Super Monkey Ball Jr.
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 This is the result of when you try way too hard to do an impressive game that is on a console that isn't powerful enough.
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Super Monkey Ball Jr. is a port of the original Super Monkey Ball released for the Game Boy Advance. The game was developed by THQ and Realism with the supervision of Amusement Vision, and was published by Sega. This is the first handheld game in Super Monkey Ball series.
Gameplay
The Main Game is similar to Super Monkey Ball's, but with fewer floors due to hardware limitations. Most of the 74 available floors are direct ports form Super Monkey Ball while others are new. The levels are spread across four difficulties. Beginner has 10 floors, Advanced has 20 floors, Expert has 30 floors, and Master has 5 floors. Each set of levels except for Master also includes three Extra Floors if the player completes the difficulties without using a continue.
The gameplay is identical to its console counterpart, where players control the stage with the D-Pad (with the A and B buttons increasing and decreasing the stage's tilt respectively) to guide their monkey to the goal while collecting bananas to earn points and get extra lives. One scoring type added to Jr. is the "Perfect" bonus, which applies an extra 2x multiplayer to the score for that floor if all the bananas in a level are collected before touching the Goal.
Junior Qualities
- The main problem of this game is that while it does a good job to be faithful to the gameplay of the GameCube game, the GBA isn't powerful enough to make this a game that is fun, and the problem comes from many things that are butchered in this game. If you want to know more, see the pointers below.
- The graphics, while impressive, are pretty ugly even for a 2002 GBA game. The graphics here are so poorly made that there's a lot of examples that can be given, such as:
- The sprites are easily the worst offender because while they look accurate to the GameCube game, it looks extremely blocky and even looks slightly disturbing.
- The color palette is really washed out and looks too bright, or sometimes they look way too dark, even if for the most parts, the colors don't look as bad as the rest of the graphics.
- In a similar vein to Jimmy Neutron vs. Jimmy Negatron on the GBA (which was also released in 2002), the graphics are horribly pixelated, which is the main reason why the graphics are so poor. However, this is somewhat normal for 3D GBA games, and it isn't as bad as in the said game.
- As stated before, the sprites are very poor, and for everyone, even including AiAi, which will be discussed in the next pointers that follow:
- AiAi looks really creepy in this game and is arguably even worse than his model in Super Monkey Ball: Adventure, since he barely even had a face, and his model is one of the most blocky of the entire game.
- Baby looks better than most of the characters here, but he also suffers from the same problem as AiAi, which is to be horribly pixelated and blocky. Also, his color scheme is pretty washed out like most of the graphics found in the game, and due to how pixelated he is, he can almost be compared with an Atari Lynx game.
- Gongon is the most fine-looking character of the game, since he is less pixelated, but overall it is nothing special, and his sprite still looks blocky and pixelated.
- By far the worst offender of this is MeeMee, which is even more pixelated than the other characters to the point of having barely any faces, and her washed-out colors make these problems even worse.
- The controls are absolutely horrible in this game because of how downgraded they are from the console versions, which makes sense because of the GBA not being powerful enough to do Monkey Ball gameplay correctly (although that could have been worse).
- For starters, the GBA doesn't have an Analog button, which is already problematic and would make the problems a lot worse than they already are.
- They are incredibly clunky and stiff, as when you move, the momentum doesn't take it directly, and instead, you are sluggish as hell, and the controls are so clunky that it is horribly hard to have them move, and because of that, you will often fall, which makes the game even more frustrating.
- They also are very sluggish compared to the console games, as stated, and unlike the console games that are very fast to respond, here they take at least 2 seconds to get them fast, and they aren't quite as fast as the GameCube game, though this is because of the GBA limitation.
- They are very unresponsive too, as sometimes the characters will take half a second to move.
- While still decent, the soundtrack is really downgraded compared to that of the first GameCube game, since not only does it don't have any original tunes, but also the soundtrack is very downgraded and some tracks are off:
- Bonus Stages theme sounds quite off, despite being somewhat catchy, as it isn't translated well to the GBA sound design, and because of this, it can sound annoying, not to mention that it is much more repetitive than the console version.
- Desert sounds decent, but a little downgraded from the original version; still, it is a decent effort.
- Sky High is definitely the worst offender, as while it was an amazing song in the original version, here it sounds really off key, and due to how badly it was butchered, it got turned into an amazing song to a poorly made song that is repetitive and sounds off.
- The real problem about this game is also the extremely hard difficulty that could have worked if done correctly, but unlike most games of the series, here it is even harder and it isn't even fun and is instead frustrating; it is so bad that it is even considered to be the hardest game of the entire franchise.
- The controls are mostly the reason why this game is frustratingly difficult to play, not to mention that most of the levels aren't even designed with the horrible controls in mind, which will be explained in the next pointers.
