4/5 ★ – DanteSnowcone's review of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania.

Time played: 12 hours Story Mode completed Gotta begin by saying “Hello Banana!” is a 10/10 song and maybe the best opening theme of anything ever. Ten year old me found it hard to fully enjoy the original Super Monkey Ball because of the lives system that prevented me from ever seeing most of the courses. Banana Mania is just what I needed to appreciate the haphazard, zany game they created. Several features make this what I believe to be the definitive SMB experience. In the story mode, you can retry levels as many times as you want, or not; every course can be skipped and every course has an assist function, so players can experience the entire game without any frustrating levels holding them back. There are a dozen party games, and most of them are accessible and fun for players of any skill level (Monkey Target is my favorite). I played on the Switch, and being able to play handheld was a huge plus for me, since I felt I was able to maintain optimal control of my movement. The biggest issue with the game is that the Challenge Modes do not save your progress in a single run, and some of them are really long — 60 levels in a row. SMB is best in small bursts, so I don’t know when I’ll ever have the time or motivation to do those challenges. And while not a flaw of the remake itself, many of the older levels are much too plain with the removal of a lives system, and the bananas that used to provide more lives now serve very little purpose. It’s also pretty disappointing that I can’t play online with other people. Still, I’m really enjoying my time with it. I’ll get to those expert levels one day and finish what I started twenty years ago.