Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing - Monkey Cup - Races 1 and 2

This is the last cup in the game, featuring the final four tracks. This cup is named after Super Monkey Ball, though it might have been ambiguous at first. The trophy is of three bananas holding up one of the balls Aiai rides in, however. Super Monkey Ball is an arcade-like challenge game where you must roll the monkey into the goal. It sounds very simple, and in a way, it is. The game began using ONLY the control stick. Some of the later games introduced jumping; some don't have it. Because of its sheer simplicity, the Super Monkey Ball games have been among the most consistently difficult game series in history. There's usually no story, but if there is, it's that the evil Dr. Bad-Boon wants to take over Jungle Island, or maybe the world, and Aiai and his buddies need to get from stage to stage to reach Dr. Bad-Boon and stop him before it's too late.

I'm playing as Mobo Bonanza (red) and his brother Robo (blue). The Bonanza Bros. are a pair of master thieves who starred in their own game back in 1990 and haven't been heard from since. They went on a crime spree, starting with a bank and working up from there. The gimmick in the game is that they are able to hide behind objects, such as furniture and columns, to stay out of the line of sight of guards. The goal is to nab as many valuables as possible, then escape in their blimp without getting shot by the guards. (Their blimp, incidentally, is their All-Star Move for this game, which you'll see in this video.) They did not beat Solid Snake to the punch in terms of stealth gameplay, but the Bonanza Bros. (the game) did show that it could be done as a 2-D action sidescroller. These guys are used to playing dirty, so they'd feel right at home here.

Race #1
Casino Park
Bingo Party
Song: Back 2 Back
Hey, there's more Sonic Rush music here. I kind of wonder why they chose a somewhat narrow range of Sonic history. Aside from "Palmtree Panic (Present)," there's no 16-bit representation of anything Sonic, nor is there any beyond 2006 through Sonic Rush. It would've bene cool to have music from Sonic Rush Adventure, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Unleashed, or even Sonic 2006--despite being near universally-loathed, the soundtrack is quite strong. Either Wave Ocean song would've fit into Seaside Hill pretty well. As for the course, I don't know what slide puzzles have to do with Vegas, but the bingo balls rolling through the tubes make a nice touch. Also, the playing card on the craps table that makes up the last jump is the joker card, and it portrays Tails dressed as a jester. By the way, that first jump, the one that takes you over the slide puzzle--it made me think about how inconsistent the size of the jumps are compared to the time you spend in midair. This one looks like a pretty big jump, but you can only do one trick before you land. On the other hand, the jump right before the windmill in Rampart Road (back at the beginning of the Egg Cup) looks like it covers a gap barely 10 feet (3 meters), yet the Bonanza Bros. can do two tricks because the jump keeps you in the air for so long.

Race #2
Dino Mountain
Lava Lair
Song: Volcanic Orchestra
The song "Volcanic Orchestra" can also be played on the Blizzard Castle courses too. Anyway, you may have noticed that Billy Hatcher's courses tend to be put at about the beginning of each block. Well, this course shows that he can do "difficult" too. Lava Lair is one of the longer stages in the game and has the most difficult series of jumps, if you ask me. Some characters, if they don't properly do tricks, will actually fall between the gaps in those jumps. Or not get enough momentum, like what happened here in the first lap. I use the All-Star Move in Lap 2 to not have to do the jumps, though I did them properly on the third lap.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• sonic
• and
• sega
• all
• stars
• racing
• wii
• grand
• prix
• monkey
• cup
• casino
• park
• bingo
• party
• dino
• mountain
• lava
• lair
• bonanza
• bros

[ChromaAurora]

What is it with SEGA and gambling? They seem to have casino-themed levels in lots of their games such as the Sonic ones. For further proof, when SEGA AV co-developed F-Zero GX, it introduced the Casino Palace tracks. What a coincidence.

[Overhazard]

@ChromaAurora Most likely, it just looks really cool. There's very little actual gambling in any of them. There's more gambling in the Pokémon games.

[seanMmaguire1]

@ChromaAurora I heard SEGA has a Poker website, or something like that

[Overhazard]

@seanMmaguire1 No, it's nothing like that. The closest thing SEGA has to such a thing is that its parent company, Sammy, manufactures slot machines. SEGA has been doing the casino stuff long before Sammy bought it.

[MetroidCommando]

What the hell? At the start of Race 2, the announcer said "Live from Blizzard Castle!" Dino Mountain's the complete opposite!

[Overhazard]

It is. Someone who wrote the lines for the announcer must have overlooked the fact that the last Billy Hatcher stage is in Dino Mountain rather than Blizzard Castle.

According to the course profiles, the two places are pretty close to each other, however.

[vivanlos33]

Overhazard estas mal, robo es el de rojo y mobo es el de azul

[KraZHD264]

@KnuxSonic8 yeah choose mobo robo

[KraZHD264]

@Sonic4K6 we choose bonzana bros mobo and robo :D

[laatmekijken999]

I like the monkey song at the aiai allstar moment :P*

[MetroidCommando]

@Overhazard Yeah, I know. Billy Hatcher's actually one of my fav games, and in it, Dino Mountain's the third area while Blizzard Castle's the fourth. I was just wondering how the writer for the announcer got a lava stage and an ice stage mixed up.

[funkizone68]

Back2Back is more fitting and played on the monkeyball stages