While there are many new features in Super Monkey Ball 2, the most obvious one is the addition of a Story Mode in which you chase after the primate baddie Dr. Bad-Boon, who has stolen all of the bananas from our lovable monkeys. It is up to our four heroes in AiAi, MeeMee, Baby and GonGon to retrieve the stolen bananas and bring Dr. Bad-Boon to justice. While the whole story around the game is incredibly cheesy, you can’t help but smile at the whole charm that this game exudes. If having a story mode that’s as entertaining as this one is being “kiddy”, then it’s no wonder so many people don’t want to grow up. While the Story mode and Challenge mode (the same single player mode from the first game) share many of the same levels, there’s still more than 100 levels for players to complete, with some of them being incredibly mind-boggling. The challenge in Story mode really doesn’t pick up until World 4, and beyond that it’s incredibly challenging, even for the sturdiest of nerves. The Expert stages in Challenge Mode are even more mind-boggling, with a lot of them having more to do with leaps of faith into the vast unknown combined with razor-thing platforms to navigate. In Super Monkey Ball 2 the courses themselves become much more dangerous with the addition of moving goal gates, huge obstacles to navigate, and several switches that allow you to control how fast or slow obstacles can go, as well as stopping them completely.

Not one to be content with just recycling old material from Super Monkey Ball, Amusement Vision has also upped the ante with their party games. Now there are 12 party games in total, including the original 6 that were in the first game. New to the series are Monkey Boat, Tennis, Baseball, Soccer, Dogfighting and Shoot. Monkey Shoot is a Virtua Cop-style mini-game where you just shoot down as many enemies as possible, while Monkey Boat has you in a little kayak padding around a course while utilizing special items that come your way. While the other mini-games are self-explanatory, the majority of them just don’t hold a candle to the originals. Out of all the new mini-games, Tennis is by far the best with Shoot coming in a close second. Dogfighting is far too slow to be enjoyable, while the other mini-games are only good when you have people over, and not necessarily when you just want to play them. Of couse, nothing in Super Monkey Ball 2 would be enjoyable if the controls weren’t as tight as they are. The amount of precision that’s needed in playing is incredible, and Amusement Vision (in typical Sega fashion) has tuned the controls to perfection. There are rarely any moments in the game where anyone can feel that dying in a level would be because of shoddy controls.

Graphically SMB2 is much like the first game. There isn't anything that's going to dazzle you as far as graphics are concerned, but what's there is great. The graphics are all very clear and bright, which goes well with the theme of the game. There are some very nice reflections and water effects in many of the stages and mini-games as well. The textures and a lot of the levels in SMB2 are very nice, although again they aren't going to blow you away. The overall presentation of the game is much like the actual gameplay: simple and to the point. Although it is really funny to see a bunch of monkeys on a launching pad when a round starts in Monkey Target.

With Super Monkey Ball 2, Amusement Vision has created an incredibly enjoyable game that certainly takes minutes to learn, but weeks, maybe even months to master. More video games need to emulate what the Super Monkey Ball games are all about: a simple concept that can be understood by just about everyone, yet provides a challenge so great that you can never get bored of it. If you own a GameCube and don’t have this game, then you are losing out. May the gods have pity on you.

· · · Reno