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Tips & Terminology
Here's a couple things to help you out, from descriptions to techniques.
Check back frequently, because more will be added later.
Bananas � Assuming you get the time bonus, a single banana is equivalent to half a second, and a bunch is worth 5 seconds. Not suprisingly, it is almost always better to get a bunch than to not get a bunch. For single bananas, you have to judge by yourself if it is worth a detour.
Boosting � Strangely, the fastest way to start is NOT by holding up. If you just hold up on B1, you'll finish with 58.30 remaining. Now try holding up-right as you fall down at the beginning, move a bit to the right, and then hold up-left. You basically just make a curve, as if you were dodging a hole in the ground in front of you. Try it on B1, and you will get 58.31, and if you do it correctly you'll get 58.33 for the record. Boosting is easy to master and is extremely important. There are several strategies and crazy stunts that can only be done with boosting.
Boost Left � Hold up-left at the beginning, then hold up-right to straighten out.
Boost Right � Hold up-right at the beginning, then hold up-left to straighten out.
Bumpers � They were made to be your enemy, but they can be your friends! Hit them at a good angle and they will send you flying, and that can be extremely useful in many situations. Take a look at the A30 strategy for an example.
Cutting Corners � If you need to go around a corner (say, to the right), you can usually go right early, hit the edge and bounce over to the right. This is obviously faster and is used quite often.
Jumping � Clearly there is no jump button in this game. But if you roll over a hole or hit an edge or a wall at high speed, you will bounce up and in some direction, depending on angle and speed. More jumps than you think are possible. Try jumping over bumpers, gaps (even big ones), walls, whatever.
One Frame � As you may or may not have noticed, the game runs at 60 frames per second. That means that the temporal distance between two frames is 0.016666 seconds. AV (Amusement Vision, creators of Super Monkey Ball) solved this by only allowing 6 of the 10 digits in the hundredths place, namely 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, and 8. This means that a one frame improvement of a 58.30 finish is 58.31, but the next improvement is 58.33. One frame will either mean a two or four point difference.
"Pick up the banana on the right" � Often in the game when you're going for records, you need to pick up a banana that is hard to get, or you want to just barely pick it up because you would waste time otherwise. When I say, "Pick up the banana on the right," I mean the right side of the banana. You roll to the right of the banana, and the left side of the ball touches the right side of the banana. If I say, "Pick up the banana on the left," just reverse all the directions.
Pull Over � As in, "Pull over to the left." Hold up-left to do this, and switch the directions if you have to pull over to the right. Rarely in this game do you need to push just left or right, it is usually up-left or up-right.
Reverse Engineering � If the statistics on these pages are not up-to-date, you can often reverse engineer scores to get the finish time and the bananas. For example, the record on B1 is 11966. If you minus 300 for the three bananas you pick up, you'll have 11666, and then divide by 2 to account for the time bonus and you'll get 5833, which means a finish time of 58.33. This can be done for any level, provided you know how many bananas were picked up.
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