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

For 20 years, the username "packattack" has been ubiquitous with Super Monkey Ball competition. After joining the SMB Elite rankings on klow.net in 2002, packattack would go on to take the competitive scene by storm, setting some of the greatest scores ever achieved in the game in the process. Multiple of which, most notably his scores of 35,980 on A11 and 26,422 on E09, would still comfortably stand as world records today, despite immense persistence and dedication from his competitors. By the time he retired in 2011, another player would promptly take the mantle, and become the only person to eventually take down some of packattack's most highly acclaimed high scores.

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:
   • This TINY Mistake Exposed a MASSIVE C...  

Expert 40 - The Hardest Challenge in Super Monkey Ball:
   • Expert 40 - The Hardest Challenge in ...  

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

Visit the new Super Monkey Ball high score leaderboards at:
https://smbelite.net/

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:
   • blink-182 - After Midnight (acoustic ...  

If you enjoyed it, make sure to listen to his other music on his Spotify page:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2R8wX...

Thanks to everyone who recorded voiceover for quotes shown in the video:
  / ganon  
‪@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.
   • Super Monkey Ball - A11 34,666  

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.
   • SMB1 - E32 - 10,652  

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:
https://pastebin.com/dtxbJWCQ

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:
https://pastebin.com/6KPu5Wmi

EliteCoder video archive:
   • Super Monkey Ball - EliteCoder Video ...  

Vortiginous video archive:
   • Super Monkey Ball - EliteCoder Video ...  

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:
https://pastebin.com/AMmrCYFY