Monkey Ball

Monkey Ball is basically Marble Madness, except in 3D with improved graphics and lots of monkeys. And a banana-shaped joystick.

Master Difficulty Graphics


Graphics for a Master difficulty exist, but are never implemented aside from one Master floor. While Super Monkey Ball added nine more Master floors, you still couldn't start at the Master stages from the difficulty select until Super Monkey Ball 2.

Whether they planned to make Master an actual difficulty setting in the original game, or something to expand on much more than they did while porting to the GameCube, is hard to tell.

Unused Strings
Present in the game are some strings referring to international versions of the game, which contradicts the warning upon game startup – namely, that the game only is allowed for usage in Japan. MONKEY BALL JAPAN VERSION MONKEY BALL USA VERSION MONKEY BALL EXPORT VERSION MONKEY BALL KOREA VERSION MONKEY BALL AUSTRALIA VERSION MONKEY BALL MONKEY BALL MONKEY BALL

A odd list of software and build dates are also present in the ROM: 1.0.1, 23-June-2000 NLOBJPUT Ver 0.9 COPYRIGHT (C) SEGA ENTERPRISES,LTD.

Aug 24 2000 13:56:19 NLOBJPUT Ver 0.99 SOFT R&D1 Build: Aug 24 2000 13:56:19

nlajamma Ver 1.01 Build:Aug 25 2000 16:52:23

libintr Ver 1.051 Build:Feb 21 2000 21:12:57 Feb 21 2000 21:02:25

NLSPRITE Ver 0.2 COPYRIGHT (C) SEGA ENTERPRISES,LTD. Feb 21 2000 21:10:33 libspr Ver 0.2 Build: Feb 21 2000 21:10:33

Mar 14 2000 14:53:04

These are the strings used during gameplay, including indicators if a level is a Bonus level or the final level, and the number of the floor. Among them is a string that describes "MASTER EXTRA", and "EXTRA 2". The string "SELECT A STAGE" could have possibly been used in the Debug Mode level select. SELECT A STAGE STAGE SELECT LEVEL SELECT YOUR LEVEL SELECT BY LEVER EXTRA 2 FLOOR LIB. EXTRA FLOOR LIB. SELECT A MONKEY MASTER EXTRA FLOOR BONUS FLOOR FINAL FLOOR

Debug Mode
A debug menu does exist in this game, and appears almost identical to the Super Monkey Ball debug menu. However, it is inaccessible and no way has been found to make it accessible. There is a DIP switch setting which will enable the Debug Mode. DIP_TRIANGLE DIP_STCOLI DIP_DISP DIP_DEBUG

The strings used by the Debug Mode are located directly after the Test Mode strings. They do not appear when accessing the Test Mode, however. BACKUP CLEAR BOOKKEEPING CALIBRATION BG TEST REPLAY TEST INPUT TEST TEXTURE TEST SOUND TEST FONT TEST MOTION TEST SPRITE TEST LODOBJ TEST OBJECT TEST TEST MODE %sSTAGE NUM: %3d BACKGROUND: