Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble - World 9 - Caelum

Unable to catch up to Easel, AiAi and his friends, along with the Gala Family (who may or may not be his new friends), reach Caelum, a technologically advanced nation high up in the clouds, hidden from the rest of the world. It is a civilization of holograms, rockets, hover technology, Tron lines, robots, and glowing blue power. If there was any example of vastly differing technology in the Super Monkey Ball world, pretty common in video games, it’s Banana Rumble, as while we’ve had space colonies and satellites in the past, they tended to be built by mad scientists centuries ahead of their time, or, in the case of Banana Splitz, time travel. This…shows that Jetsons-esque technology simply exists, and alongside the Stone Age technology used in the jungle civilizations that the beginnings of Super Monkey Ball games always begin in. Not much of an introduction, story-wise though: at 18 seconds, it is the shortest intro cutscene in the game of any World. “Caelum” is Latin for “heaven.” As you can see, they crank up the heat further here, as we are getting near the end. Some of the stages are designed not to make you fall off, but to run out the clock. All stages in Banana Rumble give you 60 seconds, and they are calibrated for you to use most of it on a successful run, or to trap you somewhere for a while. For World 9, I use Tee, the well-read, well-educated member of the Gala Family. While in real life, a sheep is bigger than a caracal, Tee is the smallest of the Gala Family, and this is reflected in his low top speed and low momentum (and is easily pushed around in Battle Mode), but fast Spin Dash charge and ability to stop and turn on a dime. 00:18 - 9-01 Rolling Gear 00:52 - 9-02 Square Panels 02:32 - 9-03 Sundial 04:12 - 9-04 Broken Square 06:02 - 9-05 Switch Adventure 08:09 - 9-06 Mirage 09:06 - 9-07 Spiral Zone 09:49 - 9-08 Bar Graph 11:04 - 9-09 Switching Panels 13:18 - 9-10 Angel Ladder 9-02, Square Panels, feels like a Super Monkey Ball 1 stage: very compact, but also very difficult and time-consuming. It looks simple, but the way the platforms move, there seems to be a particular intended route that will require most of your 60 seconds. 9-05, Switch Adventure, can be very confusing at first, because the colored platforms need to activate for it to make sense. The correct sequence is to turn right at the intersection, hit the play button, ride the now-spinning turquoise platform to the play button opposite of the first one (you need the turquoise platform to spin to reach it) to get the magenta platform to start spinning, and return to the turquoise platform and ride it to the pause button so you can stop the magenta platform as it lines up to make a bridge to the goal. The Golden Banana is located to the left in the magenta platform’s area; you need to ride it without pausing it, pick up the Golden Banana, and ride the magenta platform to the goal. 9-06, Mirage, is likely named after the platforms’ resemblance to magic carpets. 9-07, Spiral Zone, resembles Super Monkey Ball 2’s Double Spiral in concept, though this one is easier because the spirals are wider, and it’s easier to see where it’s level. 9-08, Bar Graph, has two segments that don’t feel thematically related. Each of them feel like they’re better off as their own stage, or part of another with different permutations of the elevator concept and the stepping stones concept (though the latter would be revisited as a full stage in two parts). 9-10, Angel Ladder, seems to have been intentionally placed as Caelum’s last stage due to its theme of glorious ascension. AiAi does, in fact, catch up to Easel, but he is still one step ahead, activating a trap that separates the monkeys from the Gala Family. He no longer needs Palette as a bargaining chip anymore and allows her to join back up with AiAi (though forcefully), and it is here that Palette becomes a permanent part of AiAi’s group of friends, who decide to help her save Easel from the OOParts’ corruption. And with that, we have one more World before the story is completed: Astrum, containing the story mode’s last and hardest sets of stages. Some of them are infamous among Super Monkey Ball fans and confirm that it is, at last, a worthy follow-up to the first two (or three) games.