Super Monkey Ball 2 Soon to Hit the App Store in Time for the Holidays

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sega has announced that Super Monkey Ball 2 (iTunes Link) will be available for this holiday season. It is currently in the app submission process and could hit the App Store any day.

Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone was one of the first launch titles for the App Store. Since the launch, its sales have extremely well, far exceeding Sega’s expectation. “It sold really, really well. I wish I could give you the official numbers, but I’m not at liberty to do that. But it has gone past our wildest expectations,” says SEGA’s Ethan Einhorn. “We know that even though the game has continued to sell really well through the course of its lifespan, there’s definitely an audience just waiting for the game to get bigger and better, which is what we’re doing with Super Monkey Ball 2.”

Super Monkey Ball 2 will feature 115 stages, local Wi-Fi multi-player, better graphics and tighter controls. Sega has paid extra attention to improve its accelerator controls. Poor control system was one of the main complaints of many gamers toward the original Super Monkey Ball. SEGA’s Einhorn comments on its effort to improve controls.

“That took precedence over everything else. We looked very, very closely at what was working on the Wii game in terms of motion controls and what we could extrapolate from that. Part of what we were able to pull from that was much better control over the left and right movement of the character. So we have something now where it is just so much easier to control the character and to make the precision movements that you have to.”

Super Monkey Ball 2 will feature five worlds from the Wii game Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. The 3D world will look and feel better than the original iPhone game. Local Wi-Fi multi-player will allow 4 players to race in any of the 115 stages. Super Monkey Ball 2 will also feature mini-games. Super Monkey Ball 2 will launch with Monkey Bowling. After that SEGA will periodically release other mini-games. Monkey Golf and Monkey Target is scheduled to be released via free download next February. With Monkey Bowling, player simply flick their finger to get your Monkey Bowling Ball to move towards the pins. Players can also tilt their devices to control the Monkey Balls during a roll.

There is no price yet for Super Monkey Ball 2. But $9.99 could be your best bet for the initial launch.

Via IGN

This is a post by the App Machine.