Monkey Ball iPhone patch imminent

By Tom Bramwell Published 14 August, 2008

Deadzone tweaks.

SEGA is reportedly "working with Apple" to patch the iPhone/iPod touch version of Super Monkey Ball following complaints about the sensitivity of the control system.

MTV's reliable games blog, Multiplayer reckons the patch has been in the works since before E3 and could go live any day now.

Monkey Ball is a tilt-sensitive puzzle game where slight tweaks to the iPhone's orientation set your ball-encased monkey rolling around mazes in the sky, and Multiplayer says the patch will allow you to tweak the deadzone - the position you have to hold the iPhone to stand your monkey still.

However, it's not clear from the description whether you will be able to change the default angle or whether you will be able to widen the deadzone so it's easier to remain motionless. We'd argue that the latter is what's needed - and did, of course, in yesterday's review.

According to SEGA, Super Monkey Ball sold over 300,000 copies in its first 20 days on the new iTunes App Store, for which it was a launch title, but many complained about the shonky controls. We'll let you know when the patch turns up.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Meho #1 4 years ago

    Damn you Internet, see what you've done?? Now we are going to be accepting patches for games on our telephones??? A couple years back, this would have been an April Fool joke or something...

  • m0thr4 #2 4 years ago

    I much preferred the old days of console gaming (i.e. cartridge era) when a game had to be finished and properly playtested before it was allowed to be sold.

    Sony are the worst offenders in this respect - e.g. Condemned 2 with sound problems that weren't patched until 4 months later and Orange Box that still doesn't support DD 5.1 over an optical cable, 8 months after its release.

  • EvilSpaceMonkey #3 4 years ago

    It would be nice if things had been playtested a bit more before initial release as surely someone in SEGA should have noticed that the sensitivity was way too high? It's impossible on the more complex levels.

    However, moaning about patches like Meho has is just plain stupid. Is it really that much better to go back to the old days where if you had horrid bugs that made something unplayable you had to make do with them... Surely software updates are a good thing? They fix bugs in the code (as no code can ever be 100% problem free no matter how much you test it) and can even extend the game with new functionality... just look at Burnout Paradise. Anyway, Meho has to realise that the iPhone is a UNIX-based phone and will get patches to the core OS regardless. Is that a bad thing too, because I much prefer that than the former "stuck with broken firmware" hell of my previous phone, even if the iPhone still needs some work on it.

    Anyone who really wants to go back to "single release, no patches" is to be honest a tad insane.

  • consignia #4 4 years ago

    It seems Sega regard QA testing as a nice to have these days. I've said it before, but the PS3 Sonic the Hedgehog is actually unplayable.

  • JohnnyWashnGo #5 4 years ago

    @EvilSpaceMonkey

    I would love to return to the single release system as it gaurantees that the game will be playable in the future.

    Games these days require you to be playing them at the time of launch or thereabouts to ensure that any and all bugfixes are picked up and that you can play the game properly. Try playing one of those games in 5 years time and I would bet that trying to patch them to the level where they are playable will be next to impossible.

    My NES/SNES/Dreamcast games all work fine to this day. I wonder if the same will be said about PlayStation/XBOX games in the not too distant future?

  • Meho #6 4 years ago

    I would just like to buy a product that works as advertised without having to check back for updates that might (eventually) bring it to the desired performance level. You know, the recent Hulk game for Xbox 360 was basically unplayable because surprise surpsise SEGA released a version that kept freezing at random points. Sure, it was probably fixed later in a patch, but to me this is like buying a DVD (and paying sixty € for it), getting home, playing it, realising it won't go past the tenth minute and shrugging it off with a "oh well, it will be patched in two or three days, I'll just download the patch and watch it then".

    And here we're talking about a relatively high profile launch title on a new platform. You know, the games usually regarded as defining applications for a new platform... And you need to have it patched before it becomes playable (as advertised)? Well, that doesn't sound good to me.

  • graffekta #7 4 years ago

    I'd quite like it if they also allowed me to listen to my own music without doing that stupid screen lock trick. Oh letting me pause, quit and then resume exactly where I left off would be great also.

    Considering it's a mobile platform, you'd think they'd assume people would like to be able to have a quick run on it - pause it and then come back to it after they've changed trains or replied to a text or something...

  • LazyDan #8 4 years ago

    SHONKY!

  • KennySim #9 4 years ago

    What is actually wrong with the game? Its sensitive but nowhere near unplayable so I don't see why its such a big issue. I managed to complete the game and it was a decent challenge but if tweaking the sensitivity to make it easier to control then it wouldn't have been half as fun for me at least.

  • Mudo #10 4 years ago

    It's a big issue cos rubbish gamers like me like games to be easy or we don't bother.