New Super Monkey Ball Game Reportedly in Development

A new Super Monkey Ball game is reportedly in development that will be more in line with Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2 and less in line with the more recent, less popular, and frankly inferior Super Monkey games. The game won’t be called Super Monkey Ball 3, but for all intents and purposes, it might as well be called that because it will bring the series back to its roots.

The new report comes way of former industry journalist and popular YouTuber Nick Robinson, who not only relays word of the game, but shares an interview with a current voice actor on the game — or more specifically the original announcer from the first two games — talking about the game pretty openly, yet vaguely in order not to violate the NDA they clearly signed.

The voice actor Brian Matt confirms to Robinson that a new Monkey Ball game is in development at Sega, and they’ve been brought back to work on it. Matt doesn’t divulge many salient details, but hints the game will be more like the first two games in the series.

Of course, everything here should be taken with a grain of salt. Not only is nothing here official, but everything is subject to change. That said, you really can’t get a better source than a voice actor working on the game, holding official SEGA papers in their hands as they talk about the game in order to make sure they don’t violate NDA.

Super Monkey Ball is an arcadey platformer series that debuted back in 2001 via Amusement Vision and Sega as an upright arcade cabinet. Then, later that year, the experience was brought to the Nintendo GameCube. It not only sold well, but was critically-acclaimed, and as a result spawned Super Monkey Ball 2 a year later, which also sold well and was critically-acclaimed. Some — like me — may even say it’s one of the best games of all time. Countless follow-ups and spin-offs followed, but the quality of these games quickly declined.

It’s now been six years since we got a brand new release. However, last year the series returned with a remaster of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz dubbed Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD. It wasn’t very good, mostly because the original game isn’t very good, but apparently it helped generate enough interest to revive the series. And it sounds like this revival is going back to what initially made the series so great.