You know, while it could very much be my mood when I approached the game, I definitely remember trying it with open arms and mind - but the first thoughts that were starting to come in after enough time was:

...Isn't this just Marble Blast?

See, while Super Monkey Ball and Marble Blast could be related in that both are marble rolling games over platforms, what differentiated classic Super Monkey Ball from Marble Blast is what each other emphasized for gameplay.

Classic Super Monkey Ball, as it originated as a joystick-only arcade game, is about precision with the analog stick to steer over these stages that often make good use of the physics to offer a challenge or even some cool skips if you feel like it.

Marble Blast instead is about platforming with a ball that, while does have some levels about crossing tightropes, is less about precision with the physics of the analog stick but more so about how you interact with the levels through the ability to jump and the power ups. Again, its more like platforming with a ball than carefully playing a marble maze.

So...Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD is basically a weird middle spot between both ideas due to the focus on jumping that the original game had, which means that you get some stages that vaguely or actively try to have those sections for precise controls...but on top of the controls not being as precise as the original Gamecube games to feel as good, the jump button either lets you trivialize the simpler levels or feels mandatory only as a crutch for some tougher levels where doing it the normal way or keeping your balance without jumps is far more painful than you'd think.

Oh, and of course, the many levels that are designed for jumping...so in those, the most balancing you do is whenever you bounce off landing after a jump and try to stabilize to move wherever you go.

I guess that this is a bit of a more aggressive/critical introduction than what I usually deliver, but I think that the gripes go beyond the sole comparison between old and new Monkey Ball, which is something I'll show through explaining my journey through it.

The caveat of porting a motion-control oriented game to a joystick

If there's something that sticks out in the first worlds of this game, is that they are easy to the point of being somewhat mindless or just easily exploitable with jumps - most notably having guard rails very often unlike the classic games taking off those training wheels after the first few levels.

That's because, in case you aren't aware yet, the original game was made for the Wii...and was made to be played exclusively with motion controls by holding the Wii Remove vertically like a TV remote, as the game doesn't let you play with normal controls [Wii Remote's D-Pad, Nunchuck, Gamecube Controller] or even at the very least hold the Wii Remote horizontally. The only button you get to use in that game is the A button to jump.

So it is quite evident that most early levels compromise with a bunch of guard rails to compensate for those motion controls...which remain there even in this now motion-less version of the game [which apparently doesn't even support Gyro controls as an option].

You still have the jump in case you want to try for easy skips in levels that allow it, but at that point are playing more Marble Blast than Monkey Ball if you can either trivialize levels in difficulty [which aren't all that complex early on] as you can jump repeatedly to bounce around, or even trivialize their level design altogether [since some levels have pathways with walls...but because you can jump, you can just ignore those].

The following is a screenshot from a lategame level, where while there's a thin path on the left that lets you get to the lower area while allowing you to pick up some bananas on the way...

...It also has the lower area being reachable with a simple jump from the beginning, meaning that you can choose to not interact with most of the level design at all.

There are many cases as this, and its a weird feeling on tethering between [easy or very annoying to beat normally] and [easy or very annoying to cheese] - and while some stages are harder to cheese than others, the option being there in the case both the cheese and the normal strat are difficult often incentivized me to just go for the cheese instead, because for what else hey gave me this jump button, right?

I guess that's the catch with this game, more so in the context of other Monkey Ball games: The jump button makes levels either easily bypassable by using it or is necessary for some levels made for it in mind, which is why I made the comparison to Marble Blast and how this can feel odd as a Monkey Ball game when you don't get the same need to commit to treading a level through the ground [unless you need extra lives from bananas on the way] or even try to do jumps through running over bumps when you are given a commitment-free jump button.

But on the note of lategame levels, there's some levels that stick out later in how they treat you despite being carried over almost intact from the Wii versoin, but there's also a few that get a big bump in difficulty due to a specific change they made which I'll mention later. But on the note of changes...

Good looking for the most part, but not as good sounding as before

The presentation is mostly clean on the visual front [whether you prefer the more minimalistic and clean HUD of this version or the original style from the Wii is up to you], but something that is easy to notice whenever you played the original version or not is the way music selection was handled.

A lot of the songs from the original Banana Blitz were replaced [apparently due to legal reasons, somehow] with new songs...except that most songs used as replacements aren't even new, but recycled from other Super Monkey Ball games.

