Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD

The port does sound messy. I hope it doesn’t turn off a whole new generation from potentially becoming fans of the series. It deserves better.

There’s a demo on the Japanese eShop. Gave it a quick whirl. It’s worse than I expected to be honest. Sega turned a bespoke Wii game into a modern multiplatform game with all the trappings that come with that:

  • The game is made with Unity presumably to make it more ‘portable’ across platforms
  • So there are long load times where there were none on Wii
  • And there’s noticeable input lag even in the character select screen
  • The entire game, at least in handheld mode, appears to be running at a sub-native resolution, so even the menus are blurry and poorly defined
  • And it can’t hold 60fps, with some hitches here and there. The Wii version was a rock-solid 60.
  • Motion controls are indeed out

I need to get on and play more levels to see how the new controls hold up, but this port could have been so much more from a technical perspective. Despite the 3D graphics being technically improved, everything else, such as the new music and the menus, is so bare-bones and lifeless. The ideal port would have included motion controls on Switch and HD Rumble support, with nothing cut. This clearly isn’t going to be that.

Looks like Sega’s remaking Super Monkey Ball Deluxe:

I’m not hopeful this will be any good after how badly Banana Blitz was converted. Visually it’s not very impressive either, with water in Monkey Target looking worse than both Banana Blitz Wii and the GameCube original.

I am intrigued about how it’ll handle without the GameCube’s octogate stick. I tried Monkey Ball Deluxe on original Xbox last year at an event, and even after playing for 15 minutes it was extremely difficult to control precisely. Wonder if they’ll fine-tune it around the GameCube controller considering that is an option with the Switch, or whether it’ll also feel ‘wrong’ with the GC stick. Again, I’m not hopeful considering they didn’t even bother trying to put motion control in BB HD.