00:14 - Fragmented Circle
02:32 - Crystal Mine
02:45 - Wormhole Maze
04:02 - Checkerboard
07:30 - Big Four (Ignore how much time i wasted here please)
09:01 - Enigma (man this one is scary)
10:37 - Neo Broken Cylinders (omfg this nonsense)
12:00 - Cosmic Curves
12:58 - Overturn
13:21 - IGNORE THIS ENTIRE SECTION PLEASE I BEG OF YOU
19:10 - Bumper Barrage (No I did not waste 6 minutes on this stage)
20 years later, I still stuck at Super Monkey Ball. The game is actually kind of really fun though.
Super Monkey Ball took up so much of my life when 1 and 2 came out for the Gamecube. I loved those games and played them constantly, and then we didn't get really good games for a really long time, and I didn't own a Vita, so I never got to play Banana Splitz. Banana Rumble is the first Super Monkey Ball game I've played in...a very long time.
Banana Rumble's adventure mode is made up of a whopping 200 (!) stages, split into the story mode (the first 100) and the EX stages (the last 100). This is a run of the final 10 stages in the game. These are not good, do not replicate these, people who are actually good at the game will come up with much better solves.
The game itself is actually pretty fun. The new gimmick is a sonic style spin dash, but unlike Sonic's spin dash, SMB's spin dash augments existing momentum, it doesn't really generate it. This means it's best used while you're already in motion to micro adjust your speed or to boost a jump. There are some difficulty spikes in W6, W9, EX7, and EX8, but otherwise the difficulty curve feels pretty fair.
In lieu of skip goals, each stage now comes with 3 missions, a banana count, a time trial, and a golden banana placed somewhere in the level. The time trial and golden bananas can sometimes get really hard, and it's a really neat way to add some challenge.
One thing to note is that this game does use a pretty similar physics engine to the one in Banana Mania. In that game it was a problem because it had some really wacky interactions with the stage design. Banana Rumble's stages are designed with the physics engine in mind, so there's a lot less unfair nonsense going on. That being said, there are some stages where the camera can be finicky, and I did have some stages where I fought the switch controller's analog stick than I did the actual level.
If you've read all of my rambling, thank you.
Fragmented Circle is pretty easy. You can choose to ride the individual fragments, but they way they're timed, riding the entire semicircle isn't super challenging.
Crystal Mine is one of the game's many booster stages, and this one's pretty precise. The mounds are pretty heavily slanted so they can send you any which way. Boost early, boost often.
There are a couple of ways to do Wormhole Maze. This is a pretty consistent way to beat the time trial (25 seconds). I confess I went much slower in this run just because I didn't want to mess up, but this path is pretty easy to execute and will clear in about 23 seconds if you're good about it.
Checkerboard is another booster stage. I find the most consistent way to do this stage is to move slightly to the left in order to ride the seam, which should prevent you from bouncing too hard.
Big Four tests your understanding of momentum in this game in a way that pretty much no other level does, and it's infuriating. The first three launches are free, and then the fourth launch asks you to hit the ramp at the correct time so you don't hit a wall, and the correct speed to actually hit the hoop, and ugh.
Enigma is probably my favorite level in this stage. On paper, it looks a bit like a metronome stage, with the fun spin of invisible platforms. The hardest part of the stage is learning to play around the game's sense of friction. Moving between two fast moving platforms sends your ball in some weird directions. It is possible to get to the end in a single run, but i was just a coward in this recording.
Neo Broken Cylinders is a test of your understanding of boosts. It's extremely difficult to beat the stage in the time limit, let alone the time trial (52 seconds) without performing a couple skips. The biggest skips are on the second and fourth rings. As Aiai, a fully charged boost can get you into the inner ring on the second level, and that enables you to one-cycle that ring, which saves about 5 seconds. On the fourth level, you want to perform a drop where the banana bunch is.
Cosmic Curves answers the age old question: What if Corkscrew from SMB2 was kind of hard, and really lumpy. The game has several lumpy levels, and this is way easier than W7EX-05 (hate that stage).
Overturn is yet another skip stage, and frankly a pretty boring one. Aim at the goal, wait for the right moment, shoot.
Bumper Barrage gave me Dizzy System flashbacks, but its way more fair. I did terribly at this stage, it went much better the first time I cleared this I promise.