This is way more evident if you've played the first two games, since songs from SMB1, SMB2 and even SMB3D are spread throughout the game - which even without that context can still sound fairly unfitting, like the SMB1 Credits playing over the first boss, SMB3D's Sweet Fountain being used for the World 3 boss [which isn't exactly threatening but THAT isn't what you'd expect], SMB1's Space theme being used for the Volcano world, and so on, so forth.

There are some hints of decent choices and proper new songs here and there, like SMB1's Storm theme, while being used for the final boss that is a pirate monkey in space, at least makes a bit more of sense than the rest, Sinking Swamps getting a new theme that sounds good, and the funniest case of all that makes World 3's replaced boss theme stick out even more, World 3/Smooth Sherbet's theme being completely unchanged - meaning that you'll actually get an instantly recognizable tune straight from Hideki Naganuma, which is also the only song in the entire game that wasn't replaced from the original.

But otherwise, the songs are a mixed bag, perhaps not so much as quality but more so as how they are slapped over from other titles with different contexts, likely sticking out a weird bit in some stages for those who don't know, while being VERY obvious for those who do - and most notably, a lot of good tunes tailor made for the Wii version being removed in the first place if you've heard them before.

This is also a personal nitpick of mine, but when I was going through the game, I ended up muting the voices after the first world, because every time you jump, your monkey of choice would do a noise...and since this is a game where you're meant to jump a lot sooner or later, you can imagine how that became kind of grating to me.

Although unfortunately, my brief testing of the original Banana Blitz on the Wii made me discover that it was like that in the original as well, so its an issue that was brought over from being faithful.

And speaking of issues brought over from the original game...

What do you mean you want me to do that now?

To get the simplest thing out of the way, while the first Monkey Ball games didn't have camera controls, they definitely didn't feel as finicky to deal with camera-wise as Banana Blitz HD does, more so when BBHD's controls are definitely don't allow the same careful precision the GC games did, which you could say is already an issue considering that's old Monkey Ball's appeal. Banana Blitz HD doesn't have camera controls either [this is a thing Banana Mania and Rumble fixed], so you WILL be fighting with the controls to also fight with the camera at times if a stage requires it.

Some of these stages being as much of a nuisance as they were does make me think about how this game was originally designed to be with motion controls only. As in, they were like this in the original version of all things...most of them.

This does come up with the bosses being weird to deal with at times, them being somewhat easier to deal with in a conceptual level when you figure them out, but either being a bit dumb to figure out on your first attempts or having a thing that makes them more of a nuisance than they should be, like the missiles in World 4's Boss. And yes, there are bosses in this game - again, nothing too out of the ordinary but still enough to break the usual pace you'd expect of going through stages.

Stages wise, is mainly with a few stages of choice from World 7 and 8, having some finicky thin paths to go through, having some stages that switch between needing you to rely on boosters and even doing so in a way that you can't beat the stage if you don't get enough speed - or instead having booster panels specifically to inconvenience you if you don't jump over them.

and the elephant in the room that is the topic of World 9 and 10, which originally were locked away as rewards for beating every other world without using continues.

Some levels in World 9 either felt like I needed to crutch with jumps to stabilize myself on the way down of a slanted area or to finish climbing up a steep slope, and certainly had me fighting for a bit with the camera at moments - whether to line myself up for a thin path or just to see where I'm landing after a mandatory jump. Stage 6 of it was rough to deal with at first as I had to figure out without being able to see it well on how to go down the ramp, not fall off and then go up the slim slanted path upwards into the goal.

But where it gets real gimmicky is at World 10, where a few stages have some hints of classic Monkey Ball premise in having to keep your balance [like 10-4 where you have to steer over some rolling cylinders], but others are focused on a gimmick, whether a moving part [10-6, 10-7] or more messing with you through sneaker panels [10-9].

With 10-7, I was dead set on cheesing it out of spite, as a platform could let me jump from high up into the moving platforms from below, but I also had to figure out the right moment where to jump into the goal - too early and I would likely miss the goal but too late and I'd get thrown off course by the platforms tilting downwards.

But you know that the real elephant in the room is THAT one stage.

