I liked that part too :]

"The bananas are too tasty!" :]

That’s so awesome xD

The moment I discovered the bomb hits sent the ball flying into the air, I went into a similar hysterical laughing fit xD It’s SO silly that they actually function that way even before the ball’s wings have been closed

As for “thinking up the routing”, this whole thing happened just because I had the funny idea to reach the targets without opening wings. I could’ve never guessed the bombs would allow for literally every bunch to be collected, I didnt even know they affected ball-rolling gameplay at all! It made me jump the first time one exploded and i went flying into the air 0_0

​@namb0 did it jumpscare you when you first hit the bomb

@@SD-MB-BB-CRYes, it totally did! I remember shouting out loud and the people i was discord calling with asked me what was going on xD

Rolling around on the targets was literally a childhood dream of mine :D

When i was very young i used to always wonder if it was even possible, u can actually get pretty dang close outside of TAS on that first map 0_0

a LOT of monkeys fell in the water 0_0 I thiiiink they're ok tho? :P

I didnt keep track of hours, but it took a lot of work over the course of about a week. The TAS file has 27,600 re-records (AKA # of times i loaded a savestate)

To be honest, my original idea was just to reach the targets, get like a few singles, and then open wings to get like 10 more bunches. I did NOT expect the bombs to actually shoot the ball into the air, allowing for literally every banana to be collected on rounds 1 and 4 0_0

The reason I was able to scoot around on the stages was because Monkey Target goes through 3 modes in sequence: Rolling, Flying, then Dropping. The normal “dropping” state after u close ur wings gives u no control over the ball, and ends the round by collecting points on whatever target ur on (including the starting ramp, which gives u 1 point while saying “oh no!”) Because I was able to use janky ramp collision to reach the first target on rounds 1 and 4 without opening wings, I never needed to enter the “Drop” state where u lose control of the ball, so I could roll around collecting bananas as much as i pleased. The bombs ended up being an unexpected ally for being able to get as many bunches as possible before opening the ball’s wings, since they could boost my height by a ton without any flying needed.

The other non-obvious thing at play during rounds 3 and 5 in particular is banana-RNG. The bananas in Monkey Target are randomly generated, so both their amount and position will change depending on which frame u pressed A to move on from the previous round. This meant for the stages where I needed to get lots of fly-by singles, I needed to use savestates to keep re-rolling the RNG for those rounds by pressing A at slightly different times until I got bananas in a clean line that i could fly through, plus wind that points in a helpful direction (the wind direction + strength is determined by the same RNG). This was particularly obnoxious on Round 3, where I needed to get at least 9 fly-by singles to reach the next x3-multiplier on the powerup list. Every time I got a layout with lines of 3 on each target, I never had enough speed to get that final bunch. It was only once I lucked out with that insane line of 6 fly-by bananas on the first target where I was able to skip target 2 and BARELY have enough speed to get the final bunch with all 9 fly-by singles i wanted. This combination of precise flying and obnoxious RNG made round 3 harder the hardest in the tas, Im glad that map only shows up once ‘^-^

@@namb0 this is indispensable information, thank you! How many re records did you end up having?

@@QueenOfPessimism According to my input recording file, just over 27,600. The real number may be a little bit higher because of going back to an old input recording when having to re-do a round at some point, but it's a good estimate of ~30,000.

That's actually the post-bomb animation, Gon Gon is stuck in that animation because we've hit the bombs but the game never expected us to do that before opening the wings. It's the same reason the ball spins out and loses all its speed when we finally do open the wings later in that round, cuz the ball is set to a spin-out state when we hit the bombs but the spin out can't happen while the wings arent open :0

You lose control of the ball after closing the wings, so once the ball stops rolling if it lands on the ramp the game awards literally 1 point and says "Oh no!" as a little easter egg :0

I believe that is a feature unique to Monkey Target 2 (the version in SMB2) which has a much different scoring system. Would be neat to see a TAS with it tho, just not sure if I’d be the one to do it :P

Because of how bounce restitution works in Monkey Ball, chaining infinite height off consecutive bomb bounces unfortunately doesnt seem possible. However, in Round 4 I got a looot of height from hitting 3 bombs that happened to spawn close together. Makes me also wonder how much height u would get from hitting 4 bombs at once from high up. I know distance-wise Monkey Target does have an invisible barrier, but I have no clue if there's an invisible barrier for height too 0_0

For bombs, I just went with what I was given, but the banana counts on rounds 1 and 4 needed to be high enough for me to reach the next powerup cycle, so I did use RNG manip for that! (As well as for banana positions on all the other rounds, for workable flight patterns)

@@namb0 Makes sense to me, great work on this!

Pretty much exactly correct. The only reason I was able to use the bombs in rounds 1 and 4 is because the targets are JUST close enough to the start ramp to be able to make the distance without entering flight mode. Since the targets are much further on the other 2 maps, I had to opt for optimizing the flight patterns (which actually proved to be just as hard as the more flashy-looking bomb shenanigans, especially on round 3!)

Its partly that, and in rounds 1 & 4 its because the bombs let the ball get tons and tons of excess height when u hit multiple at once.

The current score record for 5-round actually hits the x3 500 landing at every round where that powerup is available, it's a really fun challenge :D kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ntqVm8dqps_LiKs.html

I actually am not sure! Never played ps2 or xbox deluxe, so I wouldnt know.

@@namb0 you can try it using the ps2 emulator but idk about the xbox emulator one

Some of the bombs land in the water when they first drop during the cutscene tho, guess we’ll need scuba gear… 0_0