Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Things get tougher for Golden Temple EX, the fourth EX world. It shows that the designers of the stages for Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble do understand the design philosophy behind the classic Super Monkey Ball stages, which was lost somewhere along the way when SEGA decided to leave the single-player mode by the wayside and reassign the series for minigame collections. The day makes way for evening in Golden Temple, and while the riches remain, the traps get trickier.
No story here though—it’s for people who want the classic Super Monkey Ball challenge. But if you’ve been following each video, by now, you’d already know that.
Remember how you could remove or put on Easel’s mask by highlighting him in the character select screen and pressing L, L, R, L, R, R? Well, you can do the same with Tee's lock of hair over his left eye. Normally, it hangs over his eye, but once he’s focused on a thought, he brushes it aside to show both of his eyes. (There is nothing special about his left eye.) Hence, because this is a tougher challenge than Caelum (debatably), it would only make sense that he’s more focused here.
00:00 - 4 EX-01 Giant Slalom
01:04 - 4 EX-02 Inductor
03:00 - 4 EX-03 Fragments
04:15 - 4 EX-04 Open the Gates
04:47 - 4 EX-05 Emoticon
05:22 - 4 EX-06 Secret Portal
06:29 - 4 EX-07 Interruption
07:34 - 4 EX-08 Eastern Gates
09:03 - 4 EX-09 All Sides
11:06 - 4 EX-10 Perilous Parasols
For 4 EX-01, Giant Slalom, Tee is not heavy enough or fast enough to stay on the ramp as it curves upwards to the upside-down portion, instead, he got stuck between boost pads, so I chose to restart. Instead, Tee can clear this by the way harder method of bouncing over to the goal.
4 EX-02, Inductor, is a sequel to 4-02, Straw, being made up of the same bamboo chutes, but in a much more demanding shape more prone to you falling out. It is named after an inductor coil, a device used to create magnetic energy from an electrical current), due to it beginning and ending with a coil-shaped path with a pole in the middle. (You may have seen cylindrical lumps in electronic cables, namely power and USB cables. Inside is an inductor, used to minimize radio waves from interfering in the electronic items’ functions.)
I don’t know what the play button does in 4 EX-3, Fragments.
The face carved onto the main platform in 4 EX-5, Emoticon, is a henohenomoheji, a doodle made out of Japanese characters that resembles a face. It long predates emoticons (or emojis, for that matter), dating back to the Edo period.
The “secret portal” found in 4 EX-6, Secret Portal, is directly underneath the central platform. Finding it is necessary to gain the height needed to reach the goal. I accidentally approached it too fast though; I wound up getting the Golden Banana I couldn’t get on my first time through!
4 EX-09, All Sides, is a series of trials involving platforms moving in particular directions: left, then right, then up, then down. I find it tricky because the bamboo rows are so insanely narrow, even if they’re in a straight line.
Things get tougher for Golden Temple EX, the fourth EX world. It shows that the designers of the stages for Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble do understand the design philosophy behind the classic Super Monkey Ball stages, which was lost somewhere along the way when SEGA decided to leave the single-player mode by the wayside and reassign the series for minigame collections. The day makes way for evening in Golden Temple, and while the riches remain, the traps get trickier.
No story here though—it’s for people who want the classic Super Monkey Ball challenge. But if you’ve been following each video, by now, you’d already know that.
Remember how you could remove or put on Easel’s mask by highlighting him in the character select screen and pressing L, L, R, L, R, R? Well, you can do the same with Tee's lock of hair over his left eye. Normally, it hangs over his eye, but once he’s focused on a thought, he brushes it aside to show both of his eyes. (There is nothing special about his left eye.) Hence, because this is a tougher challenge than Caelum (debatably), it would only make sense that he’s more focused here.
00:00 - 4 EX-01 Giant Slalom
01:04 - 4 EX-02 Inductor
03:00 - 4 EX-03 Fragments
04:15 - 4 EX-04 Open the Gates
04:47 - 4 EX-05 Emoticon
05:22 - 4 EX-06 Secret Portal
06:29 - 4 EX-07 Interruption
07:34 - 4 EX-08 Eastern Gates
09:03 - 4 EX-09 All Sides
11:06 - 4 EX-10 Perilous Parasols
For 4 EX-01, Giant Slalom, Tee is not heavy enough or fast enough to stay on the ramp as it curves upwards to the upside-down portion, instead, he got stuck between boost pads, so I chose to restart. Instead, Tee can clear this by the way harder method of bouncing over to the goal.
4 EX-02, Inductor, is a sequel to 4-02, Straw, being made up of the same bamboo chutes, but in a much more demanding shape more prone to you falling out. It is named after an inductor coil, a device used to create magnetic energy from an electrical current), due to it beginning and ending with a coil-shaped path with a pole in the middle. (You may have seen cylindrical lumps in electronic cables, namely power and USB cables. Inside is an inductor, used to minimize radio waves from interfering in the electronic items’ functions.)
I don’t know what the play button does in 4 EX-3, Fragments.
The face carved onto the main platform in 4 EX-5, Emoticon, is a henohenomoheji, a doodle made out of Japanese characters that resembles a face. It long predates emoticons (or emojis, for that matter), dating back to the Edo period.
The “secret portal” found in 4 EX-6, Secret Portal, is directly underneath the central platform. Finding it is necessary to gain the height needed to reach the goal. I accidentally approached it too fast though; I wound up getting the Golden Banana I couldn’t get on my first time through!
4 EX-09, All Sides, is a series of trials involving platforms moving in particular directions: left, then right, then up, then down. I find it tricky because the bamboo rows are so insanely narrow, even if they’re in a straight line.
