Was Super Monkey Ball's GREATEST PLAYER Actually the BIGGEST CHEATER?!

However, following the revelation in 2021 that this other player had cheated his way to the top, suspicions naturally fell on packattack's own insane scores that would then be reclaiming world record status. The level of skill demonstrated in his 20+ year old replays was leagues beyond what any other player had proven to be possible under stricter proof requirements, and, consequently, an investigation was launched to try and find the truth behind them.

With every score in question being set in the early 2000s, the investigation required digging through what remained of long forgotten archives, revealing for the first time the extremely suspicious circumstances under which these scores were obtained. This included acquiring a now 22 year old VHS tape of never-before-seen replays, which proved to be some of the most incriminating evidence against his legitimacy.

This TINY Mistake Exposed a MASSIVE Cheater in Super Monkey Ball:

Expert 40 - The Hardest Challenge in Super Monkey Ball:

The Super Monkey Ball Flash Games that Were Lost for Over a Decade:

Visit the new Super Monkey Ball high score leaderboards at:

Huge thanks go out to all of the SMB players from the era who replied to my messages and were willing to speak with me on this topic. In particular, I would like to thank sdkess, Deku Sprout, smilingjack13 and GameCube04. Without their help, the investigation would not have been nearly as comprehensive and thorough as it was.

I would also like to thank GameCube04 for letting me use one of his covers in the video:

If you enjoyed it, make sure to listen to his other music on his Spotify page:

Thanks to everyone who recorded voiceover for quotes shown in the video:
@GregCubed
@joniivee
@Maximum
@Tony_SMB
And Mr. Anonymous who voiced smilingjack13!

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:03:18 - History
00:11:30 - Suspicion
00:16:54 - Investigation
00:19:05 - Exhibit A
00:32:55 - Exhibit B
00:42:08 - Exhibit C
00:45:35 - Dispute
00:53:33 - Response
00:55:33 - Conclusion
00:59:32 - Credits

UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS:
General note: Voiceover for this video was recorded in 2023. Any time I make reference to the current year in the narration, I meant 2023.

00:07:27 - A new "next best score" (WR) of 34,666 on A11 was achieved by scrap651 on the 18th of March, 2024. This score would still be 2nd place to packattack by 1,314 points.

00:10:42 - A new WR of 10,652 on E32 was achieved by Jezs on the 23rd of March, 2024. This score was also set without edge grinding at all.

00:21:56 - For full clarity, this specific 21,110 score was performed on a practice version of E09 on the SMB2 engine, but with the SMB1 camera. There are very slight differences in physics between the SMB1 and SMB2 engines, however the skill required to achieve that score on either is effectively directly comparable. Since this is by far the fastest recorded liveplay of a 0.1 only score on either version, it seemed most relevant to mention in the video.

00:31:36 - Here I misspoke slightly. packattack did not complete the E45 strat three more times BEFORE beating FerretDruid. As you can see from the screenshots, the fourth time he completed the strat was the completion that finally beat FerretDruid's score.

WEBSITES:
Full list of websites and archives shown in this video:

CLIPS USED:
Blendra, byrz, CyclopsDragon, Deku Sprout, eddy0777, FerretDruid, GameCube04, IkeSMB, Jcool114, Jezs, packattack, scrap651, sdkess, Silverboxer, smilingjack13, Zlatorz.

Full list of clips from other players used in this video:

EliteCoder video archive:

Vortiginous video archive:

All clips used in the credits sequence were taken from the EliteCoder and Vortiginous archives linked above.

Cck, Claris, D Oven, Deku Sprout, FreddyP, GameCube04, JuanElDiablo, sdkess, smilingjack13, SteaknCheese.

MUSIC:
Full list of music used in this video:

[Kyrfuffle]

sorry babe, can't get in bed right now, someone made a 1 hour video essay of a game i've never played

[snowytheott]

was trying to take IL runs really seriously when i was younger, but gave up because of how far behind i was to jcool and packattack, figuring out years later that i was comparing myself to cheaters was crushing, thank you for this video

[MisturHappy]

Gotta love the irony in trying to subvert genuine competition by cheating only to wind up second place to someone who cheated better than you.

[acemcwolf]

"If it looks like a monkey having a seizure on a tightrope, Then it's probably a rapid paused replay."
Words to live by.

[JoshNotJohn]

Note to self: If I get Murdered, leave a note on my body that my murderer cheated in speedruns, my murder will get solved within days.

[Arassar]

Cheaters always post stuff like "wow, I can't believe this totally unbelievable thing happened! What crazy luck!" It's shocking how often it happens.

[amazingkool]

As an outsider that just watched the Jcool video for the first time within the last month, a part of me feels like this was a forgone conclusion. The more reasonable side of me can see this was a painful labor of love for your game and community. Extreme respect.

[Xbob]

My favorite part of this hourlong Super Monkey Ball speedrun investigation into a possible cheater was the acoustic guitar cover of blink-182.

[crocodilerock]

Are you telling me that for the past 10 years, the monkey ball pedestal has been dominated by two rival cheaters trying to out-cheat each other?

I don’t know wether to laugh or cry

[BlueEyedVibeChecker]

I saw the thumbnail saying "He got away with it for 20 years!" with a picture of AiAi next to it and my mind immediately thought "Tax evasion".
Kinda underwhelming that it wasn't.

[RoyalFusilier]

"Hour-long video essay about Super Monkey Ball cheating drama" sounds like a kind of joke from an outsider, I must admit, but I'm here because I saw your video exposing jcool and discussing that and just... you're so good at this.

Explaining, presenting and editing things, I'm hardly the only person to go 'I've never played this game and barely know what it is, however I was enthralled the whole way through'.

My condolences to the SMB community for these revelations, but now people who put in actual, legitimate effort and talent can rise to their deserved higher positions.

[tarantinoish]

Oh man, old school slow-mo controllers from the NES/SNES era would just pause the game rapidly over and over again, slowing down the action. It’s crazy that basically that technique was used years later to cheat at Monkey Ball.

[RapturePlasmids]

Why am I not surprised that a discord mod tried to take credit for 'his' investigation lmao

[stormy]

This is exactly what is meant by "beyond a reasonable doubt". There's certainly not absolute, 100% proof here, but to say the evidence available doesn't show cheating is, well, doubting without reason.

[mattclassic]

Wow, you see a lot of Youtubers claiming to put large amounts of research into their videos, and no doubt some do, but the degree of detective work and scrutinisation that you’ve put into this video is second to none. Truly incredible, your uploads never let us down. LOJ 👍🍷

[gizmoman]

I think one of the best ways to deal with stuff like this is to have a legacy leaderboard for scores/times set on old proof standards. This way they are stored, but separately from runs that pass modern proof standards. It can be a little unfair to the old runs, but may be the best way to deal with potentially cheated old runs.

[stClassMaths]

Incredibly well put together. Thank you for this. What I find really sad about this situation is I tried some levels back in the day when I was exploring games for cyberscore. I gave up on this quickly when I saw the standard. How many other people might have joined the community if it weren't for these cheated scores?

[yetravellingsonc]

leaving the video at 36-ish minutes in to immediately come back to pause buffering wires with the diddy kong racing boss theme was an experience.

[ryanwillingham]

i didn't even realize smb had a thriving high score community before this point but when packattack's recording was shown in the intro i immediately thought "slowdown" i.e. trackmania. will have to check out legit smb records now, sounds sweet

[onionrinrins]

5:15 "packattack's prime days rolling primates..." 🔥🖋️🧐