule of baseball, with a few added bits here and there. First, there are the ramps. The game decides which ramps in the outfield are kept up or taken down by the results of a "wheel-of-fortune" type thing. If your monkey manages to hit one of the ramps, then it's an automatic home run! How many bases a ball is worth depends on what hole you land in at the very end of the outfield. Be careful, though - some of these "holes" are outs. And then there's always a chance you can get captured by one of the opposing teams' monkeys in the outfield. When pitching, experiment with the control stick to set up different speeds and directions of which may be easier for your monkey to throw a strike.

Monkey Soccer: You choose a team of four monkeys (including yourself). The opposing team is also composed of four monkeys. I'm not a big fan of soccer games because of the constant switching of characters. Different positions are played with different characters. The main thing in the game is to try to score more points than the opposing team in a given time limit (duh, lol). Again, this game is probably MUCH more fun if you've got three or four friends playing with (or against) you.

Monkey Tennis: Ever play Mario tennis? Monkey Tennis is nearly the same. You can choose to play 1, 3, or 5 sets of 2, 4, or 6 games in a match. Then there's the option of playing either singles or doubles, with a or without a human player as your partner or opponent. Hit the ball with the A or B buttons. The B buttons assures more power into the strike, while the A has a sort of "soft" effect to it that gives the ball a lot of bounce, and quite possibly, spin.