Kororinpa: Marble Mania Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Kororinpa Marble Mania is in essence Super Monkey Ball without the monkeys. Taking its cue from the classic Labyrinth game, you guide the maze in 3D and the marble acts with basic physics responses.

First, the premise. You have a series of themed maps that involve three dimensions of track. As you twist and turn the Wii remote, the track moves to match. As you give a tilt to the board, the marble rolls down the tilt.This is of course the basics - but soon there are ramps, sliding doors, sliding platforms, rotating pieces and other tricky objects involved in your path.

There are of course crystals to collect - what would a game be without collecting crystals! There is also a bonus green item on each level which is rather tricky to achieve, but unlocks new items. This gives you incentive to go back and re-play levels repeatedly.

Each level has its own theme. There are nature themes with leafy objects, a sugar-high theme with candies and cookies, an industrial theme with concrete, a cardboardy paper-Mario style theme, and so on. There are also background theme songs to unlock, and a variety of balls. Some make cute little noises, like the pink pig or the mrowling cat.

My first reaction was - do we really need another Super Monkey Ball game? Super Monkey Ball has a ton of great mini-games, great levels, and all around fun. Kororinpa is lacking a lot of that. All you have is mazes. The multi-player is just map racing.

It is challenging in a brain-train sort of way to figure out the solution to each puzzle, thinking in three dimensions. So from that point of view, I suppose you can consider this "Monkey Ball 1A" - not really better than Monkey Ball, but it gives you a new set of puzzles to figure out.Again, though, it lacks a lot of the features that Monkey Ball has, so I would start with the Monkey Ball series, and then move on to this one once you've figured all the Monkey Ball puzzles out.

The only real complaint I have about the core game is that the game treats the balls too delicately. There were many times where we were done with the first half of a map, and did a 'leap' to get to the second half. We landed nicely, plainly on the map, and it made us die. These are marbles! They're not eggs! If they land on a surface, they don't explode in a million pieces :)

I do have to give kudos here to the Wii remote. When I remember back to playing these types of games on a regular remote, it was always a little challenging to get the board tilt just right with the stick or buttons. With the Wii remote, it is very simple and obvious. You tilt the remote - the board tilts. No thought, no translation - it simply does what you do.

Recommended!

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Product Description:
Kororinpa: Marble Mania is a fun and addictive action puzzle game for your Wii Remote. Players tilt and rotate the Wiimote to roll a ball around a maze to reach the goal. Using an intuitive control scheme, gamers of all ages and skill levels can pick up a Wii Remote and immediately join the fun.

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Super Monkey Ball Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I just bought a GC less than a week ago and this was one of the first games I purchased. This game is flat out fun, no other word to describe it. I read some inaccuracies in the official review and in some other reviews on here. You don't tilt the floor in this game, you are actually in control of the monkey in the transparent ball and you move them around in the ball to get through the board. Sometimes the board tilts and gives the illusion that you are controlling the board as opposed to the monkey but that's not the case. You have a time limit to get to the goal without falling off of the board. There are four unique monkeys to choose from, and more than one person can use the same character, they'll just be a different color. Along the way, you can collect bananas and like Mario or Donkey Kong games, when you collect 100, you get a 1up.
Anyway, if you play one player mode, you must have patience. There are three difficulty levels: Beginner, Advanced, and Expert. Each has 10, 30, and 50 levels, respectively. Beginner is pretty easy, I finished all 10 levels without losing any monkeys. Getting to board 30 on Advanced is a trip and I still haven't been able to pass it, but half of the fun was getting there. Expert is really hard and of the 50 levels, I've probably seen 10. When you play in one player mode, you earn Play Points. Play Points allow you to unlock the Mini Games (Monkey Billiards, Monkey Bowling, and Monkey Golf). It kind of reminds me of Mario Party in that respect. So far, I've unlocked Bowling and Billiards, both of which are fun.
The cool thing about this game is that every mode can be played in multiplayer. (Just remember, you can only earn Play Points in one player mode.) Whether you want four people to play the regular floor-to-floor game, or Monkey Fight (knock your opponent off the platform with a boxing glove, a little like a minigame in Mario Party), or Monkey Race (a lot like Mario Kart with the items), or the Target game (a lot like P-Wings, I love this mode, a whole lot of fun). In addition, all of the minigames can be played by up to four people. Bowling is very straight forward, pick the angle, then the power, then the spin you want to put on the ball. Billiards is 9-ball. Haven't seen Golf yet.
Half of the fun is watching. My friends and I, a 24, 25, 26 and 29 year-old were playing this for a couple of hours, and we all go for different types of games. The monkeys are so entertaining that you find yourself laughing at them constantly. Trying not to fall off in the Normal Mode will ruin your nerves. It keeps you on the edge of your seat when you're watching someone manuever through a tough spot. It's one of those games that makes it fun to be a spectator.
Simply put, I love this game. There is enough variety that everyone should be able to find something they like about it. The fact that the four of us found any one game great was amazing. This is a must buy for Gamecube.

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Product Description:
In Super Monkey Ball, you're in control of a cute little monkey trapped inside a transparent ball. The objective of the game is deceptively simple: tilt the floor with your analog stick so that your monkey ball rolls towards the goal. Your success is all in the thumb: the more you tilt, the faster the ball rolls. Just be sure not to fall off the edges! You can play with up to four others to see who can master the tilt and get their monkeys to the finish line ahead of the pack.

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