Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz: New Screens

You may have noticed that we're quite excited about a certain scheduled Wii title involving monkeys, bananas and balancing. There are those of us at SPOnG HQ who bought release Gamecubes purely as Super Monkey Ball enablement devices. Those of you who share our love of the Amusement Vision masterwork, and who are similarly afflicted by latent Nintendo/SEGA fanboyism hardly need the delicate joys of monkey balling explained. That won't stop us blabbing on in an emotional nostalgic haze.

The smug elitism of the early days; the unofficial online Monkey Target highscore rankings (we were fifth with 7300 odd points once, y'know); the opinion dividing second installment; the sense of bewilderment and betrayal as the once 'Cube exclusive debuted on rival machines, with exclusive features to boot; more recently, the exultation when it seemed that Aiai and chums would return to the bosom of a new Nintendo machine, with a control system even more ideal than that perfectly weighted Gamecube analogue stick.

There's little more to report today, but new pictures have emerged which bring that joyful Nintendo monkey reunion a little closer. Feast your eyes on the blue skies and imagine the monkey whoops and spangly banana noises. Not long now...