Watch your step, for you’ve just entered theGraveyard. Inside, we’ll be digging up games that have long been without a pulse. You’ll see both good and bad souls unearthed every month as we search through the more… forgotten…parts of history.
The Super Monkey Ball series has had great success over the past 20+ years across both arcade and console releases, but there weren’t a lot of variants on the core concept within the obstacle courses themselves. Originally released in 2004 for PC, Hamsterball achieved its greatest success thanks to a re-imagining on the PS3 and remains something playable to this day via streaming on PS4 and PS5 thanks to PlayStation Plus. It’s one of the most unique marble rolling-style games on the market because of how it blends in other modes with the core obstacle course concept.
Beyond just trying to get from point A to B, players can also be tasked with race course-style stages with laps. It’s an interesting way to change things up because most games have always had a basic progression loop to get through stages, and while there’s still an obstacle course to navigate, the course itself is secondary to being as efficient as possible to navigate it. The core obstacle course action is still intact, but accented by having different modes available within it alongside a lot of different settings and traps.
More than most marble-rollers, Hamsterball offers up a real sense of menace to players thanks to violent traps that test the platforming mettle rapidly. Beyond having a clock to work against and a large map to navigate, you then add in the special sauce of a mace swinging towards you or spike pits and all of a sudden, a bit of the terror induced in players in Bowser’s castles is brought into this sub-genre. It’s an interesting twist because in all the years playing games like this, even dating back to Marble Madness and Marble Blast Ultra, I don’t recall ever seeing a game like it throw so much at a player to take them out.
The usual challenge of the player versus the stage is ever-present, but made more challenging thanks to the sheer variety of obstacles being put in your path. It can be frustrating if you aren’t coming into the game with the correct mindset – playing it like a Monkey Ball game will work to some degree, but going into it expecting a core platforming challenge sets you up for more success overall. Having both the set goal that’s normal for the genre and then something unique makes it different than playing other marble rollers because you think about things like efficiency more than usual.
Hamsterball’s diversity in stage settings is also noteworthy as you have bright areas with various color-schemes, but also a healthy amount of neon-soaked stages. These darker areas are tougher and include things like disappearing pathways, adding a layer of challenge that is akin to the disappearing blocks in Mega Man games only with the additional benefit of being able to traverse without being able to see the platform. It’s still possible to memorize where the path is and move around, it’s just a risky proposition – but one that keeps you on your toes.
It’s a more challenging game right out of the gate than a Monkey Ball or Marble Blast game, but the courses are also more rewarding to conquer. They’re long, winding and have at least two different paths to completion that have their own hazards to contend with. One may have a more straightforward path, but have more hazards in the way while the other has a winding path with more tight squeeze turns to make – but fewer obstacles. It’s a risk/reward scenario because either way, you have the same respawn speed and time limit working against you.
Control-wise, Hamsterball is a little easier to work with than the modern-day Monkey Ball remakes, but not as easy to work with as Marble It Up on the Switch, PC and Apple Arcade. The Dual Shock 3 works nicely and the movement speed is consistent and easy to predict. One thing that can destroy a rolling game instantly is iffy control, as I’ve seen in many PC games or even fan-made creations like those in Dreams. Having a good sense of weight to what you’re moving around alongside accurate movement is a large part in having fun with any game like this, and the obstacles are balanced out nicely with a quick response time.
Hamsterball is for the most part a good-looking experience that has been weathered a bit by time, but not too badly. The boards themselves are a lot of fun to navigate and they all look either vibrant or intimidating to a degree depending on what the stage theme is. The ground textures are jaggy and look odd at times, but the stages themselves have a fair amount of detail in the fbackground and a lot of detail in the foreground to allow each area to feel different. The goal area is distinct and looks like a checkered flag more akin to a race track, but even that fits in nicely with this having race-themed stages.
The soundtrack is solid, but it’s not like Marble Madness or Super Monkey Ball where the sound design sticks with you after playing it. More than just nailing a roller-style game, one thing SMB did better than anything was mesh music and things like an announcer, the “fall out!” voice clip and merge everything together in a way that worked. Marble Madness did that with the squeaky marble, the crash effect, the dustpan and an eerie soundtrack that Hamsterball never quite comes close to equaling. It’s got a lot of catchy music that is cheery when it needs to be and fun to listen to, but isn’t memorable outside of the hazard-filled stages that use less music and rely more on terror with the effects of the hazards swarming you.
Despite a lackluster soundtrack, Hamsterball is a joy on the PS3 and something I’m surprised didn’t get a PC re-release that included both the original PC version that was more like Marble Madness and the PS3 Monkey Ball-like. A modern-day PS5 release would make sense and the publisher is still around to license the game out – and maybe it’s something where the game makes more being licensed for streaming than it likely would as a port. The PC version can be bought directly from the devs at Raptisoft and isn’t on Steam, while you’re able to stream the PS3 game on PC, PS4, and PS5 via PlayStation Plus streaming and it holds up well there, but a marble-roller isn’t exactly the best game for anything prone to input lag like game streaming.
