In a first for the series, Sega has passed the development torch from Amusement Vision, responsible for the first two games, to UK-based Travellers' Tales, whose most recent title was the sleeper hit LEGO Star Wars. No Western developer has touched the franchise, and the change is a good one. With Travellers' Tales' experience in creating fun, intuitive platformers, they've managed to take what could have been a potentially disastrous idea and made it into a fun-looking game that incorporates everything that was appealing about the Monkey Ball series.
In a depature from the puzzle-centric main game of the first two titles, SMB Adventure's main game is a character-driven platformer. The story takes place across five worlds, while introducing fifty to sixty new characters into the Monkey Ball universe. We didn't get hands-on with any of the platforming, as the Product Manager helmed the demo. From what we saw, it appears that the game's physics will mix player-centric movement and camera with platform-based bouncing to collect bananas and overcome obstacles. And yes, fallouts will still count. Some obstacles, however, can only be solved with puzzles, and that's where the original Marble Madness-style game will come into play. In order to get past a certain point in the game, players must jump into the classic puzzle world and tilt their monkey across some tough challenges to beat the puzzle stages and unlock obstacles.
Another new and crucial element of gameplay will involve the monkeys invoking mystical chants that change the form of their ball. Using a combination of four chant words (probably familiar to fans of the series and the nonsensical chatter of our simian heroes), "Ei," "Woo," "Yay," and "Poo," in three-word phrases, the characters can morph their ball into all sorts of practical things, from a Monkey Target-style boxing glove to take out enemies, to a wooden ball that will float on water, to an expanding ball, which was used to overcome being swallowed by an orb-devouring villain.
