Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The fourth OOPart can be found at the Golden Temple, a place with so much gold that golden coins just lay around in piles everywhere. It seems to be themed on both Feudal China and Feudal Japan, with the coin piles consisting of both the round Chinese coins with the holes in the middle (forgot what they’re called, but the coins were kept on a string for easy storage, counting, and retrieval when needed). and the oval Japanese yen coins (like seen on Meowth’s forehead). The buildings themselves seem to be modeled after pagodas like in China, but with paper windows and doors like in Japan; it has the large bells and lanterns characteristic of both places, and the tallest building is topped with a model of a dango stick (a Japanese dessert made of rice paste).
Is it me, or are the backgrounds in Super Monkey Ball stages absolutely ENORMOUS in scale? The backgrounds don’t move much compared to the camera movements (but move some, indicating they’re real-time 3D models), when you fall out, the ball seems to shrink and disappear as it falls, and you never seem to come near any of the background objects despite them not looking so big. They look normal-size in the cutscenes, but are there separate, scaled-up models of the characters in the cutscenes so they look right when actually interacting with them? Maybe the gmaeplay models are scaled down.
There is only on thing left to introduce in this world, which are the boulders, golden spheres that roll when on an incline, move along conveyor belts, and can be pushed around. And hence, this is when the training wheels come off, but it won’t be that mean to you quite yet. (You may also notice that World 4 in the first couple of Super Monkey Ball stages were absolutely merciless compared to this game. More on that later.)
In any case, I chose Palette for this because she seems to be so enamored by all the gold coins everywhere.
00:58 - 4-01 Mad Dash
02:01 - 4-02 Straw
02:51 - 4-03 Step Down
03:45 - 4-04 Floating Puzzle
04:25 - 4-05 Spinning Switch
05:17 - 4-06 Rolling Balls
06:11 - 4-07 Circle Bounce
07:00 - 4-08 Sand Garden
08:46 - 4-09 Target Strike
09:13 - 4-10 Rush Hour
4-03, Step Down, is similar in gameplay to Super Monkey Ball 2’s Opera, which was found in World 6, though its steps were narrower, steeper, and shorter. This might be an easier counterpart, but when the game wants to be challenging, it will really get challenging.
The obstacles in 4-05, Spinning Switch, are color-coded. The play button in the green saucer brings down the bamboo clusters (which look like Warp Pipes), the play button in the blue saucer removes the blue ring at the bottom, the play button in the red saucer retracts the red disk above, and the play button in the yellow saucer shrinks (but does not fully remove) the yellow ring immediately surrounding the goal. I removed all the obstacles, but I have a feeling experts don’t need to remove them all (or possibly any of them).
4-06, Rolling Balls, shows that you sometimes must push the heavy balls out of the way to proceed. We’ll see more of them in the following worlds.
The danger in 4-09, Target Strike, isn’t falling off, but running out of time. It’s in a wide open pit, but you have limited chances of hitting the goal, which is dangling from a string as it slowly moves from one end of the stage to another.
4-10’s name of Rush Hour is likely named after the movie starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. Of course, it being full of moving dash ramps could also evoke heavy traffic.
The OOPart for Golden Palace is a miniature bronze bell decorated with the gemstone like the previous ones had. With over half of them obtained, AiAi suggests the next location, Stone Valley.
The fourth OOPart can be found at the Golden Temple, a place with so much gold that golden coins just lay around in piles everywhere. It seems to be themed on both Feudal China and Feudal Japan, with the coin piles consisting of both the round Chinese coins with the holes in the middle (forgot what they’re called, but the coins were kept on a string for easy storage, counting, and retrieval when needed). and the oval Japanese yen coins (like seen on Meowth’s forehead). The buildings themselves seem to be modeled after pagodas like in China, but with paper windows and doors like in Japan; it has the large bells and lanterns characteristic of both places, and the tallest building is topped with a model of a dango stick (a Japanese dessert made of rice paste).
Is it me, or are the backgrounds in Super Monkey Ball stages absolutely ENORMOUS in scale? The backgrounds don’t move much compared to the camera movements (but move some, indicating they’re real-time 3D models), when you fall out, the ball seems to shrink and disappear as it falls, and you never seem to come near any of the background objects despite them not looking so big. They look normal-size in the cutscenes, but are there separate, scaled-up models of the characters in the cutscenes so they look right when actually interacting with them? Maybe the gmaeplay models are scaled down.
There is only on thing left to introduce in this world, which are the boulders, golden spheres that roll when on an incline, move along conveyor belts, and can be pushed around. And hence, this is when the training wheels come off, but it won’t be that mean to you quite yet. (You may also notice that World 4 in the first couple of Super Monkey Ball stages were absolutely merciless compared to this game. More on that later.)
In any case, I chose Palette for this because she seems to be so enamored by all the gold coins everywhere.
00:58 - 4-01 Mad Dash
02:01 - 4-02 Straw
02:51 - 4-03 Step Down
03:45 - 4-04 Floating Puzzle
04:25 - 4-05 Spinning Switch
05:17 - 4-06 Rolling Balls
06:11 - 4-07 Circle Bounce
07:00 - 4-08 Sand Garden
08:46 - 4-09 Target Strike
09:13 - 4-10 Rush Hour
4-03, Step Down, is similar in gameplay to Super Monkey Ball 2’s Opera, which was found in World 6, though its steps were narrower, steeper, and shorter. This might be an easier counterpart, but when the game wants to be challenging, it will really get challenging.
The obstacles in 4-05, Spinning Switch, are color-coded. The play button in the green saucer brings down the bamboo clusters (which look like Warp Pipes), the play button in the blue saucer removes the blue ring at the bottom, the play button in the red saucer retracts the red disk above, and the play button in the yellow saucer shrinks (but does not fully remove) the yellow ring immediately surrounding the goal. I removed all the obstacles, but I have a feeling experts don’t need to remove them all (or possibly any of them).
4-06, Rolling Balls, shows that you sometimes must push the heavy balls out of the way to proceed. We’ll see more of them in the following worlds.
The danger in 4-09, Target Strike, isn’t falling off, but running out of time. It’s in a wide open pit, but you have limited chances of hitting the goal, which is dangling from a string as it slowly moves from one end of the stage to another.
4-10’s name of Rush Hour is likely named after the movie starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. Of course, it being full of moving dash ramps could also evoke heavy traffic.
The OOPart for Golden Palace is a miniature bronze bell decorated with the gemstone like the previous ones had. With over half of them obtained, AiAi suggests the next location, Stone Valley.
