Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

Marble gravity puzzles have a long history both in physical and digital forms. In both cases, whether the maze should be manipulated directly or via mind-bending knobs depends on if the designer intended the puzzle or the control to challenge the player. The grandfather of video game marble puzzles, Marble Madness, began life in arcades with an intuitive trackball setup that highlighted the course itself. Later, it was ported to other platforms which tend to use directional controls making the game an exercise in axis shifting.

Super Monkey Ball on the GameCube represented a sort of middle ground between the extremes. I only played it a few times and using an analog stick to maneuver floating platforms in order to propel monkeys who were inexplicable trapped in transparent spheres took some getting used to. But once oriented, the game felt fairly natural, though the levels themselves are very difficult. However, the Wiimote's tilt control and Super Monkey Ball are an even better fit. Tilting the controller forward tilts the world forward and starts your monkey moving ahead. Tilt in the other direction to slow down and to one side to turn. I'd guess the transition from "What's going on here?" to "This is awesome!" is half as long on the Wii compared to the GameCube.

This time around, Sega added the ability to jump, which adds a platforming element to many levels. Personally, I find jumps enjoyable, but aggravating at times. Part of the aggravation comes from the challenge of getting over obstacles or across gaps, but a bit is related to the controls. Jump is mapped to A, which normally makes sense. However, the A button is toward the front of the Wiimote, so pressing it pushes the controller forward a bit, causing your monkey ball to race forward as soon as you land often sending it crashing into some object in your path or zipping off the end of the platform. Knowing the cause of the problem was all I needed to solve it. Jumps can also be accomplished by holding the B button and flicking the Wiimote up. While it seems gimmicky, this method does allow jumps to flow better at the cost of being slightly less responsive.

I've only finished about half the main game, which tells you A) the course difficulty ramps up pretty quickly and B) I have not played it as much as Super Mario Galaxy. The courses I have beat were fun and challenging. But trying and failing the levels can be a chore because of the way the worlds open up. Initially, you start with an island world (Monkey Island, if you believe it). Each level in that world has the same music and graphics style. If you beat that world (most will have no problem up to the final map before the boss fight), you are allowed to move on to the Jungle world. You can play the levels within a world in any order, but you can't move on to another world until you finish off the previous one. So it's not unusual to get stuck on a map and have nothing to do but try over and over to beat it. In Galaxy, you can never get stuck on a level with nothing else to do because there are always a handful of worlds available at any one time. Opening new worlds in Banana Blitz requires falling off the same level over and over until you get it right.

Thankfully, there are reasons to go back to worlds you've already beaten. In order to unlock the 9^th and 10^th worlds, you'll need to conquer the other 8 worlds without using the continue option. Since only the most obsessive players will make use of the practice option enough to do it the first time through (and they have other problems besides being getting worn out doing something over and over), you'll likely need to retry older worlds in order to get a clean run. In addition, there are high-score, fastest-time, and bananas-collected records that can be pursued. Plus most of the courses are fun to race through and some have crazy shortcuts to attempt. Finally, a look around any cheat site will reveal a hidden goal to pursue. I'd prefer the less-linear Mario-style of progression, however.

Originally, the party games in Super Monkey Ball were a sort of extra that could be unlocked, but in Banana Blitz, they are half of the game's split personality. This time around, there are fifty mini-games and all of them are available from the start. If you've read other reviews, you'll know these are a mixed bag. The most unfortunate are those that match Wii Sports—Monkey Squash, Home Run Derby, Monkey Golf, Monkey Bowling and Monkey Boxing. They are either shells of deeper games or simply don't work (I'm looking at you Monkey Golf!). I feel like these would have been better received if Nintendo hadn't bundled a much better package with the system. Sega could have saved the sports if they had offered traditional controls in addition to motion controls. And since some of these were included in earlier Monkey Ball titles, it should not have been hard to get this right.

Perhaps the biggest complaint about the party games is that the developers seemed to be experimenting with every type of control scheme imaginable and all sorts of crazy game concepts. The result is that each game takes a few plays to understand what's going on, which doesn't work the best in an actual party. The good news is that some of the games do work well and are fun to play. You just have to finish the bad ones quickly and move on.

