Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD  (or Tabegoro! Super Monkey Ball in Japan) is the 11th mainline installment in the, released on October 29th, 2019 on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and on Steam on December 10th, 2019. It is a remaster of the original Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, which came out in 2006 on the Nintendo Wii.

It is the first official installment in the series since Super Monkey Ball Bounce in 2014, and the first mainline installment since Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz in 2012.

A Japanese-exclusive demo for the game released three weeks prior to the release of the full game, on October 10th, 2019.

Announcement
On May 7th 2019, SEGA trademarked the title ''Tabegoro! Super Monkey Ball'' which lead to weeks of speculation until July 10th, when a Taiwanese rating board effectively leaked that a new game was coming.

Six days later, on July 16th, SEGA officially released the first trailer for the game revealing that it is a remaster of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz.

New features
Besides hosting most of its content from the original version on the Wii, Banana Blitz HD also has a bunch of new features and enhancements, such as:


 * Graphical enhancements, such as higher resolution textures, and more.
 * An all-new Decathlon Mode, which challenges players to complete all 10 party games in a row.
 * Online leaderboards for both the main game (Time Attack) and Decathlon Mode.
 * A Camera Mode, which takes the camera and focusses on the player character while the game is paused.
 * Character costumes (returning from Super Monkey Ball 3D) which are:
 * C-AiAi
 * W-MeeMee
 * A-Baby
 * F-GonGon
 * P-YanYan
 * R-Doctor
 * Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character. Playing as him replaces the bananas with golden rings.
 * Adjustable settings for display, graphics, audio, controls and more.
 * Korean and Traditional Chinese translations have been added, as the original Wii game never released in these countries.
 * Exclusive to the Steam version of the game, an update brought different shapes for your monkey to travel in. While on the character select screen, type in...
 * cube for a cube
 * star for a pointy ball
 * triangle for a pyramid
 * and sphere to revert back to the regular ball.

In addition, several changes were made to game mechanics. For example, the player can now select "next" after clearing a stage to automatically begin the next stage, rather than returning to the stage select menu. Lives are now carried over between worlds in the same play session. It is no longer possible to change characters without first backing out of the world being played. Stages can now be replayed after being beaten in the same session, which allows the player to grind for lives for the later worlds.

Stages
Banana Blitz HD has the same 100 stages as Banana Blitz, with a few changes to some of them in order to adapt to the new control style.

Party Games
The total number of Party Games that the original Banana Blitz had has been cut from 50 down to 10.

Worlds

 * Monkey Island
 * Jumble Jungle
 * Smooth Sherbet
 * Detritus Desert
 * Pirates Ocean
 * Cobalt Caverns
 * Volcanic Pools
 * Space Case
 * Sinking Swamp
 * Ultra Heaven

Achievements
The PlayStation 4, XBOX One and Steam versions of the game have a variety of achievements for the players to unlock.

Animations

 * Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Continue Animations
 * Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Idle Animations
 * Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Main Game Victory Animations
 * Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Podium Animations

Reception
The game received mixed reviews averaging a Metacritic score of 62 for the PS4 version, a 62 for the Switch version , and a 72 for the Xbox One. While many critics praised the improved controls, complaints were raised at it’s lackluster minigames, boss battles, and overall lack of content.

Trivia

 * This is the first Super Monkey Ball game to feature online leaderboards and second to bring in online content. Super Monkey Ball Adventure was the first with the PSP version's exclusive mini game Monkey Trumps.
 * Although the life counter won't count beyond 99 lives, it is actually possible to build up more lives than this.
 * This is the first game to feature a character outside of the series, which is Sonic the Hedgehog.
 * This is the first game to measure speed in km/h in the English version of the game, as opposed to mph, although the Japanese versions of the games always used km/h.
 * This is the first games since Super Monkey Ball Adventure to reuse assets from previous installments. In this case, the soundtrack is almost entirely composed of reused songs.
 * This is one of the games that doesn’t have a Practice Mode or the replay saving feature. The other game is Super Monkey Ball Adventure.