Wii impressions: Monkey Ball (minigames)

by Ross Miller { May 11th 2006 at 9:45PM }

Behind doors at the SEGA booth, we got to check out three of the promised 50 minigames that will be included in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz for the Wii. The three games we tried out are very simple and intuitive:

Darts -- Hold A to grab a dart, push forward and release to throw. Then go play real darts.
Hurdles -- Shake nunchuk and Wiimote furiously, occasionally press B to jump. Try not to feel ridiculous.
Hammer Throw -- Spin Wiimote in the air, wind up steel ball and release some score-breaking distance.

The games are extremely simplistic, both conceptually and artistically, but so goes the Monkey Ball franchise. SEGA is going for quantity on these minigames -- they could use more visual flair, but at least they've seemed to gotten the controls down.

Tags: darts, e32006, hammer throw, HammerThrow, hurdles, monkey ball, MonkeyBall, sega, wiimote

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Allen Ormond @ May 11th 2006 10:03PM

"Why bother?"

I played it today... @ May 11th 2006 10:11PM

And I assure you my comments are not skewed by my having to wait 3 hours in line to play it...

Yes, the games are simplistic, but no different from previous Monkey Ball games. Anyone who has played Monkey Fight (Boxing) multiplayer can tell you how much mileage you can get from a simple game mechanic.

The controls work very well. Not all the ones work equally well. My friends tried the minigames, so I played the main game. The main game is a natural for the Wiimote, you just tilt to move and press A to hop. Most of the mini games work well too.

I also played tennis. It's not quite what it seems on the screen. The player (your character) moves to where he wants, and you have to hit a back hand or forehand, depending on what he picked. Once you get that down, it's great. I only got to hit about 10 shots with the Wiimote and yet I could effortlessly control where the ball would go before I was done.

It's gonna be great. N is going to bury MS and Sony in sales, even at $250. At $200? PS3 will be near doomed, and 360 on life support (assuming it drops to $300).

Brian @ May 11th 2006 10:20PM

This looks awesome. Monkey Ball was one of those games that no one took seriously until they played it and then they couldn't tell you why they liked it.

Spoon @ May 11th 2006 10:23PM

I'm going to start posting a picture of me goatse-ing myself everytime you guys use the word "intuitive".

Heh, only joking. =p

OR AM I?

Vince @ May 11th 2006 10:40PM

"I only got to hit about 10 shots with the Wiimote and yet I could effortlessly control where the ball would go before I was done."

I haven't played it of course as I am several thousand miles away, but if you had effortless control after 10 shots then I would imagine rallys would end quite quickly: -
BONK - hits ball perfectly to right hand side of the court..BONK- opponent returns ball.. BONK Slaps ball perfectly to left side of court and wins point as the Wii controlled player movements of the opposition can't get there in time.
If this isn't the case then do rallys last forever with players who have played it for more than a few minutes?

Four player games would surely never end.

Clear this up for me someone please. :)

Linear_soul_child @ May 11th 2006 10:45PM

You should review all games like this.

eg. God of War 2: You just go around killing things, just like any other game, honestly, it's just button mashing. boring

eg. Gears of War: Just another killing game with nothing but button mashing. So simplistic and unoriginal.

HONESTLY! These are the most skewed reviews i have read for ANY system EVER. At least Joystiq is reviewing 360/ps3 games without resorting to "why bother" every time (tell it like it is #1)

How about "We *only* played three out of the 50 (!!!) mini games in SMB" (dat's a lotta games)
What about how it controlled? Was it fluid? Did the framerate drop at all? Was there any sensitivity problems with the Wiimote? Do you know what some of the other games might be?

KingOfGods @ May 11th 2006 10:53PM

"tennis. It's not quite what it seems on the screen. The player (your character) moves to where he wants, and you have to hit a back hand or forehand, depending on what he picked"
_______________________________________________________

Is it me or the majority of the games shown for wii have been basic games like mini games or downhill games. That truck racing game seems to be a downhill game where you just control it to turn left, right or jump. The same thing goes for Tony Hawk and sonic. Monkey ball and bomber man are mini games.

I'm sure these games will be fun but for how long? Some of these games being shown already seem very similar in game play and I'm worried that we probably won't see much diversity from 3rd party Devs (I know it?s still early).

I want a Nin Wii just as much as the next person but show me something different....something that will pull me away from these beautiful high def games I'm playing now.

player1 @ May 11th 2006 11:06PM

These games are too basic for me. They would only keep me interested for a couple of hours, then i suppose i would play them for 5 or10 minutes now and again if drunk.