I am a touch annoyed at the Shepherd game, which is an implementation of an idea I had in the late 80's while playing with my cousin's Arcade Game Construction Kit on the Commodore 64. In fairness, I've had plenty of time to implement my idea and I didn't imagine monkeys playing the role of shepherd!

The games can be divided into tilt-control, IR-pointer, and motion-control listed in order of how well they tend to work. Tilt-control games such as Monkey Snowboard benefit from the developer's experience on the main game and only have issues if theme of the game has issues. Since tilt is even used for navigating the menus, you get the idea that when the developers got down to doing the mini-games, they found tilting the easiest control to work with. All-in-all, I would have thoroughly enjoyed more attention focused on these games and either left the other game out or just directly ported the GameCube versions.

IR suffers throughout. I suspect the Wii's pointer wasn't completely understood at the time. One problem is that the system does not register the motion of pushing the Wiimote toward the screen and Banana Blitz uses this mechanic in many mini-games. Sitting closer to the sensor bar helps as does making more dramatic motions. Another problem stems from a pretty good idea: pointer calibration. Before IR-pointer games the players are asked to land a ladybug on a flower to calibrate their Wiimotes. If you land in the center of the flower, your Wiimote will be directed at the sensor bar, not the TV, so in the game you won't be pointing at the screen. A solution is to aim at the screen and ignore the bug during calibration so it will land at the bottom of the flower if you have your bar mounted above the screen and vice versa. Finally, more rumble feedback would help greatly to know if you are pointing at what you think you are pointing at.

Motion control is temperamental at best in these games. Too often a movement will be ignored only to have the motion of returning the controller to a neutral position be registered. So in Monkey Golf, a back swing won't be detected, but lowering the controller will be detected as a stroke somehow. So your monkey ball will dribble a few feet off the tee rather being hit hard. Putting is even more frustrating since there's no way to gauge how hard the game will interpret your swing. I feel I do the same motion, but one time it barely budges the ball and the next it shoots the ball off the green. Other games are better, but only because constantly shaking the controller is rewarded by lots of action on the screen. The one game that motion control works for is Red Light, Green Light. Shake the Wiimote and Nunchuk like crazy when the light is green and stop all movement when it turns red. Temperamental controls add to rather than subtract from this bazaar activity.

Two factors ought to temper some of my negative comments about Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. First, it was a launch game and having fun titles to play on a new console, especially a console as revolutionary as the Wii, are critical to the platform's success. Taken on its own, the main game is a worth addition to any Wii library and a showcase of the power of tilt-control. The mini-games should be seen as 50 experiments, many of which succeed. That so many copycats have now tread the same ground on Wii should not be held against this group of party games. The second factor is that nobody will be paying anywhere near full price on this title. In the context of Wiiware, and it can be purchased for Wiiware prices, the main game is a true bargain. The rest of the package can be utterly ignored or counted as the whipped cream and cherry topping.

Super Mario Galaxy: Controls

Clearly, the Wii owes a great deal of its success to the Wiimote's innovative control features. And the latest Mario also excels in large part because the controls work so well. So you might expect that Super Mario Galaxy relies on the new controls as well. But you'd (mostly) wrong. In fact, I believe the game would be almost as good with a GameCube controller.

Mario's basic movement is accomplished with the analog stick on the Nunchuk attachment, which is exactly what you want in a 3D platformer. Small movements of the thumb start the little plumber walking and big movements propel him across the world quickly, yet accurately. Like the GameCube analog stick, there are eight notches to push into, which makes running from point A to B easier than if the stick were completely free moving. Mario has a quirk that simultaneously makes him easier and more satisfying to control: he can walk right to the edge of most platforms without falling. If he takes that extra step, he usually can grab the edge before falling thus saving a life for another day. It's rare to walk to your death in this game. (Running and jumping to your death commonly occurs, however.)

The other thing you want Mario to do all the time, of course, is jump and that control is conveniently located under your other thumb—the A button on the Wiimote. Again, this is exactly the way a platformer should be controlled. Pulling off precise jumps is made easier by giving the player the ability to change course midair, which is physically-impossible everywhere but in a video game. Jumping into a wall and jumping again in the opposite direction allows you to get to higher locations than would be ordinarily be possible. Many levels rely on the ability to climb parallel vertical walls and the maneuver is very satisfying to pull off.

