Super Monkey Ball 2

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Super Monkey Ball 2

Behold, one of the greatest sequel ever made on the GameCube.
Genre(s): Platform
Action
Platform(s): GameCube
Release Date: NA: August 26, 2002
JP: November 21, 2002
PAL: March 10, 2003
Developer(s): Amusement Vision
Publisher(s): Sega
Country: Japan
Series: Super Monkey Ball
Predecessor: Super Monkey Ball
Successor: Super Monkey Ball Jr. (by release date)


Super Monkey Ball 2 is a platform party video game developed by Amusement Vision and published by Sega in 2002 for the GameCube. It is the second installment in the Super Monkey Ball series.

Plot

Dr. Bad-Boon is an evil scientist who steals all of the bananas from Monkey Island, putting four protagonists, AiAi, MeeMee, GonGon, and Baby into action to chase him through booby-trapped stages he has set up.

Why It Got All The Bananas Back

  1. To start with, the life system has been heavily improved since the first game Since you had unlimited lives here, you can use all the lives you need to complete a level, whereas in the first game you had only 2 lives and you needed to collect bananas to have extra lives.
    • This also makes up for the very hard difficulty of this game, where if you only had 2 lives, then this game would be even harder than the first game.
  2. The plot, while cheesy, is pretty decent and is better than the one from Super Monkey Ball: Adventure. Since here there's a lot of funny moments (see WIGATBB#3) in this game, and Dr. Bad-Boon himself is a decent villain (more on that later).
  3. The game has a lot of very funny moments, especially in the cutscenes where Dr. Bad-Boon is trying to marry MeeMee, but she rejects him due to him being evil and bad for Monkey Island. This game is also possibly the funnier game in the Super Monkey Ball franchise.
  4. For the first time in the series, the game has a story mode, which is quite an improvement over the first game, which only had the challenge mode, which is the closest to a story mode, but here it's finally got a proper story mode, and despite the fact that it's mostly the challenge mode stages with cutscenes placed in them, it's still one of the best story modes the franchise can offer.
  5. The cutscenes, despite being cheesy just like the plot, are still very great and fun to watch since they explain the plot quite well, and as said before, they are very funny, not to mention that they are so entertaining that you will not see the time you kill when you watch them.
    • It's also innovative to make a plot out of this game genre since Monkey Ball in the first place wasn't really a game with a plot, but still, it's neat to have a plot in this game, and the best of all is that it's a great one, especially for a game like this.
  6. Unlike the first game, you had the option to save automatically before the title screen and before you started the game. As in the first game, you had to go to the option to do that, and you could possibly lose all your progress if you didn't know about it.
  7. Great voice acting, despite only being gibberish, and the voice that they give to each monkey is fitting, especially AiAi, MeeMee, and Dr. Bad-Boon.
  8. Dr. Bad-Boon is the best villain of the entire franchise since here he has tried to ruin AiAi reputation, never really shown his plans, and is kind of funny, and he is much better than the villain from Banana Blitz, which had a bland villain compared to Dr. Bad-Boon.
  9. The graphics are very beautiful and are even better than the first game, which is so good that it's comparable to even Super Mario Sunshine.
    • First off, the color palette is very bright, but in a good way since it's making the graphics more colorful, and it's also the reason why this looks even better than the first game. This is also helped by the better lightning and the colors being even more vibrant.
    • The character models, while mostly the same as in the first game, are still really great and look even better, again due to the crisp color palette, and they actually manage to add more details to them.
    • That being said, this and the first game, by the way, look much better than Super Monkey Ball: Adventure.
  10. The box art is great for all the regions, especially the North American cover art.
    • The North America box art is the best out of the three since it's very good with the main cast of the main characters on the screen, and the amount of detail is really great and fun to look at, not to mention that it's got a great logo.
    • The European box art, while not as good as the North American version, is still pretty good since the font is very interesting and is what makes the box art great. It's also containing again the main cast doing some poses, and if it's for the font, then the cover art would probably be lazy and not as special as it does.
    • The Japanese box art is very good, with a fun font that is used for this one, and again, you see the main cast of the main characters on the box art.
  11. Just like the first game, the soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal and contains many bangers that are so good that you may want to stay on a stage just to listen to them, much like Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. This is especially true with the World 3 music, which sounds very good, and due to how great it is, it's become the most well-known music of the game. The music of the First World is also so awesome that it might be one of your favorite songs of the game.
  12. There are even more mini games than in the first game. With all the original mini games in the first game that we're included in this game, but it's also got brand new mini games that are also awesome to play. The nickpointers will only talk about the new one for this game since the ones that are from the first game are usually the same.
    • Monkey Boat: Monkey Boat is somewhat similar to Monkey Race, but with one major difference: the courses in the game take place on the water. The monkeys are inside a boat, which is made of the bottom of one of the monkey balls, and they move by paddling through the water. There are four items, three of which harm other players. See the items section below for more information.
    • Monkey Shot: The monkeys must shoot enemies while heading towards the boss. To defeat the boss, the monkeys must shoot at its weak point. Players must be careful to dodge enemies' attacks and make sure their weapons are loaded. The background decides which enemies will be fought.
    • Monkey Dogfight: Each monkey is equipped with a machine gun and ten missiles. The machine gun has unlimited ammo, and missiles are placed around the battlefield for the player to collect if he or she runs out. Use the radar on the screen for more precision in your attacks. Bananas replenish your health, so be sure to collect them if your health bar is low.
    • Monkey Soccer: Players are required to earn as many points as possible. Players have five members on their teams: four kickers and one goalie. Players can pass the ball to another player to help save time and protect the ball from their opponents. If the players tie, there will be a game of PK to determine who is the winner.
    • Monkey Baseball: As a game is started, the first player spins a wheel to determine which shift will affect the field.
    • Monkey Tennis: The following are the three courts you can choose to play on. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, so choose wisely and practice well to overcome each.
  13. The intro is really great and is as good, if not better, than the first game.
  14. The difficulty is more balanced compared to the first game, despite still being a little frustrating in some levels.

