Google+

Poor man's games

Sort of the same, but somehow worse... We investigate the low-cost versions of our favorite games

Words: on February 13, 2007
Email
Email this Article

Habitrail Hamster Ball is the Poor man's Super Monkey Ball

You should have been alerted to the bum nature of Hamster Ball by its bizarre license - Habitrail is a manufacturer of premium hamster accessories. Unsurprisingly, the game was far from premium, cannibalizing Super Monkey Ball with none of the tight rolling physics and a low-grade, cheaper species of animal.

It's simple - monkeys are cute, funny and exhibit personality. Hamsters just keep you up all night trying to break the sound barrier in their stupid little wheels, catch incurable rodent diseases and keel over roughly four minutes after you've bought it a cage with an elaborate tube-based "adventure playground." We'll stick with the clichéd, but always dependable monkey.



Above: Hamster Ball - tastes alright when mixed with orange juice but on its own makes you sick up in your mouth

Related

Platforms:

Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PC, Wii, DS, PSP, GameCube, Xbox

8 comments

  • D0CCON - February 27, 2010 5:52 a.m.

    Gotta love how the poor man's game still cost just as much as the good version.

  • GrayFox161 - January 7, 2010 12:25 p.m.

    Winback... What a crappy name...

  • linkganon - October 16, 2009 2:08 a.m.

    nobody will ever be able to outthrone metal gear solid except of course another metal gear solid. ah, hideo, you have to have long cutscenes which is a long rant, in which everybody makes no sense, and i guess raiden doesn't understand the ending of the second one eather, he might have intended to confuse you in order to put you in raiden's shoes.

  • RandomSamurai13 - August 31, 2009 5:34 p.m.

    That Street Racing Cyndicate sounds almost creepy, "Winning girlfriends" is almost justifiable, but making them dance clearly shows the distrubed nature of the developers. Who the hell makes their girlfriend dance?

  • WoodyWoodrowAndThePanfluteOfDestiny - August 31, 2009 2:20 p.m.

    hamstets rule

  • musashi1596 - August 31, 2009 12:33 p.m.

    Dogz is the poor mans Nintendogs? Fair enough, but the latter was hardly stellar material to begin with, so I shudder to think of the quality of the former.

  • hybrid616 - September 20, 2009 1:53 p.m.

    @darklinkinfinite. actually, MGS1 had the pop out and shoot mechanic. and also the laser sight. granted, you couldn't use it in first person, but it was there to help you aim with the overhead camera... did you assume they meant MGS2 because they used that picture? they used it because they were both on PS2.

  • darklinkinfinite - August 31, 2009 11:51 p.m.

    I wonder if they realize that Winback on the PS2 is an updated port of an N64 game released in 1999, two years before Metal Gear Solid 2 and actually introduced the pop out and shoot w/ laser site mechanic that MGS2 would later itself use.

Showing 1-8 of 8 comments

Join the Discussion
Add a comment
(HTML tags are not allowed.)
Characters remaining: 5000

Connect with GamesRadar


Featured Guides

Connect with Facebook

Log in using Facebook to share comments, games, status update and other activity easily with your Facebook feed.