A third command, which is commonly needed, duck was mapped to the Z button on the Nunchuk. Again, it would have been easy to put this on a shoulder button of the GameCube controller. Combined with movement, the duck becomes a duck walk and combined with a jump, it becomes an extra high back-flip. Tapping Z and A while running allows for long jumps and tapping Z in the air produces a ground pound needed to stun certain enemies. As you can see, there are a number of combinations that help Mario get from point A to point B. Pretty soon, you'll find yourself back-flipping into a wall jump and finishing off with a ground pound. And none of these controls use features not available on the GameCube.

The main action you need that is mapped to a Wiimote only control is Mario's spin attack. Flicking the Wiimote (or Nunchuk) in a vaguely circular motion causes Mario to violently spin with fists outstretched knocking around enemies. While there's no reason it couldn't be mapped to a button, the physical action of flipping the wrist maps well to the onscreen action of a spin attack. In addition, there's a short recharge period that needs to be observed before using spin attack again, so the relatively slower flick control matches the relatively slow development of the attack. As you might expect, the spin control is pressed into a variety of different uses in different portions of the game. You can get a speed boost underwater, turn giant screws, start skating on ice worlds, gain more jump hang time, spin a Boo out of the way and so on.

Galaxy makes moderate use of the IR controls to collect and fire star bits. Most levels are completely playable without this mechanic, but it does make some of them easier. Firing star bits takes a backseat to collecting them, since it's usually better to save them in order to get a new life. The second player essentially uses the IR controls exclusively. When I've been able to talk my son into playing, it's nice to be able to have one person dedicated to manipulating the star bit inventory. (The second player can also freeze most enemies, which simplifies many puzzles.) Other uses of the pointer include aiming the canon with Mario as ammunition, grabbing pull stars, positioning bubble puffers, etc.

It seems like the development team had some fun with some of the levels. For instance, several levels have stars trapped in transparent balls that Mario jumps on and are controlled by tilting the Wiimote. (Now where have I seen that before?) Another level lets Mario ride a giant swimming manta ray via tilt control. A great many puzzles depend on special costumes that alter the way Mario moves through the world. Fire Mario launches fire balls instead of the spin attack. Bee Mario flies a short distance in lieu of jumping. Boo Mario disappears when you flick the Wiimote. And so on.

MLB Power Pros: Exhibition Mode

The battle between pitcher and batter lies at the heart of any baseball game and at the center of MLB Power Pros. For quick pickup games with a friend, against the computer, or a CPU vs. CPU demo, the place to go is Exhibition Mode. There you will pick two Major League teams (no Miis outside of Wii Remote mode) and play using traditional console controls. Personally, I find the GameCube controller more natural than the Wiimote/Nunchuk setup because all the throwing and running buttons are always under the thumb.

This is a cursor-control game, which means the pitcher picks a location and the batter tries to guess where the ball will cross the plate. If all goes well (for the batter), the sweet-spot of the bat will smack the ball for a hit. Missing the location will result in a variety of sub-optimal outcomes. For a long time, this was the traditional way to design an arcade baseball game and it has been derided for being unrealistic. More recently, games have used a timing based system that works like the traditional golf power slider control.

Some people feel the cursor style puts too much control in the thumbs of the player. No pitcher has the pinpoint control and it's too easy for a player to get a perfect hit every at bat. I have MVP Baseball 2005 on the PC, which used a timing system, and I find MLB Power Pros more realistic. With Expert pitching, you have to time your release correctly in order to hit the catchers glove and turning off automatic lock-on makes batting more difficult. Further, each player has dozens of underlying attributes that alter his ability to respond directly to your controls. So a pitcher that lacks control will miss more often and a batter with poor contact skills will have a smaller sweet-spot.

