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If you look back on its development now, Monkey Ball is a game that seemed perfectly suited for the Sega Dreamcast.
Not only was it developed using the Sega NAOMI arcade hardware (a system that shared a lot of the same architecture as the Dreamcast), but it also seemed to share the bright, colourful aesthetic of a lot of other games Sega released on the platform (titles like Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5, and Sonic Adventure). Because of this, I'm willing to go out on a limb and argue it would have felt right at home on Sega's console, becoming another feather in the system's cap and sitting proudly alongside some of the company's heavy hitters.
As we all know, though, this unfortunately wasn't to be, with Sega discontinuing the Dreamcast in early 2001 and deciding to move into third-party development. As a result, Monkey Ball's console debut wasn't on a Sega system but instead on the Nintendo GameCube, with the title serving as one of that system's launch titles.
Now, though, thanks to a dedicated fan developer named @memorix101, we finally have the opportunity to see what a port of Monkey Ball to the Dreamcast might look like, with a new homebrew version for the Sega console currently being developed.
The port came to our attention thanks to a recent video from thesegaguru on YouTube, and is described as a "reimplementation of Monkey Ball using GameCube assets from Super Monkey Ball." It currently features "the first 10 or so" levels from the GameCube title, and is essentially "a proof-of-concept," but is already looking mighty impressive from what we can see.
As thesegaguru notes, because it uses GameCube assets, it includes some elements not present in the original Monkey Ball. For instance, when you bump into objects, stars will appear onscreen — an effect added in the GameCube entry. As for the Dreamcast VMU, it apparently currently acts as a bit of a data stamp, but similar to thesegaguru, we'd be interested in seeing whether more bespoke functionality can be added in the future.
Sadly, a public demo is not yet available, but you can view some of @memorix101's other projects here, including his Dreamcast port of the original Prince of Persia, which we covered last year.