It has been almost ten years since the Monkey Ball series debuted in the arcades. Running on SEGA's Dreamcast-based Naomi hardware, the original Monkey Ball was an extremely cute, and very enjoyable Marble Madness-style puzzle platformer. The first entry in the series was quickly ported to the GameCube and would serve as one of the system's launch titles. Super Monkey Ball 3D will mark the third time that a Monkey Ball title is available at the onset of a new Nintendo console. Featuring gameplay extremely reminiscent of its predecessors, the new entry hopes to reignite the gaming world's passion for the ball encased primates.

When I got some hands-on play with the title at a recent SEGA event, the first mode I booted up was the classic puzzle mode. You can control the game with either the gyroscope or the circle pad. Using the circle pad to control was extremely precise and felt just like the old GameCube titles. The gyro controls worked great as well, but split-second direction changes were definitely harder to pull off when compared with the circle pad. The SEGA representative also recommended not to play the game in 3D when using the motion control because the constant movement of the system easily destroys the 3D illusion.

While I only played a small selection of levels from about halfway through the game I can say it was quite a bit of fun. The levels were lacking in difficulty, but the SEGA rep insisted that the final worlds would be a bit more troublesome and that a great way to challenge yourself is collecting every single banana in a stage. Graphically, it looked very similar to the recent Wii titles, and the 3D effect gave the stages some nice depth. Obstacles included pinball-like bumpers and bumpy ridges on the floor. One stage even had a switch you needed to roll over to lower a slanted platform. 

Monkey Ball 3D has a brand new version of "Monkey Race." The stages I tried were decently designed and pretty fun to race through. Controls were basically just like those in Mario Kart DS, with the R button for drifting and the L button to use the weapons you picked up. Similar to the Bullet Bill weapon in Mario Kart, you could get a weapon that basically plows through the competition for a short amount of time. The one strange thing was the drifting mechanic, which I did not get a hang of. Hitting the R button will cause your Monkey Ball to start spinning and you have to be careful not to spin too much because instead of drifting, your character will just go out of control.

The third and final mode available to play was "Monkey Fight." Disappointingly, this was not the awesome mini-game that appeared in Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2, but instead a Smash Bros.-inspired beat-'em-up mode. Up to four players must punch and throw one another while also collecting as many bananas as possible. I didn't have much fun with this mode, but I did only play it very briefly.

Both "Monkey Fight" and "Monkey Race" can be played in local multiplayer. Each mode has a variety of stages and there are 16 characters to choose from. I believe one of the new characters was a Goth version of AiAi, but my memory could be faulty.  When playing the puzzle mode, you only can choose from the original four monkeys, AiAi, MeeMee, Baby, and GonGon. The game does have single-card multiplayer, but I believe this limits the number of stages you can choose from for racing and fighting.

One other feature the game has is the ability to use the game coins you earn with the 3DS' built-in pedometer. Players can use those coins unlock new characters. Another way to unlock new characters is to collect all the bananas in a stage.

Super Monkey Ball 3D appears like it will be another fun entry in the series. While I do miss the ridiculous difficulty found in the GameCube games, I think that the new game still has the potential to be challenging at times. I hope SEGA someday realizes that "Monkey Target" is a great multiplayer mode and brings it back to the series.