For example, Johan Santana has a pretty good fastball, so it can be hard to make contact on strike one. If he throws it in the same location on the second pitch, the batter can be dialed in at take a good swing at it. Fortunately, Santana also has an A+ circle change that messes up a batter's timing. More often then not, the batter will have finished swinging before the pitch crosses the plate. A timing-only system would illustrate the value of a changeup too, but Santana also has an excellent slurve. In MLB Power Pros, a hitter who has been setup with a fastball will tend to swing over the top of slurve since the pitch starts off looking a lot like a fastball. A batter with good contact might be able to get enough of the pitch to foul it off, but it won't be automatic. The human player will need to recognize the pitch quickly and drop the bat a bit. There's just a ton of nuance in the cursor system that I never noticed in MVP Baseball.

As a batter, the strategy of "sitting on a fastball" makes sense. With the "Big Swing" option that reduces the sweet spot to circle, you have a good chance to drive a fastball in the strike zone. Once you get to two strikes, you can switch back to contact mode (the sweet spot becomes a teardrop with the point aimed at the handle of the bat) or try to foul off breaking stuff. With a home run hitter like Ryan Howard at the plate, it's easy to see why a hanging curve is such a big mistake—that sucker is gone. The two problems I have with batting are the inability check a swing and the difficulty drawing walks. The first is a minor annoyance, but its not a big deal once you get used to the idea. The second seems to be a function of the level of difficulty. In Normal settings with three balls, the computer pitcher bares down and throws nothing but strikes (which are often homerun balls). The computer gives up more walks with Expert and higher settings since it tends to work off the plate more. I'd welcome an option that makes the umpire's interpretation of the strike zone a little more fuzzy.

Games are played to completion pretty quick. Usually it only takes 20 to 30 minutes depending on how many replays you watch. Pitchers go into the windup almost immediately after the previous pitch is resolved and most of the cut scenes between plays can be skipped. There's no need to warm up relief pitchers, which might be unrealistic, but removes my least favorite aspect of real baseball: in-inning pitching changes. Plays end automatically once all baserunners stop moving and the ball is securely in the defense's grasp. Unlike more graphically intense games, foul balls are not loving tracked into the stands to show off details of the crowd.

Baserunning and fielding can be automatic, manual or semi-automatic. (Semi-automatic means you control lead runners and throwing while the computer manages everything else.) Manual controls are difficult and can be frustrating—nothing is more annoying than getting a made-to-order double-play ball that slips past an infielder and then rolls past an outfielder for a double. I also lose too many baserunners through forgetting they are on base during infield pop-ups. Better players might be able to control those aspects as well as the computer, but I don't think it's possible to do better than the automatic setting. Semi-automatic seems a good compromise.

Speaking of settings, there are far too many to go over in even an extensive review. It can be totally overwhelming, since it's hard to know what one particular tweak might do to the game. On the other hand, there's no real need to adjust the settings unless you want to. When you start up a game, each player can pick from Easy, Normal and Expert. The spread between the settings make games between unequal players (such as my son and I) competitive. Games can be shortened to 1, 3 or 6 innings to save time. Games can be played during the day or at night, fair or rainy weather, in MLB parks or a few imaginary parks, with many or no replays, and so on. Compared to other games, MLB Power Pros features only a limited number of camera angles, but the angles represented are quite pleasant.

Graphically, the game seems simple and cartoony. But there's a lot of attention to detail under the surface. For instance, balls hit out of Wrigley roll onto Waveland Avenue past speeding buses. (I'm pretty sure the street is closed on game days, but I appreciate the hat tip to quirky ballparks.) Afternoon games start out sunny, but the sun sets as the innings go by. First basemen toss underhand to pitchers covering the bag. Many, many players have unique stances and pitching forms. All the strange hairstyles and beards in the Majors are represented. Pitchers take uneasy glances over at runners on first and will pick up the rosin bag to calm themselves down. Balls take realistic trajectories off the bat. Runners from first try to take out the infielder covering second to breakup a double play. Catchers block the plate in a satisfying way. Every animation is smooth as silk. Pretty soon you don't see bobble-heads in the outfield, but baseball players.

