Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania is a bundle of three games wearing one title, and the trick of it is how little the seams show. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio developed it, Sega published it, and it landed on October 5, 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S — with an Amazon Luna version following on May 12, 2022. It is a remake of the first three console entries in the series, built to mark the franchise’s 20th anniversary. It earns a 7.9 of 10.
Trailer, via Super Monkey Ball.
AiAi, MeeMee and the Jungle Island premise
The setup is as thin as it has always been, and that is fine. Dr. Bad-Boon, a monkey mad scientist, wants to blow up Jungle Island. AiAi and friends race to stop him and steal back their bananas. The all-star team is AiAi, MeeMee, GonGon, Baby, YanYan and Doctor, and the whole point is bouncing, tilting and rolling across hundreds of levels and mazes.
Banana Mania does not pretend this is a story game. The premise exists to justify the stages, and the stages are the product. Anyone who has played a Super Monkey Ball game knows the plot is a coat rack. What matters is whether the levels hanging on it still hold up, and here they mostly do.
300 stages from Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
The primary mode works the way it always has. You navigate a monkey in a ball across a series of suspended platforms to reach a goal and clear the stage. You never control the monkey directly — you tilt the stage, and the ball’s movement follows from the game’s physics. Clear obstacles, avoid the edge, reach the goal.
Banana Mania recreates all 300 stages from Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, the 2005 compilation that collected Super Monkey Ball (2001) and Super Monkey Ball 2 (2002). That is the core of the package, and it is a lot of game. Certain stages have been rebalanced, which decreases their overall difficulty. The originals are not gone: a new “Original Stage Mode” lets you play those versions as they were.
Whether the rebalancing is a kindness or a loss depends on what you came for. For anyone who never cleared the hardest stages in 2005, the softened versions are the difference between seeing the content and hitting a wall. For anyone who did clear them, Original Stage Mode is the answer, and its presence is the reason the change does not read as a surrender.
Comic-book story sequences and 12 party games
The Story mode from Super Monkey Ball 2 returns. It now uses comic-book-style story sequences in place of the animated cutscenes from the original releases. That is a real trade. The animated cutscenes had a specific low-budget charm, and static panels do not replicate it. What the panels do is move faster and cost less, and the story was never the reason anyone was here.
All 12 multiplayer party games from Super Monkey Ball Deluxe come back with it. That is the other half of the package, and arguably the half with the longer tail. These are the modes that turn a difficult single-player game into something a room full of people can play badly and enjoy.
The party games are also where Banana Mania earns its place on a shelf next to the originals rather than in a drawer. A single-player run through 300 stages is a solitary, often frustrating exercise. The party games are the release valve, and their presence in full is the single strongest argument for this collection over emulation or a used copy of Deluxe.
Golden Banana Mode, Reverse Mode and Dark Banana Mode
A handful of new modes have been added, each presenting a selection of 10 stages from the main game that must be completed in alternate ways. “Golden Banana Mode” asks you to collect all the bananas in a stage. “Reverse Mode” swaps a stage’s starting and goal points. “Dark Banana Mode” requires you to finish a stage without touching any rotten bananas.
These are not filler. Each one takes stages you already know and changes what you are actually doing inside them, which is the cheapest and most effective kind of remix a game like this can offer. Reverse Mode in particular changes the read of a course more than the name suggests — a stage that taught you to read downhill suddenly asks you to read it uphill, and the muscle memory you built becomes a liability before it becomes an asset.
Other additions include a time attack mode, online leaderboards and a photo mode. The leaderboards matter more than they sound. Super Monkey Ball has always been a score-chasing series at heart, and giving players a place to compare times turns a solitary grind into a competition that never quite ends.
Accessibility features and the slow-motion button
Banana Mania adds several optional accessibility features. The jumping mechanic from Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz returns as an option. There is a “slow-motion” button, an extended time limit and an optimal path guide.
The optimal path guide is the most interesting of these, because it does not just lower the difficulty — it teaches. A player who follows it learns how a stage is meant to be read, and that knowledge carries over when the guide is switched off. The slow-motion button is closer to a pure assist, and the extended time limit is a courtesy. None of them are on by default, which is the correct call.
That default matters. Accessibility options that are buried in a menu and off by default let a purist ignore them entirely while a newcomer turns them on and finishes the game. It is the rare design decision that costs the experienced player nothing.
Points, missions and 747 of them
Players earn an in-game currency called “Points” by completing stages and collecting bananas in the main game, or by completing any of the 747 missions. The mission count is the clearest statement of intent in the whole package: this is a game built to be played for a long time, not finished once.
The volume is also the risk. A large mission list can read as busywork if the missions are not varied, and with 747 of them, some are going to be the same task in different clothes. The Points economy softens that, because currency gives every mission a purpose beyond a checkmark, but it does not erase the padding.
The verdict on Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania
Roll through wondrous worlds with AiAi and friends as you race to stop monkey mad scientist Dr. Bad-Boon from blowing up Jungle Island!
What matters here is the 300 stages and the 12 party games. The comic-book sequences are a step down from the animated cutscenes, and the rebalanced difficulty will bother purists until they find Original Stage Mode. The new modes — Golden Banana, Reverse, Dark Banana — are the part that justifies the purchase for anyone who already owns Deluxe, because they change how familiar stages play rather than just repackaging them.
This is a remaster that understands its job. It preserves the stages, restores the party games, and adds assists that let new players in without forcing them on anyone else. The 7.9 of 10 reflects a package that is generous and well-built but not a reinvention — the story panels are a compromise, and the mission list is padded.
For the 20th anniversary of a series about rolling a monkey through a maze, that is a fair result. The stages are the reason to come back, the party games are the reason to stay, and the assists are the reason a new player can get through the door at all.
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