Ultra Heaven 5, and the need of forcing you through what is essentially a scuffed Marble Blast stage due to how you have to be jumping repeatedly at the right time to go across the platforms - except that these have small pyramids on the floor, making for a fair chance that landing in one of those on a bad angle actually sends you off course.

That cursed stage alone took me 30 minutes to beat - and that was with the joystick, let alone entertaining that this was actually just like this in the original Wii version where you play with motion controls through and through.

Although I was told later that GonGon, which is heavier and usually not as good as the rest of the cast, is more convenient as you reduce the chances of getting bounced off course. But I wanted to stick through AiAi on my first playthrough of the whole thing just to stay balanced [and wasn't aware that this awaited me at the end].

You want to know what's funny though? Not ALL of the difficulty in some stages are from the original, but rather added to this version since you don't have motion controls anymore.

You wanted no more rails? Here you go, big shot

That...looks rough, doesn't it?

Well, if you want to look how the stage above looked like, below is a screenshot of that world in the original Wii version plus a video of the whole world being played in it.

Yeah, I think you may notice the catch here.

All stages that used these rails in the Wii version were replaced with tightrope platforms in the HD version.

In a way, it feels like an attempt at bringing back more of that old Monkey Ball style that you'd see in some old levels...but you have to remember that, once again, the controls in this game aren't as precise as those old games.

This basically makes these stages that relied on rails into patience drainers that you have to somehow carefully maneuver with the twitchy movement you get in here, and some stages definitely feel like they are messing with you with the rail-less versions, such as the stage above having a few banana bunches away from the main path, which you could realistically risk jumping from the rails into the platforms and back, knowing you shouldn't fall off unless you don't get to land on the center of the rail.

...So in the HD version, you can instead easily bounce off the thin roads when landing if you were to try and jump back to them, let alone jumping from them. Which made me have no desire to actually try to go for those banana bunches and more so feel taunted - as well as how this specific stage doesn't have the tightropes connected, meaning you HAVE to jump through those tiny gaps in it with each time risking a bounce into falling out.

Another well known case of these stages going from simple to quite the tough one would be this stage from Cobalt Caverns. Again, these tightropes were rails before, but now you have to ride through these carefully despite your controls - although if you can get to each of these corners then you can hug those walls to go to the next part - or just try to jump into the platform ahead in a pinch, and the ending of the stage is this straight tightrope where I feel like I survived because I thought on the genius idea of...not touching the stick at all when going down there to avoid nudging myself to the sides and falling off.

In a way, I feel like I should commend the effort to add extra challenge to those levels with rails in the version with analog controls, but I can see how these have been divisive in a way to the point that people ask why they even made the change [which again, is obviously to add more challenge - but the way a few of the stages are handled definitely feel like sudden overcorrections], and also how the execution suffers because of how Banana Blitz HD is a bit finicky in its controls, making those more of a nuisance than you'd think.

And at the end of the day, most they do is to add an extra sprinkle of difficulty bumps in worlds where most of the other stages end up being more on the inoffensive side, which is what I could describe for this game: Many simple or easy to cheese stages around, but those few stages that show up and enforce a particular gimmick, playstyle or approach that you wouldn't figure out blind stick out the most - ESPECIALLY the last two worlds, which again, feel sort of questionable to have come straight from a game designed for the Wii Remote of all things.

Conclusion

I'm unsure about why I felt more bothered about this one than I expected I would be, knowing that I tried it out for curiosity sake as the remake adding proper controls to this one mixed title of the franchise, but perhaps it was to be that, for the 3 hours it took me to beat all of the worlds in one session, the switching between basic platforming stages and trial-and-error fueled stages, with rare sprinkles of fair challenge or at least a skip that lets you cut some time on those, and that on top of the bosses sometimes draining my lives because of the jank had me more bothered than I wanted to be.

I think that ironically, that may have been because the game has these Champion medals you get informed about straight up and are granted whenever you beat a world without continues - and if starting to lose out on those due to some of those levels in the later worlds being bothersome wasn't enough, don't forget that you'll likely die to the bosses if you aren't ready to slowly play by their rules each time.

There IS a way to work around continues, which is by getting an extra life for each 20 bananas you get, so you can technically keep replaying a specific level with enough bananas to keep grinding for lives, but at that point you're just spending time to make a safety net for a medal - and that's assuming there isn't enough levels that can drain all of