Jump (ability)

For the Adventure stage of the same name, see Jump (stage).

The ability to jump in the Main Game is granted a few times throughout the Super Monkey Ball series, namely in Banana Blitz (HD) and in Banana Mania. It allows players to reach elevated areas and to leap across gaps.

Description

In Banana Blitz

The jump feature debuts in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. In this game, a jump input is made by pressing the A button or by holding the B button and swinging the Wii Remote upward. Upward momentum is added when a jump input is made, and holding the jump button or swinging the remote harder results in gravity temporarily being reduced so that the jump goes higher, a common technique in video games with variable jump heights.

Unlike in most platformers, the vertical momentum of the jump is affected by the monkey's current momentum; if they are rolling down a slope, the downward vertical momentum will stack with the upward vertical momentum added by the jump, and vice versa. Jumping can be performed as long as the monkey's ball is in contact with solid ground and during a small window after bouncing off the ground, with jumping during this window cancelling all but a small amount of the vertical momentum of the bounce.

Many of the stages in Banana Blitz are designed with the jump ability in mind, as there are parts of stages that are impossible to reach or avoid without jumping. An example is the 3rd stage of Sinking Swamp, where crossing the various platforms wouldn't be possible due to several factors.

Each character has different jump strengths: AiAi has an average jump height, MeeMee and Baby jump higher than AiAi, while GonGon jumps lower. YanYan jumps the highest, and Doctor jumps the lowest.

In Banana Mania

Banana Mania would later bring the jump ability back, although this time it isn't mandatory and all characters share the same jump height. The ability can be purchased from the Point Shop in exchange for 30,000 Banana Points.

Several changes were made to the jump feature. Jumps no longer cancel most of the vertical momentum from a bounce. Additionally, they cannot be performed when the player's monkey ball is tipping over the edge of a platform, preventing last-second saves that were possible in Banana Blitz, but also preventing the player from jumping while straddling between solid ground, such as in the stage Gutter. Oddly, a jump also can't be performed when standing on the solid part of a horizontal goal, like on Free Fall.

Techniques

Several techniques are possible to perform using the jump ability:

• Double jumping is a technique in Banana Blitz. When jumping after landing from a previous jump, most (but not all) of the momentum from the bounce is removed. The small amount of momentum that is not cancelled out stacks with the momentum of the second jump, causing it to go slightly higher. This technique is actually required in order to collect some banana bunches in Pirates Ocean stage 7.
• Momentum cancelling is a technique in Banana Blitz that allows the momentum from a bounce to be mostly negated by jumping as the bounce occurs. This works because as stated above, most of the momentum from the bounce is removed, allowing the player only to bounce up a short distance when landing from a great fall with a well-timed jump.
• Jumping for speed is common in speedrunning as friction is much lower in the air in Banana Blitz and absent entirely in the air in Banana Mania, allowing the player to build up more speed by repeatedly jumping while holding forward. To compensate for this, some forward momentum is deducted upon the jump initially occurring, but this is outweighed by the benefit of the reduced friction.
• Chain jumping is a technique in Banana Mania, which exploits the fact that jumping no longer negates most of the momentum from a bounce. Jumps can be chained together, and the momentum from the bounce upon landing from them can be stacked with the momentum from the next jump to jump higher. When performed repeatedly and combined with forward momentum, this allows for jumps that go more than twice as high as the base jump height in Banana Mania.

Trivia

• While Sonic had a unique jump sound in Banana Blitz HD, all characters in Banana Mania now also make this sound when jumping.
  • This sound effect was taken from Banana Blitz's Monkey Wars, a party game that didn't return in Banana Blitz HD.
• In Banana Blitz HD and Banana Mania, when performing a held jump into an upward slope with sufficient speed, the player will land before the game expects them to, and the jump animation won't be cancelled. Instead it will proceed to the last frame of the animation and freeze on that frame for as long as the player keeps rolling up the slope.