Game Info for 'Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz':

• Genre:party game/puzzler
• Rating:ESRB E (Everyone - Comic Mischief)
• Number of Players: 4 (4 online)
• Developer: Sega
• Publisher: Sega
• Format: PS Vita card, PSN download
• Other Platforms: Wii
• Release Date: unknown

Find Out More About 'Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz':

• PlayStation Website

Summary of 'Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz':

Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz is a puzzle-platformer in which the player has to roll a monkey around in a ball (think hamster ball, but with a monkey inside instead of a hamster) and get past a series of obstacles to complete each level.


This will be the second time a Money Ball game has appeared on a Sony handheld--Super Monkey Ball Adventure came out for PSP in 2006. Adventure was also available on PS2 and GameCube, rather like how Banana Splitz, is also available for Wii (but not, apparently, for PS3).

Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball

The Monkey Ball series is a long-running one, and the first game came out as an arcade title--housed in an upright arcade cabinet with a banana-shaped joystick--simply called Monkey Ball in 2000 in Japan. The next year it was introduced to consoles as a launch game for Nintendo's Game Cube, but with the title changed to Super Monkey Ball. Most of the Monkey Ball games have been multi=platform titles, appearing on both Sony and Nintendo hardware; only one--Super Monkey Ball Deluxe--came out for XBox. More recently, the older titles have been re-tooled and re-released for iDevices and mobile phones.

The Monkey Ball games usually have a choice of four different monkeys--in many of the games they have been the same four monkeys--but some games have added and subtracted playable monkey characters.

The series is considered somewhat innovative because instead of directly controlling the monkeys in their balls, the player tilts and moves the entire gameworld in order to move the monkeys-in-balls around the level, get past obstacles, and avoid hazards. There are pick-ups scattered through the environment that earn bonus points and extra lives, and the aim of each level is to get to a specific end point before the time runs out, and without rolling off the edge of the stage.

Similar stage-tilting mechanics have been used in other games since the original Monkey Ball, but it is a defining characteristic of the series. For one example of a game that uses a similar mechanic, see my review of Mercury Meltdown.

Monkey Ball on the PS Vita

Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz on the PS Vita is a natural for using the Vita's motion-sensing capabilities. Instead of using buttons to tilt the stage, players can tilt the PS Vita itself. The touchscreen and touchpad will also, naturally, come into play. The main touchscreen has a variety of uses, including more intuitive menu navigation, while the rear touchpad is used to guide your character in the Monkey Rodeo.

Both cameras are also used, with the front camera for taking pictures for use in the stage editing mode, and the rear camera for capturing colours in the Pixie Hunt party game mode. Location-sensing capabilities (some only available on 3G PS Vita models) allow the game to sort online game rankings by location.