Outside of remasters and remakes, the Super Monkey Ball franchise has been resting for a decade. At a certain point, it seemed that AiAi and his monkey crew were relics of a bygone era and Super Monkey Ball were little more than a nostalgic series that no longer has a real place in the Moderna gaming landscape. Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble challenges this statement by offering an experience that is delicious, crazy and rewarding at the same time, but above all fun.

At its best, Banana Rumble’s adventure mode offers some of the best stages in the history of Super Monkey Ball. Especially at the beginning I enjoyed discovering the optimal strategies to get through the puzzling levels while completing the three optional missions of collecting a certain amount of bananas, grabbing the golden banana and finishing in a certain time. Thanks to the new spin dash movement, I was pleased to find ways to throw my character over the ramps and lips to get through the gate or grab the golden banana.

The early stages best illustrate the hallmark of the series, easy to learn and hard to master. Passing through stages in the first worlds is intuitive and enjoyable thanks to improved physics and a better camera. These levels are ripe for experimentation in order to find the best ways to beat the level efficiently; on several occasions I have wondered if the developers intended me to complete the stage in this way or if I discovered a secret. These stages represent the Super Monkey Ball franchise at its absolute peak.

As expected, progress through the adventure mode campaign will bring more and more difficult stages. Although I love working my way through a difficult level, the restrictive nature of these more challenging obstacle courses often finishs my favorite aspect in this way: experimenting. Instead of trying to find optimal ways and ways to sequence the levels, the after stages of the game simply left me action for survival while desperately trying to reach the finish line.

The stages towards the end of the 200-level campaign go beyond the sweet and colorful aesthetics of Banana Rumble and offer fast-paced challenges where I had to hold on to my controller as tightly as possible while my character ran around corners and tempted fate with death-defying jumps. I really enjoyed these levels, although sometimes they shed light on the limitations of even the improved physics system, and the busier the stages became, the more noticeable the performance losses became.

If these stages ever feel too difficult, you can activate the helper functions, which add a ghost guide, arrows with the best route, a rewind function and a checkpoint in the middle of the stage. Although I used them extremely sparingly, if I ever turned them on, they immediately turned out to be invaluable for overcoming the obstacle I was stuck in.

The adventure mode can be played with up to 4 players in co-op mode, but the real multiplayer experience allows up to 16 players to participate in various party-style mini-games. Players can participate in longer races where the rubber bands are not from the capabilities of the AI, but the more demanding the course is, the further ahead they are. I loved this variant of the proven formula, especially with the various boosters that add extra chaos to the mix.

Meanwhile, Ba-Boom offers a fun survival-based variant of Tag, and Goal Rush challenges your accuracy and courage as you climb down a hill and activate goals in a high-reward high-risk blitz. The other two action modes, banana hunting and robot strike, allow you to collect bananas on an open map and throw yourself at robots to inflict the greatest possible damage. Banana hunting and Robot Smash were my least favorite activities, but they still serve as fun side activities for the main course in adventure mode.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble aptly proves that the franchise still has something to offer in 2024 beyond nostalgia. With an eclectic mix of platform levels and party games, Banana Rumble maintains little and offers a robust package that effectively heralds the true return of the series.