To beat Hoppers, A2, hold forward. To beat Reversible Gear, A12, look at the stage from the pause menu. The gear stops in two places. The nearest one is near a corner. Go to the inside edge of that corner, and wait for the gear to stop with the opening away from you. Then wait for the gear to slow down again. Begin rolling forward before the gear stops. To beat Pro Skaters, A21, pause the game between 57.33 and 57.35 seconds, hold up, then unpause. The interval may be slightly larger than this, but it’s not much larger... To beat Arthropod, A30, wait twenty seconds and roll straight forward. To beat Amida Lots, AX7, wait about two seconds (accuracy isn’t important), then roll straight forward onto the long rail. Go onto one of the side rails and wait for the goal to pass. Turn to watch the goal come back, then walk through as it slides by. To beat Switch Inferno, E19, hit the switch on the right-hand side, second row back.

Super Monkey Ball 2 has two “point” systems: regular “points” and “play points.” Regular points are earned for playing challenge mode, and are used to rank high scores. Play points are earned for playing the game in single-player mode. They unlock mini-games, story mode movies, and extra monkeys for challenge mode. One might think that the two are correlated, but in fact they are not.

It is easy to deduce how regular points are awarded. At the end of each stage, you break the ribbon with a certain amount of time remaining. The game indicates your time to the hundredth of a second; the time in fact increments approximately 60 times a second. Your score is the number of seconds remaining, times one hundred. For example, if you have 12.34 seconds remaining, you earn 1234 points. With more than 30 seconds remaining, your score is then doubled. For instance, if you have 31.05 seconds remaining, you earn 6210 points. The scores are much higher if you go through the blue or the red goals. With the blue goals, you get a bonus of 10,000 points and another doubling, so with 12.34 seconds remaining, you would earn 22,468 points, or with 31.05 seconds, you would earn 52,420 points. The red goals give a bonus of 20,000 points and an extra tripling, so with 12.34 seconds it is 63,702 points and with 31.05 seconds it is 138,630 points! On top of this you get 100 points per banana. You normally skip one or two stages with a bonus goal.

Play points are more difficult to figure out. The rule seems to be: bananas don’t count, switches don’t matter, you forego a stage’s play points by skipping it, dead monkeys cost you a little, the cost for a dead monkey goes up as you progress, but killing a whole bunch of monkeys gets you a discount, and failing to break the tape on a bonus stage costs you a lot of play points. I have yet to properly finish a bonus stage on SMB2, so I don’t know whether you get any kind of bonus for finishing a bonus stage. Your choice of monkey makes no difference. The time remaining when the monkey dies also makes no difference.

As a side note, on the first Super Monkey Ball game, play points weren’t nearly as important once you opened the mini-games, and the best way to earn them, categorically, was to play Expert mode even if you were really bad at it.

I’ve collected several data points to help me understand how play points are earned. I’m listing the data here to help other people form their own conclusions.