Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz hit the Wii on November 19, 2006, as a launch title in North America. It was the seventh game in the Super Monkey Ball series, following Super Monkey Ball Adventure, and it arrived built around a controller nobody had used before.
That timing is the whole story. The Wii Remote promised motion, and Banana Blitz answered with a game that tilts, flicks and swings. Some of it works. A lot of it does not.
Trailer, via Nintendo Life.
A Wii Remote Held Parallel to the Ground
The core idea is unchanged from earlier games in the series. You hold the Wii controller parallel to the ground, and the monkey rolls according to the slope of the game world. The tilt of the controller maps directly to the tilt of the level.
Then the game added a jump. For the first time in the franchise, players can flick the controller upward while holding B to launch a character into the air. Pressing A does the same job. The jump gave designers a new dimension to build in, and the game leans on it across its 100 main levels.
That is the pitch, and on paper it is a good one. In practice, the flick is the problem.
100 Levels and a Flick That Will Not Cooperate
A tilt is a continuous input. A flick is a gesture, and the Wii Remote reads gestures with a shrug. When a level asks you to roll a monkey along a narrow path and then jump a gap, the margin between the two motions is thin. You tilt, you flick, and sometimes the game decides you did something else.
The 100 main game levels are designed to challenge skills in a way the series had not asked before, and the jump is the reason. But the jump is also the least reliable tool in the game. A mechanic that shows up in nearly every level should not be the one you learn to distrust.
Character-specific abilities and stats for the puzzle stages are a genuine addition, previously unseen in any other Super Monkey Ball game. Different monkeys play differently in the puzzle stages, which gives the roster a reason to exist beyond cosmetics.
Eight Boss Battles and Captain Crabuchin
Banana Blitz introduces eight boss battles, a first for the franchise. It also introduces a new pirate-like villain named Captain Crabuchin, who has stolen the Golden Banana Bunch. AiAi and his friends set out to recover the scattered pieces.
Captain Crabuchin was previously confused with Dr. Bad-Boon. Crabuchin gives the game an antagonist rather than a premise, and the boss fights give those encounters a structure, though the motion controls follow them into every arena.
50 Mini-Games, Ring Toss and Whack-a-Mole
The Party Games return, and there are 50 mini-games, each using the controller in a different way. Monkey Darts has players simulate throwing a dart with the Wii Remote. There is ring toss. There is Whack-a-Mole, where you smack pesky moles.
Fifty is a lot. It is also the number that gives the game away. When every mini-game needs its own control scheme, the schemes get thin. A few land. Most feel like a demo reel for the hardware rather than a game you would return to with friends.
Split screen and single player are both here. The party mode is a real draw. It is also the mode that wears out fastest.
The Hard Numbers
- Release date: November 19, 2006 (North America)
- Also released: December 7, 2006 (Australia), December 8, 2006 (Europe)
- Platform: Wii
- Developer: New Entertainment R&D Dept.
- Publisher: Sega
- Series position: seventh Super Monkey Ball title, after Super Monkey Ball Adventure
- Main levels: 100
- Mini-games: 50
- Boss battles: 8
- HD remake: Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD, October 29, 2019, on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One; December 2019 on Windows via Steam; Switch and PlayStation 4 also in Japan on October 31
- Critic aggregate: 6.6/10, drawn from six outlets
When Each Version Arrived
| Date | Release |
|---|---|
| November 19, 2006 | North America, Wii launch |
| December 7, 2006 | Australia |
| December 8, 2006 | Europe |
| October 29, 2019 | Banana Blitz HD, worldwide, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One |
| October 31, 2019 | Banana Blitz HD, Japan, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 |
| December 2019 | Banana Blitz HD, Windows via Steam |
What the Remake Tells Us
Sega published Banana Blitz HD on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 29, 2019, with a Windows release through Steam in December. The Switch and PlayStation 4 versions also hit Japan on October 31.
That is all the source establishes about the remake. Whether it changed the flick, or why Sega chose this game to revive, is not known from the record.
The 6.6 out of 10 that Banana Blitz holds across six outlets is the right number. It is not a bad game. It is a game with one great idea it cannot quite execute and 50 smaller ideas it never needed.
Where the Tilt Beats the Jump
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz is worth playing for the tilt. The controller-to-world mapping is the best thing about it, and the 100 levels are built to use it well. The jump is the failure. A mechanic that appears in nearly every level should be the one you trust most, and here it is the one you trust least.
The party mode is where the game earns its keep. Fifty mini-games is a number that sounds like generosity and plays like padding, but a handful of them — darts, ring toss, the moles — are good for a night. That is a real thing to own.
Captain Crabuchin and the eight boss battles are the series finally trying to build a villain worth the name. The character stats give the roster weight. Those are the parts that point forward.
But this is a launch title, and it reads like one. Sega had a new controller and a launch lineup to fill, and the result is a solid foundation buried under its own enthusiasm.
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