Couldn’t agree more with the sentiment. It’s still my go-to game on GameCube, it’s the only I revisit every time I plug in the Wavebird and memory card into my Wii.
What makes it still the best in the series today is the focused level designs, the difficulty curve is pitch perfect, and for the most part, each level offers a fair challenge that also encourages you to better yourself with its alternate end-goals or routes (the guitar strings level in the third world is probably the most famous). The only game that came close to offering this quality of level design was Banana Blitz on Wii, but that game took too long to get challenging and it didn’t have the same arcade level structure.
From what I recall, if you die enough you unlock unlimited continues, and that’s still the only way I beat Expert - back in 2002. Haven’t managed it again since losing my save file and having ‘only’ a few limited continues!
It speaks a lot for the quality of the arcade game that we haven’t even mentioned the mini-games yet, and those were quality! Monkey Target in particular - the music still gives me goosebumps today.
