Introduction
Super Monkey Ball 2 is the sequel to Super Monkey Ball. If you haven’t figured that out by now, then your obviously need professional help from which this site cannot provide. Nonetheless, Super Monkey Ball (and the sequel, for that matter) is a puzzle game and a great multiplayer game. SMB 2 improves upon it’s kin by tenfold, even in the story department. The story, albeit the lamest I’ve ever seen, at least gives you a reason to be completing the game besides being the absolute most hardcore puzzle gamer. Dr. Bad-Boon (an evil Baboon) and his assistant (who for strange reasons has no name) have traveled back in time (this isn’t even the half of it) in order to get his stolen bride Mi Mi (who in his future was about to marry him, but she fell in love with another monkey named Ai Ai). In addition, Baby, (Ai Ai’s and Mi Mi’s son who is still in diapers) ALSO travels back in time to help them. To make a long, extremely stupid story short, Ai Ai must traverse Dr. Bad-Boon’s mazes in order to get his beloved island’s bananas and blah blah something about monkeys and bananas. Come to think of it, the previous game’s story was almost better because there WAS no story (not to mention the most retarded cut scenes in the world that inhabit SMB2). Despite the slight improvement needed on the storyline, SMB2 surpasses its ancestor with the speed of a jet.

Gameplay
SMB 2 doesn’t fail in the sounds department either. The game beats out funky, upbeat music (albeit not the greatest in the world) in order to match up with the frantic gameplay. The sounds are cartoony, but hardly annoying. I really noticed how well AV implemented the rumble feature. Although you won’t notice it, the game executes this feature well as you bump your way through a lot of the game. Trust me, if you turned the rumble off, you would miss it greatly. The only gripe I can give is that the monkeys tend to make an annoying sound when you fall off of a maze (and you will be doing that a lot).

Fun
You may pass up the main game because of it’s difficulty and head straight to the minigames. You can play them, but the really good ones must be unlocked through the main game. Every time you play Story or Challenge Mode on the single player setting, you will get points. Although going a little ways gives you a lot of points, each minigame is a lot of points to unlock, although you can select which minigame you want to unlock when you have enough. In addition, the points per minigame rise as you purchase minigames, so the game pushes you to go further and game more points. This, along with the plain fun of playing the multiplayer minigames, will have you playing a long, long time.

Story
The graphics and designs are leaps and bounds above its predecessor and it makes the game all the more pleasurable to look at. I can remember playing the first one and noticing how the balls weren’t just quite rounded. Now everything is as round as in real life. In addition, the backgrounds don’t just consist of a few sparse giant trees and then fade off into the fog, like in the first. The backgrounds to the mazes and games consist of lushes waterfalls and animated backgrounds, like a floating space station on a maze thousands of miles above the earth, or a carnival ride that casts shadows on the maze as the cars zip by. All in all, Monkey Ball 2 is much better in graphical potential than its brethren and even stacks up there with some of the better rendered games of today.

Graphics
Amusement Vision paid attention to the strengths of it’s last game (mainly the multiplayer mini-games) and built up the areas that may have lacked (number of levels and variety) when they created Monkey Ball 2. There are more than twice as many mini-game, half of which you must unlock. All of the minigames from the first game appear and most of them with a different twist (for example, Monkey Target is now played with all players AT ONCE). I enjoyed those minigames, while some aren’t as exciting to look forward to (like Monkey Billiards, snore.) The true heart of the game now is the Story and Challenge Modes. The Story mode gives you all of the cut scenes for the “story” (if that’s what you want to call it) and places you in the shoes of Ai Ai, the main character.

Sound
There are numerous worlds with about fifteen stages in each. SMB2 starts out the new player with very easy levels to get a hang of the game (even though the only control used in this mode is the control stick). As before, you guide the monkey (inside his clear ball) to the end of the maze which has several obstacles and other things to get in your way. Despite the nice nudge for newer gamers, this game gets really hard, really fast. Upon the second world I found some of the hardest mazes, ones that were never this hard (even in the first game), even at the end. The timer, in addition to new obstacles make this one of the most challenging games you may play this year. Simply put, you will die: a lot. If you are annoyed by the Story modes extremely badly worded cut scenes, you can skip the chatter and go straight into Challenge Mode, which is Story Mode with no cut scenes and different level “colors” and locales (although the mazes are quite the same).