Super Monkey Ball 2

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Think of all the sports in the world that require balls. You have football, tennis, then there is baseball for our American allies. But how many of them involve monkeys? I think I can safely say the answer is not nearly enough...until now. Yes thanks to Sega you too can play football with your very own team of monkeys. You can send a monkey to the plate to swing for a home run, and who amongst us can honestly say they wouldn't pay good money to see monkeys boxing? Ladies and gentlemen I present you, Super Monkey Ball 2.

The first Super Monkey Ball came out without much fanfare with the launch of the Gamecube. It was a minor landmark in the industry being Sega's first title for a Nintendo console in years. It proved that while Sega may not be making any more consoles they are certainly making great games. The sequel has finally arrived in Europe, overshadowed again by other high profile titles, and the basic premise of the game remains unchanged. In the single player game your primary objective is to maneuver a translucent sphere that contains a bipedal mammal of the primate family hominidae from your initial location toward a set goal position. The sphere or 'monkey vehicle' rides across a characteristically low friction surface whereby your direction of travel and velocity is mandated by controlling the tilt of the level across the (x,y) plane, taking account of constant gravitational forces, inertia and any other external influences on the motion of the 'mv'. I hope that has cleared things up.

If you require more of an explanation, imagine placing a marble on a flat table with a set of goals at the end. To get the marble through the goal you tilt the table up and the marble rolls down, if you get the marble through the goal you've succeeded and if it falls off the table you fail. Now imagine there are a hundred tables: some will have holes in; some with ramps and moving platforms; and a whole stack of them will be weird free form structures replete with spirals and all manner of pointy bits. That comprises the single player portion of the game. It is brilliantly simple in concept and wonderfully executed. Like a modern day Tetris it takes mere seconds to learn but mastering all the intricacies is, literally, a whole different ball game.

There are a two paths to play through for the 150 new stages on offer. As with the original you can select a difficulty. In 'beginner' you play through the first ten stages, 'advanced' the next thirty and finally 'expert' to wade through the final fifty. Some of these stages are shared with the story mode. In this challenge mode you have a limited number of lives, should you run out you must start again from the beginning. As a bonus if you complete the whole section without using any continues extra levels are unlocked. A more manageable way to play through most of the stages is to use the story mode. The story lets you play through ten worlds that each contain ten stages. In each world you can select any stage to attempt from the ten on offer. Any stages completed will be saved allowing you to play through at your own pace. A practice option is also available should you want to revisit any encountered stage. The stages initially start off easy for both modes but if you're thinking you're going to breeze through them all forget it. Even if you've mastered the original you'll have to concentrate by the second world and by the third you'll really be sweating. From then on in the stages start to become insanely hard and at times will probably drive you mad with frustration. And I don't mean a bit of dribble and a crayon to keep you happy mad. We're talking the straight jacket, padded cell, trying to eat your own head type of mad. In fact the stages sometimes seem like they were designed by just such a nut case. I worry for the designers at Sega.