The only reason to play this game is for the mini-games inside. The main game is tedious, frustrating and repetitive. You have to tip the monkey (who's in a ball, hence the title) down slopes and chutes without going off the edge. When you've completed one maze/route/slope you move onto another. And another. It's pretty dull.

Having said that, the "party games" are great fun! Unfortunately you have to unlock them by getting a certain amount of points in the main game but this can be avoided to some degree by accumulating enough points to unlock one party game, saving, and then killing it without saving after you've enjoyed your party games, so that you can restart next time from the "got enough points to unlock a party game but no party games unlocked" situation.

The party games are as follows:
- Monkey target. This is the best, and most original. Your monkey (in its ball) goes shooting down a ramp a bit like a ski jump, goes flying up in the air and you then open the ball into two halves which act like wings to enable the monkey to glide towards the target. When you close the ball up again the monkey falls - hopefully in the right place. The smaller the part of the target you aim for the more points, but if you land in the water you get no points. Also, amusingly, if you forget to close the ball the monkey splats on the ground and lies there twitching (also for no points).
There is one bug in this mini-game in that occasionally after a monkey has safely landed the camera moving around him seems to knock him off somehow and he falls in the water even though he had already landed.

- Monkey racing. This is my second favourite, probably because I'm useless at racing games (my boyfriend says that some of the items are really annoying for the people up front - I think it's great to be able to blast everyone ahead of me off the track!) There are 6 (or is it 8?) different routes and you can play them individually or as a grand prix. You can play by yourself (against the clock), with other people, or against computer opponents (or against a mixture of human and computer opponents).
There is a mysterious "boost" that all the computer opponents get at the start of the game though that isn't mentioned in the manual and we've no idea how to do it! Unlike in most racing games, when you have to time it right, for this one it seems you have to be a computer! But it doesn't make much difference in the long run.
Honestly, if you were just looking for a racing game, there are better ones out there, but this is still a lot of fun and very playable.

- Monkey bowling. This is just like any bowling game, except that since you're a monkey in a ball, you're the ball, which I think is quite neat. Not much to explain here, since it's just like ten-pin bowling (I think there are some different options for other bowling variants too). Quite enjoyable.

- Monkey tennis. Like normal tennis, with a few extra bits added in. Obviously you have to hit the ball, and try and put it somewhere where your opponent can't hit it back, but there are also bonuses you can get by being in the right place for a "smash" bonus.
There are different options too, for playing singles or doubles against your opponent or against the computer, so given that I play with my boyfriend we've played singles against each other and doubles as a team against the computer, which was neat. (But we were absolutely terrible, as I recall. The computers wiped the floor with us.) You could also play doubles in teams if there were four of you, or play it with each team consisting of one human and one computer.

- Monkey Fight. Like a boxing match. I can't remember this one so well, unfortunately, so I don't think it was that great.

- Monkey Golf. This is quite fun. The course consists of two sets of nine holes. The first nine are reasonable and quite fun. The second nine are nigh-on impossible. And not impossible in a "man, that looks hard" kind of way, but in a "I don't actually understand how to physically do that" kind of way. You spend about ten shots getting restarted from the beginning just because you've shot off the edge trying to make the ball do a somersault in mid-air or something. But your opponent's in the same boat, so it's actually quite fun because the whole thing is so ridiculous. Worth playing a few times with new people to see the look on their faces when they suddenly get confronted with the first crazy course, if nothing else!
You can change clubs and things as well as choosing angle and power, which gives it a nice extra dimension.

- Monkey Billiards. Like snooker or pool except your monkey is the ball. I don't remember this one being that thrilling.

- The main ones are Target and Racing - you could have hours of fun with either or both.

The other thing to mention is that the music for Super Monkey Ball is really irritating - you just have to turn it off.