I don't think anyone (except Konami) is satisfied with the sound. From the moment you load up the game ("MLB POWER PROS!!!"), you know this game tries to amp up the action with an excited announcer. The effect will be entertaining for a few games, but after a while, it gets old. While the play-by-play commentator (some guy named Jack Merluzzi), has a wide variety of lines, they don't always sync up with the action on the field. It's hard to figure out how these lines could be strung together on a single play: "And he was fooled inside. IT'S A HIT! He pulled it foul." It seems like something was lost in translation. Also both the stadium announcer and Jack screw up the pronunciation of player names, which many people find annoying. Personally, I find these glitches charming, but there's too much repetition in some of the more basic calls. Sports games in general are prone to this issue and it's not an easy problem to solve.

Exhibition Mode lays the foundation for most of the other modes. While it is fun to play a game or two on the side, it's even more fun to play games that matter in Season Mode. The little snippets of college baseball in Success Mode, which use the same basic game play, make for great season finales. When it comes down to the big Eckersley/Gibson situations, you want to know that everything hinges on a 3-2 backdoor slider. All in all, baseball has never felt more enjoyable for me in video game format than MLB Power Pros.

Buying a Wii

Until last Christmas I was a PC gamer (if I had time for games at all). Originally, I figured a console was too expensive—especially since I already owned a PC. Since PC games are usually a few dollars cheaper and there's no additional hardware to buy, the choice was obvious. But over the years, I played fewer and fewer games. Part of the reason was that I got married and had a son. There just hasn't been as much on-my-own time as there was when I was single. But I also discovered the fatal flaws in my cheaper-is-better world view.

First, PC gamers are constantly upgrading. In the early days it was memory. Then CPUs needed to be upgraded as well. Then video cards. Plus you need joysticks and better mice and keyboards. All these things add up over time to match or exceed a console's startup cost. Then there are the wasted hours getting all the drivers and device settings working together.

Second, most games are awful. Saving a few dollars on a good game is fine, but too often I'd buy a game only to get bored with it a few days later. This is not an issue specific to the PC, obviously. Games are hard to perfect on any platform. But the PC has a unique issue that hasn't hit console games for the most part: patches. Theoretically, a game that isn't quite perfect can be released on the PC and a few weeks later, a patch to fix the small issues can be distributed. A surprising number of times, I'd get a game that included the patch on the disk with the rest of the game! (I have no idea why publisher do that. Just send us the patched game.) The result was a culture that viewed polish as less of a goal than publishing. Technically, there's no longer a reason console games wouldn't be patched. But for some reason they aren't.

Third, PC games are either solitary or remote. Sure, we'd organize LAN parties once in a while. But that carried it's own set of problems and frustrations. The computer is ideal for one person, but a console is geared toward people sitting around the TV playing together. A game that's kinda fun can become boring really quickly if there is no one to share it with. Since I want to maximize the time I have with family, I haven't had as much time for solitary games as I once did.

Now a few years ago, I visited one of my brothers who had a GameCube. We played a bit of Wario Ware Inc. and Super Monkey Ball, which are two of the oddest games I'd ever seen. There seemed to be wires everywhere and we had to sit close to the TV. But we had a pretty good time, so I put the idea of buying a used GameCube console in the back of my mind.

Last Christmas, we visited another brother in Hawaii. He has an Xbox 360 and plays Halo online. My son, who was 4 at the time, was interested in the game, but we didn't really want him watching that sort of thing, so we loaded Lego Star Wars. I don't know what it was about that strange combination, but we had a great time. Even watching other people play was a lot of fun somehow. Being able to grab a new controller and drop in or out at any time in coop mode really increased the fun factor as well. It was a revelation.

The Xbox 360 has wireless controllers, so there is no tangle of wires. The games look great and there isn't a huge install process for starting new games (compared to PC games). When my son went to bed, my brother and I played a few games of capture the flag with strangers online and it just worked. On the downside, more casual and family-oriented games are less common then on Nintendo systems. And the Xbox draws a lot of power, so it has an overheating issue. Further, it's really expensive.

Striking a balance between the GameCube and Xbox consoles (plus adding an innovative controller) is the Nintendo Wii. Sure the graphics fail to live up to an Xbox 360 and the price is higher than a used GameCube, but it had all the features I wanted. I was lucky enough to find a bundle at Costco early this summer. In the future, I plan on writing about the games I play on it.