"Fall Out" Qualities

  1. Due to having unlimited lives in the story mode, collecting the bananas is absolutely useless.
  2. Much like most story modes from the franchise (beside Adventure), the story mode is somewhat short and can be beaten in only 2 hours.
  3. The cutscenes and plot, while great and funny, are pretty cheesy nowadays, but that is not a problem since it is so good to watch that you would really mind it.

Reception

Super Monkey Ball 2 received critical acclaim, with a score of 87/100 on Metacritic. The critics praised the soundtrack, the graphics, and the level design. It's also considered to be one of, if not the best, games in the franchise.

Trivia

  • Super Monkey Ball 2 was already in development before Super Monkey Ball was released.
  • Numerous members of the community have made their own custom level packs for the game.
  • Master can be entered as the difficulty select in this game, unlike in Super Monkey Ball where it was treated more like Expert Extra Extra.
  • Unlike In Super Monkey Ball, where in Beginner and Advanced in order to unlock the extra stages you had to complete the difficulty without losing a single life, in order to unlock the Expert Extra floors you had to complete the difficulty without using a continue, in this game the requirement to unlock the extra stages is the same across all difficulties without using a continue.
  • The difficulty ratings in this game appear to be based more within the difficulty group, considering Sliders has a very high difficulty rating of 8/10, and Spiral Bridge has a difficulty rating as low as 4/10.
  • A now defunct website for Super Monkey Ball 2 had a bunch of paper printout notepads up for download, some of which have been recovered through the Internet Archive.
  • This is the first Super Monkey Ball game to have a female announcer in the Japanese version, rather than using the same announcer as in the international versions of Super Monkey Ball 2, who is male.
    • Despite this, many of the announcer voice clips are still in English, including the entire countdown, though some are in Japanese.

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