Gaming's Defining Moments - Super Monkey Ball

Me? My wish-list of yet-to-be's is fairly extensive, but there's one title whose name is raised every social gathering, one with a specific time stamp on it, that I know I'll never get. And digital re-release is the only conceivable - honest - way I could play Super Monkey Ball's Monkey Target again.

That's original version, circa 2002 for GameCube now. Unsullied from sequel tinkering. A game that was fitted into nearly every Friday night and nearly every day come exam time, for my second year of University.

Super Monkey Ball carried that stigma that all truly classic launch games tend to wear. The title in the line-up that's outshone by other high profile releases of the day - yet's the one you can't stop playing or talking about when you finally give it a go. Rogue Squadron may have wowed everyone from critics to George Lucas, but it was Super Monkey Ball, and specifically its Party game Monkey Target that became a mainstay for blowing off steam during the twelve months of second-year University.

The five-round Monkey Target was one of three 'Party' games on the disc built for multiplayer. Players took it in turns to roll their simian down a ramp and fling them into the air, tapping a button to split the ball the chimps were encased in two and operate as a glider.

Precision control and compensation for wind velocity were all important as dotted in the vast ocean below were a series of colour-coded platforms, each colour designating a score. The smallest middle part, and even some solitary platforms no wider than the ball you'd just escaped from would rack up the points if the landing was successful.

Adjustment had to made for the ball's physics - with another button press you'd retract the ball's back in, and you'd drop like a stone, but compensate for a slight roll on hitting terra firma.

That took skill alone, but that didn't grab you gold.

Each round introduced different platforms. We started with circles, moved on to rectangular blocks and more complex designs that'd were built to roll you into the ocean if you put a foot - or ball - wrong.

Dotted throughout the sky above were ability-boosting bananas, the collection of each would shunt you one stage further along a five-step ability branch. They were roughly divided between score multipliers (x2, x3), and an increasingly stronger "sticky" ability that'd almost suction your ball wherever it first touched.

Anyone could turn the ongoing scoreboards on their head.

Of course, what resulted was a lot of people, myself included, trying to one-up each other with increasingly daring feats - and screwing it most times. But that's the great thing about local multiplayer; ragging on your friends.

And after the tomfoolery, as it always goes, things get serious. Right around the time the developer decided to stick in ball-busting bombs in the sky as well. Microsoft Flight Simulator players had nothing on the careful aerial trajectories we could pull off on the tweak of an analog stick.

Personal strategies developed, and in five rounds rolled out continuously over a year Target was the site for ballsy manoeuvres, risky flight arcs, last second fouls and wins scooped in the gamble of a last round all-out assault.

It's the closest I'd seen at the time of a developer matching Nintendo at its own game. There was an irony that the developer was Sega and this, its inaugural title as a third-party publisher for its oldest rival.

Monkey Ball has aped Ridge Racer's trend to re-release come every new format launch, but the sequels, while good, haven't quite matched the purity of this.