Super Monkey Ball is the greatest thing that's happened to Sega the past five years. You're certainly free to debate me on such a claim, but it's probably best to just save your strength, smile and nod. There's certainly been some other quality games, but the Monkey Ball titles are clearly the best, as they're not only easy to pick up and play, but offer enough challenge to lure the "hardcore" set. They're all cute, but somehow they transcend "cute". They're fun for the whole family, geeks, jocks, and even serial killers (I suppose).

Unfortunately, the entire franchise is in jeopardy thanks to Sega (of course) and Traveller's Tales, the developers that struck gold with the immensely popular Lego Star Wars. Both parties have joined forces to turn the series upside down, and the result is Super Monkey Ball Adventure, an evolution of sorts that strays away from the tried and true puzzle board solving in exchange for a full fledged story mode where you must explore different areas of an island in the hope to spread happiness and cheer, the goal being to convince characters to allow a prince/princess from opposing kingdoms get married. To that we say, the hell?

It's human nature to assume that this game is going to be good simply because the developer's previous project was so well-received, but that's just silly. It's true that Traveller's Tales really nailed one out of the park, yet at the same time, no one really expected them to, so Lego Star Wars was a sleeper hit. But Monkey Ball is already an established franchise, one that's garnered much praise and a plethora of fans. We're not expecting the game to suck, but we are skeptical that the people involved can actually pull this off.

Basically, Super Monkey Ball Adventure is made up of three different parts: Story Mode, Challenge Mode, and Party Mode. Story is the meat of the game, a fairly large adventure full of platform hopping and enemy bashing. You'll interact with 60 plus characters, navigate your monkey ball through all types of danger, and chant to make use of various magic spells that instill your character's monkey ball with special abilities. Doing so will attach a mighty boxing glove to the ball, enable it to hover, float, of turn it invisible. And you can only use one at a time, so that should make for some interesting puzzle solving scenarios. Plus, there are collectible bananas hidden about the levels, and uncovering those will unlock all types of goodies such as new characters and levels for the party games, of which there are six: Monkey Race, Monkey Boxing, Monkey Target, Monkey Tag, Monkey Bounce, and Monkey Cannon.

The first three are mainstays from the previous games. Monkey Race tasks you with defeating your opponents in a race to the finish line, Boxing places four monkeys in a ring and tests your skills at pushing the others out, and Target lets you fire a monkey high into the air, the goal being to land on a dart board of sorts.

As for the last three, Monkey Tag is just your normal game of tag. We're not sure what Bounce is all about, but Sega's given us the low down on Cannon. Each player (up to four) has a castle made of bricks, and the goal is to repeatedly fire monkeys at your opponents to knock down their walls. In between rounds you can rebuild your castle, albeit with a limited number of bricks, and you can supposedly outfit them with defense items such as spikes. It sounds like fun, but it's a shame that none of it can be played online. All we've got is turn-based and split screen play.

Challenge Mode is a bit of a mystery, but we're guessing that it contains a bunch of traditional Monkey Ball puzzles in which the object is to maneuver the game board in order to guide the monkey to the goal. If this is true, it definitely makes the Story Mode easier to swallow, and serves as some added insurance just in case it's bad.

The PS2 and GameCube versions appear to be identical, but the PSP port actually contains additional content. Not only is there an exclusive spell known as the Banana Vacuum (sucks up bananas), but there's also a collectible card game, the ability to customize your own cards and send them to other players, and "director's cut" puzzles and new quests not found in the console iterations. We're not sure if that'll be enough to warrant two purchases, but we admit to being intrigued.

Thus far, the game is on track to be shipped on August 1st and we're looking forward to playing it in depth. However, we are a bit concerned that Sega has veered off the path just a bit. Expect a detailed review shortly after the game's release.