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BONK!
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In the photo: the only good Nazi.
Nickireda
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Each level starts with a Monkey Ball3D panoramic style around the map to locate it.
Nickireda
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Protecting yourself from the coming fire is surprisingly difficult inside a monkey ball.
Nickireda
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What are you looking at, Nazi scum?
Nickireda
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Victory!
Nickireda
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This game had 91% bananas.
Nickireda
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Something about the banana in this image drives me crazy all the time.
Nickireda
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Two bananas, two fists. It looks natural.
Nickireda
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Are you a bad enough guy to beat my high scores?
Nickireda
In 1992, id Software proved that it can be a lot of fun to shoot virtual Nazis on your computer with Wolfenstein 3D. In 2001, Amusement Vision proved that it can be a lot of fun to roll around in a sphere collecting bananas with Super Monkey Ball.
This week, game creator Itch.io Nickireda proved that both concepts somehow fit perfectly with Return to Monkey Ball Castle, a free fangame that you can play in an HTML5 compatible browser.
Yes, the famous one-man army BJ Blazkowicz somehow found himself trapped in a translucent sphere and without his usual arsenal of weapons. So, you have to help BJ tilting the whole world to guide your ball through Nazi-infested corridors, picking up bananas and plundering treasures along the way for a high score.
Right, Return to Monkey Ball Castle loses a little by avoiding the analog controls of the Monkey Ball series for digital keyboard instructions. And yes, the levels generated procedurally from the game can end up a little unbalanced and / or simplistic, depending on the random seed you fall into.
Still, there is something incredibly satisfying about seeing a Nazi guard at the end of a corridor, building a good cloud of steam, and simply throwing him to death with a colorful sphere at full speed (and hearing an animated voice shout “Time Bonus! “as a reward). Frankly, it is the kind of mild distraction that is more welcome than ever, given the state of the news these days.
Like any fangame that uses original art and sounds from copyrighted titles, it exists in a state of legal precariousness. Nickireda makes it clear on the game’s Itch.io page that it “exists as a free fan project”, that they consider the game “fair use under an educational license” and that “they will not accept donations or compensation of any kind” for the game .
Hopefully, this will help prevent the usual legal threats that threaten this type of game. Sega has shown a surprising openness to fangames in the past, and id Software has publicly released the source code for Wolfenstein 3D, which suggests that a cease and desist warning may be a little less likely here.
In any case, it is probably best not to delay and go to Itch.io now to enjoy the Nazi destruction. My highest score is just over 1.9 million on the “Death Incarnate” difficulty, and I would love to see someone try to beat that. (Seriously, I would. I need a challenge to judge my skills).
Listing image by Nickireda