Super Monkey Ball is an addictive, colourful game that is probably best played with friends or family.
Plus, the game is seriously great, clean, pure fun to play with friends or family - you get to laugh when they take a foolish fall, you get to applaud when they overcome an obstacle that faced them, you get to share a game that is good stuff and suitable for people of all ages. Taking it in turns achieves a great sense of tension and it's fun to race to the final floor. The courses and floors are actually very challenging and well designed, and in the main game you can choose from three versatile difficulty settings, Beginner, Advanced, and Expert, each having 10 stages, 30 stages and 50 stages respectively.
Each setting has a sharp difficulty curve from one to the other, though, which can initially put off newer players who have had trouble with Beginner and are now faced with a daunting task in the way that you're facing harder stages in larger quantities, so unfortunately you'll have to have had quite some practice before elevating yourself to the next difficulty level. There is an immense feeling of accomplishment if you finish the final floor of your difficulty setting and, even better, the game features one of the best credits sections in existence - the letters of the developers' names will fall on to a huge massive stretch of linear track and you have to avoid their letters while simultaneously collecting as many bananas as possible, and you'll want to do that again and again, as it is almost as fun as actually playing the proper stages. It doesn't help that the game is at its core quite fiddly and difficult to master. The GameCube controller isn't exactly the greatest controller to play the game with either, as I find the thumbsticks to be not as responsive as those on an Xbox controller, even if they're on par with a PS2's. Although weirdly, the level of challenge and difficulty here is an added factor for enjoying the game - it's seriously fun to get the feeling that you're mastering the gameplay mechanics and it's great to get there bit by bit too. This is also down to the aforementioned sense of accomplishment you will get when you complete a particularly difficult floor you were stuck on, or finish an entire course. It gives you an incentive to keep playing as well as something to look forward to, and it also helps to overlook the shortcomings of the control system as long as you have a goal to aim for.
Super Monkey Ball also features a few alternate minigames that use the excellent gameplay mechanics to their advantage - the best one of these is easily the Monkey Race in my opinion, where you'll be forced around a floating racetrack as fast as you can and if you fall off you'll pay for it in the way that the friend or family member that you're opposing has probably left you in their exhaust fumes. That is, if the monkeys' spheres actually have exhausts.
As for the technical aspects of the game, the graphics could be disappointing for some and merely adequate for others. Either way you get the feeling that they could have been so much more. The monkey models are definitely quirky and charming, but the backdrops to the floors are pretty flimsy and they could have been positively dripping with charm and character if there were a bit more creativity in the design and in the artistic direction. The colour palette is decent, but they could be a bit brighter and more varied. The environments just all around do what they say on the tin, but don't add any spices.
The audio, though, is awesome - the music is catchy and really suits the game, its bursting with infectious Japanese tunes and other such beats that just generally fit the colourful sketchy atmosphere of the game, and that innocent monkey wail when they take a tumble off the side of a course... So all in all, Super Monkey Ball could have been a definitive, bonafide musthave for the GameCube - but a few shortcomings set it back a little bit, in terms of merely decent visuals and a few fiddly aspects to an otherwise immaculate sense of gravity and balance. Apart from that, the game is a very addictive game that is also great fun to play with friends or family - the multiplayer here is sheer class. This game is worth a go for any gamer; the level of accessibility is pretty good if you have the time to master the mechanics on offer. Pick it up for cheap if you have a GameCube and if you lack this game - I don't think there will be any regret.