Submission #1713: Comicalflop's GBA Super Monkey Ball Jr. in 02:20.47

Game Boy Advance
baseline
VBA-rr
8428
60
2341
Unknown
Super Monkey Ball Jr (U).gba
Submitted by Comicalflop on 9/25/2007 10:01:01 PM
Submission Comments

Settings

  • Recorded with VisualBoy Advance Re-recording 19
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Plays on hardest difficulty
  • Aims for fastest in-game time
  • Uses a password
   
Super Monkey Ball Jr. is part of the Super Monkey Ball series (most certainly not the best), in which a monkey inside a bubble spins around a course, aiming to either collect the bananas or get the fastest time. In the GBA port, you have far less control of your monkey ball, and you have 2 different modes: the main game and mini-games. The Mini-games are: Monkey Duel, Monkey Fight, Monkey Bowling, and Monkey Golf. The Main game has 3 different difficulties, each with a different number of courses: Beginner (10), Advanced (20), and Expert (30.) There is also a Master difficulty (5), normally only attainable once you beat Expert without any continues, which this TAS completes. A password (Down, Down, Up, Up, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A) is used in order to unlock this difficulty from a power on.
The reason why I chose Master over Expert is that Expert has 30 courses, and they might get tedious after watching a while, and I wasn't sure of audience feedback yet. Master difficulty has only 5 courses, which are even more difficult, so I felt that this mode should be used. (The music is also different and the stages are fiery. Hyah!!!!)
The game is notoriously difficult to play in real time, because of the lack analog controls, the course tilting, the slipperiness, and the very thin platforms. To quote a gameFAQs review: "The ball has a parachute...right?"
I could not find any speed, turning, or acceleration differences between the 4 available monkeys, so I just chose the first one.

Times

Here are the times for the 5 courses. Each timer starts at either 30 or 60 seconds, and goes down.
Level 3 uses a non-intended shortcut. Level 4 uses 2 intended shortcuts.
  • Level 1 (30.00"): 6:00" left on timer
  • Level 2 (60.00"): 42.9" left on timer
  • Level 3 (60.00"): 47.4" left on timer
  • Level 4 (60.00"): 46.0" left on timer
  • Level 5 (30.00"): 17.6" left on timer
The credits have a mini game that requires input, so I skip it, and end input after entering the name.

Afterthoughts

If this game is received well, the Expert difficulty can be run as well (a different category, or obsoleting since it's the hardest difficulty without a password and may be liked for the presence of 25 more stages), and also a 100% run that does all courses (and maybe all mini-games) and gets a perfect bonus on each one, which is attained by collecting all of the bananas, which really changes the way the game is played.

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Oh! I also replaced the ROM name.
  • You indicated Super Monkey Ball Jr. (U).gba
  • I updated it to Super Monkey Ball Jr (U).gba

comicalflop: I just found that the intro screens can be skipped faster, and lackluster viewer response, cancelling.
Last Edited by Ilari on 12/5/2011 9:16 PM
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