additional six months incorporating six extra modes into the game, with an emphasis on multiplayer competition and the introduction of GonGon as a fourth playable character. The bananas in the game display the Dole Food Company logo, but this was removed in Super Monkey Ball Deluxe due to a licensing dispute. A theme song called "Ei Ei Puh!", which was arranged by Cheru Watanabe and featured vocals by Yu Abiru, was created for the Japanese version of Super Monkey Ball but removed from its U.S. release. Tokyo-based voice actor Brian Matt provided the game's narration, albeit uncredited. Reception Sales Super Monkey Ball was commercially successful upon release and remained one of Sega's best-selling titles in the United States through much of 2002. The game's North American sales were strong in 2001, in addition to a further 105,000 units sold through August 2002. While it sold well in all major territories, Nagoshi was disappointed by the game's performance in Japan, where he had expected it would be most successful; weak GameCube launch sales were cited as negatively impacting its performance in the country. The game sold 72,631 units in Japan. Critical reception Released to positive reviews, with aggregated scores of 87/100 on Metacritic and 88.7% on GameRankings, some journalists considered Super Monkey Ball the highlight of the GameCube's launch lineup. Edge praised the main game as "absorb[ing]" due to its high level of difficulty, noting that the trial and error required to complete challenging levels forces one to learn the nuances of its "reductive control system" and eventually enables the player to perform seemingly impossible tasks with increasing ease: "Once a level falls, the mysticism around it vanishes. It's beatable; it's an afterthought on the route to your next impossible hurdle." Ben Turner (GameSpy) commented on the "excellent progression of difficulty" engendered by three distinct difficulty modes and thoughtful stage design, expounding "most levels introduce some new idea or concept to the game" and "every single level played adds to your skill." Matt Casamassina (IGN) commended the "great level variation", with "well created mazes and puzzles that must be completed using a combination of physics calculations, careful planning and a huge helping of patience." Turner complimented the frequent introduction of incentives to keep playing such as additional continues and hidden levels, adding that a high "ceiling of mastery" enhanced the game's longevity through a "simple but well conceived" scoring system and