The Good - Obsession with Monkey Target
For the Christmas of 2002, me and my sister received a Gamecube. The two games that she ended up getting were Super Monkey Ball 1 + 2. Though she played and enjoyed them, I was the one who primarily played them, especially the second one.
The single-player aspect, for SMB2, was fantastic as the stages were genuinely creative and challenging. It was the mini-games that shined though. They were mostly refined versions of those from the first game plus a few new additions. The star of the bunch was Monkey Target.
Here, you control one of the four monkeys from the game as you roll down an incline with your ball, and then open it up to form a set of wings as you soar the skies as you approach the target at the end. You then need to close your "wings" in hopes of landing on a spot that has a high point value. This goes on for several rounds, with several types of targets. It's surprisingly addictive and is more so, in addition to being very competitive, when playing with other people.
That spring, some of my friends in the neighborhood came over and we played various mini-games from SMB2, but as I expect, they took a liking to Monkey Target and we ended up playing that for four hours straight. Four hours of four 12-14 year-olds screaming, sabotaging, and teasing while controlling monkeys in a ball.
That wasn't a one-time deal though. We did it for seven days in a row. We didn't all go to the same school due to age and other reasons, but whenever the last guy was available, we would all gather at my place for a Monkey Target marathon.
My dad wasn't too happy about it since it screwed with our dinner plans. I forget what my mom and sister were doing, but they were out of town for the week. Me and my dad ended up going to Skyline Chili for dinner that entire week because he worked the night shift and didn't have time to make me dinner that late and get to work in time.
After that week was up, we never played that game the same way. We still played it on occasion but certainly not longer than an hour a session.
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