Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble

Release Date: June 25, 2024

Platforms: Switch

What can I say? It’s more Super Monkey Ball, folks, just with a lot of additional bells and whistles this time around. The game did not visually look that great running on Switch, though maybe that’s because it was blown up on a massive Samsung TV. The gameplay was decent and I never felt like I was slipping off stages or floating in the air for too long (the Sega rep told me there was a conscious effort to make the controls weightier this time around following some complaints about the recent remaster of the original games).

Did I mention you can play as Sonic? He, Knuckles, and the rest of the gang are part of a season pass players can pick up to expand their roster of characters, and a lot of the push behind the game seems to be inspired by things like Fall Guys, including a multiplayer mode featuring 16-player activities. There’s also a spin-dash move this time around that lets you store up momentum and fling your monkey around like a pinball. It was perfect for trying to cheese levels. — Ethan