Super Monkey Ball Touch & Roll (Nintendo DS) Review

The premise of Super Monkey Ball Touch & Roll on the Nintendo DS is simple; tilt level, roll monkey about until you reach the goal and repeat. It is exactly the same as the GameCube version apart from one key aspect; everything has gone all touchy-feely. We're very much of the impression that the controls made the original game great. It was almost a demonstration of perfect analogue stick implementation. If you wanted to teach a total novice how to use an analogue stick on a controller, you would logically sit them in front of Super Monkey Ball on the GameCube. Conversely, if you wanted to teach someone how to use the touch screen on the Nintendo DS you would not plonk them down with this game.

Whilst moving about in general is easy enough to grasp, the more precise and skilful manoeuvring and tilting that is required in the more complicated and bastard-ish latter levels is hideously impossible. Rather than being smooth and flowing (as you would imagine a ball to be), everything twitches and jerks about. The human eye can't physically look at the two screens at once, which means knowing where you are on the touch-screen at any given time is totally impossible. This causes problems...major problems.

SEGA have tried to do the obvious thing, one would imagine that the control system implemented here simply couldn't fail. But it has. We spent ten seconds trying to steer just a tiny bit in order to get one last banana on a bonus level. The problem was we simply couldn't get the precision of control we needed with the stylus, the thumb-strap or our grubby mitts; in the end we had to resort to using the sodding D-Pad. Anyone who has played the GBA version will know that using the D-Pad isn't much fun either. Happy bunnies we are not.

A lot of the levels are rehashes of the big console version too. Whilst some offer minor variation, a lot of them bare a striking resemblance to their GameCube cousins. However, the game does look rather pretty, Belting along at a pleasing frame-rate and with some lovely graphical effects used, Super Monkey Ball on the DS is a rather nice looking title. The colours are bright and vibrant, the animation on the cute little monkeys is excellent and the general game design is top class. It is certainly a well put together product, from rubbing Ai-Ai's bum to start the game (disturbing) to selecting levels from a number of different world's off a game map, the whole thing smells of care and attention (whatever that smells like). The sound however, is enough to make you want to commit suicide. Hideously plinky-plonky it sits on that annoying/cute borderline that is always dangerous in videogames. Keep the sound on whilst you play this on the bus or train and needless to say people will look at you like you just farted, threw a tuna fish in their face and called them a ugly fat whore.

Moving on to the game's more positive aspects and we can't congratulate SEGA enough on the excellent multiplayer and minigame experience this game offers. The delights to be enjoyed this time are: Monkey Race, Monkey Wars, Monkey Fight, Monkey Hockey, Monkey Bowling, Monkey Mini Golf and Monkey Terrorism (only kidding). Wonderfully, the game supports single-cart download play for up to four people, so if you and three mates chip in a few quid each you can all enjoy simian superiority at a great price. Monkey Bowling and Monkey Golf are our two favourite games and both are greatly improved by the introduction of the touch-screen control. Sweeping motions in both allow for perfect and fun control and make multiplayer action a real hoot and both are good fun on your own too.

There is loads of fun to be had out of the minigames, and the fact that you only need one copy of the game between you to enjoy it is a great addition. As a nice additional extra you can also record your most memorable monkey moments in the main game. If you manage to complete that frigging impossible course or do something particularly amazing or fluky that you want to save, you can! There is ample space for quite a number of replays to be stored so you can watch those times that you get the better of the controls over and over again!