Super Monkey Ball Deluxe [PS2]

Compiling the best content from two classic GameCube hits, Monkey Ball Deluxe's whimsical presentation hides a puzzle game that's all serious. With a monkey-load of puzzle stages, a ton of entertaining minigames, enjoyable multiplayer, and a wallet-friendly price, it's a fine collection, if rather limited for fans of the series.

For those unfamiliar with the series' previous two outings on the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, the Super Monkey Ball games are fiendish ball-rolling puzzle games. A monkey, encased in a plastic ball (for reasons that remain an enigma), is dropped at the start of a maze containing a selection of moving platforms, sharp inclines, narrow walkways, and sudden corners.

Your job is to move the monkey to the exit -- but rather than controlling the tiny ape yourself, you have to tilt the level and let inertia take the ball where it will. Fall off the edge, or run out of time, and you have to start over: simple to learn, but teeth-grittingly hard to master.

So what we have here, for Monkey Ball aficionados, is most of the stages and minigames from the first and second games, together with a four-player mode, 50 or so exclusive levels, and a whole lot of bananas (strangely devoid of the Dole stickers they featured in Monkey Balls past). In other words, if you've got either of the GameCube games, you'd need to be some kind of obsessive monkey-completist to pick this up.

If you're not already convinced that the designers of Monkey Ball were out of their collective trees, a few minutes spent watching the cutscenes will leave you with no doubts. Attaching a plot to an abstract puzzle game isn't the most enviable of game design choices, but Sega had to have had at least part of their brains out to lunch when they came up with this one.

The game's villain, Dr. Bad-boon, has stolen all the bananas from an idyllic monkey island. Our four simian heroes, with the assistance of a magic spell too bizarre to repeat, set off through the game's levels, to recapture the bananas and defeat Bad-boon, somehow. There's a faintly creepy sub-plot about Bad-boon wanting to marry one of the monkeys, too. You get the point -- and remember, kids, huffing paint fumes is bad.

All of this is, of course, almost totally irrelevant to the puzzles, which are excellent (and almost as mind-bending as the cutscenes). Reminiscent of classic coin-op Marble Madness, there are some real brainteasers in store for players. On later levels, it's coldly unforgiving -- rather at odds with its whimsical presentation -- and you'll do well to lay in some extra joypads, as the frustration can get extreme. That's all part of the fun in this style of game, though.

While the selection of minigames has some definite stinkers, they're diverse enough that just about anyone should find their favorites. The winner here is Monkey Target, where you roll your monkey down a ski jump-like ramp, and glide through the air attempting to land on a large bullseye. The inspired Monkey Baseball is also great with more than one player, and many of the others play just as well.

Talking a friend or three into joining you for a game shouldn't be too difficult, thanks to the easy-to-learn controls and approachable minigames. You'll have plenty to play with -- completed levels from the single-player game can be played head-to-head, and all the minigames have plenty of multiplayer options and styles. It's quite a package.

Although this compilation is impressively huge, it's obviously lacking in the online stakes. Would it have been so hard to add a few extra multiplayer features? Comparing your performance and exchanging replays with other players would have been a major bonus, to say nothing of the potential for simultaneous online play. It's a definite missed opportunity.

Another disappointment concerns technical aspects. It's an old game, and a simple one, so why such long loading times? Why does the framerate drop? The Xbox version is a smoother experience than the PS2, although you'd be hard pressed to call it pretty -- gaudy but functional is nearer the mark. To all intents and purposes, it's made no progress since the original GameCube title. But hey, since when have puzzle games needed top-notch graphics to make millions?

Super Monkey Ball Deluxe is a good deal for Xbox owners, despite its shortcomings. There's an awful lot of gameplay here, thanks to the multiple single-player modes and good selection of party games. If your only option is the PS2 version, it's a less attractive option -- but if you're looking for simple, addictive brain teasing, you can't go too far wrong with this.