- Here is the main problem of this game: the absolutely horrible moving platforms that are so poorly programmed that when you try to get on them, they will move, and you will have a hard time standing on them due to how sluggish the controls are, and some of them move horribly fast.
- Also, if you don't get on them correctly, you will move when the moving platforms move, which is not only a major red flag, but this might make the game stupidly unplayable for even the experts of the franchise.
- There's once again limited continues, and while this added challenge in the other games of the franchise, here it is just nothing good because of what flaws this game had, and due to this, you will have to try your best to not getting a game over because of how terrible the level design is, and to make everything worse, there's only 3 continues.
- The level design is absolutely atrocious and is probably one of the worst of the entire franchise, even more than Super Monkey Ball: Adventure (that is somehow even worse than this game), and is one of the reasons why this game is that difficult for no reasons; in fact, all of the levels are so poorly designed that we can even describe all of their flaws. (Note: That doesn't include the bonus floors.)
- The level design is filled with terrible moving platform gimmicks and is filled with a lot of difficulty spike to the point of making the GameCube games feel easy in comparison; not only that, but sometimes the moving platforms are so tight that you may likely fall in a pit, making this game extremely frustrating at best and unbearable at worst.
- One of the levels had you have to pass a place where spikes are attacking you so you fall, while in the console versions it wasn't that bad despite being really hard; here it is just frustrating because of the terrible controls and also because of the low framerate.
- The camera is terrible and even worse than Adventure's camera; when you turn, it is especially noticeable because of the fact that the camera doesn't follow your character correctly, and because of this, it might cause cheap deaths in the worst way possible.
- Horrible framerate, although this isn't that surprising due to the fact that this game is below the limitation of the GBA.
- Though fortunately, there's a cheat where the sprites look even worse but the framerate improves, which makes this game a bit more playable.
- This game had some of the hardest levels of the entire franchise, which include:
- Master 2 is easily the worst level of the Master difficulty and is one of the hardest (only behind Expert 19). It is filled with moving platforms, and you must run on them to get past it without falling out. This, of course, is extremely hard because of the horrible controls and janky hit detection.
- Expert 19 is easily the hardest level of the game and probably the hardest from the entire franchise, since not only is it so poorly designed but also, it is filled with platforms that make you fall once you're on them, which is extremely frustrating, and the controls don't help at all.
- Expert 26 had a lot of platforms that try to make you fall, which is incredibly tedious, and due to how janky the hit detection is, you will probably get hit by a wall or a spike. Either way, it's frustrating and isn't designed well due to how bad the framerate and controls are.
- Horrible hit detection: sometimes it looks like you will not get hit by an obstacle, yet you get hit, and sometimes you might get cheap deaths because of this.
Senior Qualities
- While poor, the graphics are quite impressive for a Game Boy Advance game and almost look like a DS game.
- It at least tried it's best to be faithful to the console versions, right to the level design and even the graphics, despite how poorly executed this game was.
- Master levels are more intimidating than in the GameCube game, since here it is in hell along with really scary music that fits the level unlike the GameCube game where it is in heaven, and the background is even better, despite how horrible the difficulty and scary the appearance of those levels are.
- On top of that, Master 1, 3, 4, and 5 are fine.
- This is the first Super Monkey Ball game released on the handheld console, but it handled poorly until Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Roll redeems the handheld's reputation, which is an improvement over this one and is even one of the best handheld games of the franchise.
- The soundtrack, despite being off, still sounds good, such as the Jungle theme that is one of the best in the game, and sounds just as good as the original.
Reception
The reception is a bit particular for this one, the game mostly got positive reviews by critics because of being impressive technically for a GBA game, and was praised to be faithful to the console game but criticized the lack of analog movements.
Howewer, fans of the franchise we're less kind to this game, in which they considered it to be mediocre and one of the worst game of the series, they mostly criticized the poor controls, ugly graphics, the awful camera and especially the horrible framerate.
Nathaniel Bandy was especially critical to this game and consider it to be truly awful, he criticized the camera, the controls and the difficulty spike.
Trivia
- This game is considered more difficult than other games in the series due to the lack of an analog stick, instead using the D-pad for movement and the A and B buttons for controlling the player's speed. This locks control to eight directions.
- If a banana is collected while reaching the goal, and that banana results in obtaining a 1up, the game will prioritize showing the "1up" message instead of showing "Goal" as normal.
- It is the first game in the franchise to not be released in Japan.
- There are 3 cheat codes that can be entered at the title screen:
- Entering the Konami code will cause the game to taunt the player and change the title to say "Super Nice Try"
- Pressing Left, Left, Right, Right, Down, Down, A, will cause the graphics to become worse, but make the framerate increase.
- Pressing Down, Down, Up, Up, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, will unlock all content in the game.
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