There's nothing new about this game and the graphics look worse than the cube version. Just another cheap rehash that probabaly took Sega five mimutes to come up with.

A lot of the Wii games sound like somthing you play at a fair ground for a few minute tbh.

I already own monkey ball for the cube but the idea of playing it with a Wii-mote does'nt really iterest me tbh. It's stil the same game after all.

Show us something revolutionary about the games themselves please Nintendo!

Kain @ May 11th 2006 11:09PM

My guess is that the PS3 controller couldn't possibly do what this game demands. Which brings me to my misplaced digression.

If one looks at a present generation controller (Xbox 360 for example), one can see 4 degrees of motion. vertical and horizontal on the 2 analog sticks (d-pads count as buttons).

The Wii controller will have one analog stick which means 2 degrees of analog controlled motion. The remote and nunchaku each have an additional 6 degrees of kinetic motion (translation + rotation along the x, y, z axes). A grand total of 14 degrees of motion with the nunchaku and 6 without.

Now think about the PS3 controller, there is one additional set of kinetic motion, giving it a total of 10.

Degrees of motion available:
Xbox 360: 4
(4 Analog-based)

PS3: 10
(4 Analog-based + 3 Translation-based + 3 Rotation-based)

Wii: 14
Wiimote 6 (3 Translation-based + 3 Rotation-based)
Nunchaku 8 (2 Analog-based + 3 Translation-based + 3 Rotation-based)

In addition: The zapper attachment will force the the nunchaku's kinetic motion to match the so will have 8 degrees of motion. The classic controller will like the xbox 360 controller have 4.

I don't think that the PS3 controller is set up in a way that can take full control of the motion sensors because of the way one holds it. I also don't think every developer on the Wii will require the nunchaku. This would mean the numbers of used degrees of motion is closer to:
Xbox 360: 4
PS3: 4
Wii: 6

Kevin H. @ May 12th 2006 12:09AM

"So goes the Monkey Ball franchise"? Screw you. I love me some Monkey Ball and the sales figures say there's a bunch of other people who do too. Why are you jockeying for position to play games that you hate? You're at E3. I'm sure you could find something you LIKED if you tried really, really hard.

PorpoiseMuffins @ May 12th 2006 1:05AM

Everyone read what Linear_soul_child said.

player1 @ May 12th 2006 1:32AM

Sorry, but MonkeY Ball IS far more basic than Gears Of War. I terms of gameplay and looks. MB is a piss easy game to pick up but a very hard game to master and can be very diffcult. Still, the ideas in the game are much more basic than Gears of war. What do you think is more difficult to create MB or GOW?

player1 @ May 12th 2006 1:44AM

@6

He's not reviewing the game. He's giving us a small impression of a couple of mini games he played. What is he supposed to do? Go into great detail about a simplistic mini game when there is no great detail to go into?

Some of you people are fucking stupid, honesly.

It's simple and basic mini game for god sake. It's not fuckiing chess so WTF do you expect him to write? He said "Darts -- Hold A to grab a dart, push forward and release to throw. Then go play real darts."

What else is he supposed to write? He's throwing dart not firing a nuclear missile ffs.

Comparing a mini game on monkey ball where you throw a virtual dart to what you have to do in a game like Gears Of War is idiotic.

Madster @ May 12th 2006 2:49AM

"What else is he supposed to write?"

how about: 'Aiming felt natural' or 'it was awkward' or 'We couldn't get it right for the first three attempts'
anything non peyorative will do.

godspiral @ May 12th 2006 8:36AM

Does the "then go play real darts" comment mean that the experience is quite poor and devoid of any skill?

I'm a very average darts player with no real interest in competitive levels. Still real darts is fun, while the $5.99 plastic children's sets are annoying (but partly because its hard to get them to stick on the board, or the target end is so thick that scoring is innacurate).

Does the darts game feel interesting or not? (Some of us dont have the access/space for real darts)

Ross Miller @ May 14th 2006 4:39PM

The darts game was alright, but just bored me.

"So goes the Monkey Ball franchise" does not be "so long to the MB franchise." It means that the game is a similar experience than the previous iterations, for better or worse (for better, I feel).

And I did play games I liked, but I also played games I didn't like. Why? Because we are covering ALL the games at E3 -- if we didn't tell about the games we thought were bothersome, we'd be no better than a sales catalogue.