Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

Wednesday 16 August 2006
When we playedSuper Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz at this year's E3, we were mighty chuffed to find that the delightful roll-the-cute-little-chimp-in-a-sphere nature of the game and the motion-sensing magic of Wii was a winning combination.

But as the apes escape conventional control, how has it changed the way Sega has designed the newest roll out for AiAi and his fruit-munching buddies? To find out, we wrapped a bunch of questions in a banana skin and slipped them over to the man behind the monkey balls, Toshihiro Nagoshi.

Is Wii the console that Super Monkey Ball has been waiting for? Do you believe it's the best platform to play Super Monkey Ball on?
We did our best on every Super Monkey Ball game on many of the platforms available at the time. In this title, we significantly changed our approach of the development to match the function of the Wii console and this has worked very well.

Is Banana Blitz as intuitive to play with the Wii controller as you had originally hoped? Will someone who has never played games before be able to pick up and play Banana Blitz easily?
Yes. You will be able to play this game intuitively with the Wii controller. I believe that this game will be enjoyed by both casual users and core gamers.

Above: Collecting crate-loads of bananas is still your main aim

Have you made any changes to the controls since E3?
We didn't really change the controls however, after seeing how players reacted at E3, we slightly adjusted the controls and interface accordingly so that players can better understand how to play this game easily.

Has the way the game is played affected the approach to level design?
We purposefully made levels easier. In addition to this, we made them much more exciting with the new 'jump' action.

Why did you decide to introduce the ability to 'monkey jump'?
As you can see when you play the game, Wii provides intuitive and dynamic gameplay. So, I thought adding the jump control was the most effective way to explore its potential to its maximum extent. I believe this worked very well.