Super Monkey Ball

Feature: Super Monkey Ball - By Tetsuo

This could be the most obscure, useless, pointless feature on the site yet, but in some ways, maybe that's why it really needs to be done. Sort of like an ode to a Geocities fan site, or an ignored GameFAQ, never to be read, understood or cared about. So here it is: a run down of all regional differences and bugs in Nintendo GameCube game, Super Monkey Ball.

Region differences

• There are significant differences between the Japanese and PAL attract sequences. For a start, there is an entirely different song played in the Jap version (the brilliant "Ei Ei Poo" song) which is curiously cut out from other versions. There are also extra animation sequences (see screenshots above) in the Japanese release.
• The Options mode text that fades out after an auto-save is much slower in Japanese version, and text sizes are also slightly different.
• In the Japanese version of Monkey Target, there is a different speech sample used when the "floating spiky balls" thing is selected from the item wheel. I still can't quite make out what is actually said, so maybe that's why it was removed for the western releases. We'll let SEGA Europe have that one, then.
• The text used on the hi-score tables to indicate a single-credit run to Master stages is different between Japanese and PAL versions.
• And also, when entering your initials in the circular pinball-style stage, the text at the bottom of the screen says "You are the greatest baller!" or "You are the 2nd baller!" for the Japanese version. The western releases changed this to simply say "You are the greatest" or "You are 2nd best" etc.

Bugs & errors

• During the credit sequence, for the title of "2D DESIGNER", the letter "R" (which is comprised of a 3D polygon) is missing in the PAL version, so it instead reads "2D DESIGNE". Oops. The Japanese version has the correct text.
• There are bits of slowdown on several stages, most notably Ex17, in the PAL version. The Japanese version does not suffer from any slowdown however, so another example of a rushed optimisation job, I think.
• Again, there's some particularly disastrous slowdown on a portion of the ice stage of Monkey Race on the PAL version that almost brings the game to its knees. The Japanese version does not have any.
• There is heavy slowdown on the final level of Expert (EX10) on both the PAL version and Japanese versions.
• There are several punctuation mistakes in the PAL version menus. See the Options mode and the sound settings, for a quick example.

Next month: Super Monkey Ball 2. Only kidding.
Bye!