Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD

I found this to be the most difficult mini-game achievement to earn, so I thought I would post my experience since the game doesn't explain the mechanics beyond the basic controls.

As the description says, you need to score 5000 points in one single-player round. You earn 10 points for each small ship you destroy, 1000 points for destroying the large pink ship and "clearing" the game, and an additional 500 points for each life you have remaining.

It took me about two hours of playing this mini-game to earn the achievement. The first 30 minutes or so were spent scoring below 2000 points and losing many lives just to figure out the mechanics. I was 40 minutes into the game before I realized that you could actually destroy the boss. If you don't destroy it, there is an unseen timer that will just start counting down after a minute or so and the ship will fly away, ending the level.

So, we are working with a timer, which means that you need to stay alive so as to not lose valuable seconds to be damaging the boss or scoring points by destroying the smaller ships.

Strategy-wise, I found that holding "A" is the best way to fire, and I would focus on the blue ships that dive bomb you at an angle, since I found them to be the most disruptive to staying alive. Once the final boss appears, I would mainly focus on dodging the continuous pink blasts from the boss, the blue dive-bombers, and making sure that I wasn't going to trap myself in a corner that the green ships would move towards. Your barrel roll (RB) has a cool down, so I would try to save it and use it only when necessary.

I was sitting at a score of 4990 for about 45 minutes until I finally got the achievement to unlock with a score of 5050. I was never able to clear the game without losing a life, but I'm sure if you can do that you would surely be above 5000. I lost one life the time I unlocked it and was able to make up for it. Here is the video where I unlocked it:


The life I lost was pretty unlucky, but then I got VERY lucky in both corners with three straight uses of the barrel roll. Ultimately, I think it's going to take some determination and a bit bit of luck to unlock, but let me know if there are any other questions you have.