Who knew catching monkeys would be so fun?? Ape Escape is such a unique game, it really goes to show how unique controls can be in a platformer while still feeling really good. This game is just light-hearted fun, catching the apes is so satisfying and the levels are well-built and fun to explore. The collecting and gadget use is so much fun, and even if the control scheme is so weird you get used to it so fast and realize why they chose to do it this way, it just works. This definitely stands out as one of the best 3D platformers on PS1, and I will come back to it very often :)

A childhood game that lived in the back of my head for decades, unsure whether it was mere nostalgia that made me look back fondly at this, or if it was an actual classic. Thankfully it holds up and was surprised just how incredibly innovative it is for its time. Ape Escape does a competent job at giving a simple story about confidence, growth, and animal abuse/exploitation. Somehow humanizing its cast and all being written/fleshed just the right amount to be able to focus on what is at the forefront - the dualstick controllers and gameplay.

Gameplay is intuitive and constantly ramping up difficulty at the perfect points in the story and game. This is a true example of what good pacing looks like in any game. The player's skill-set matches and the game's skill level cap sync up at the right moments, meeting the player half-way without any cheap deaths of the sort (aside from possibly fighting the camera, but that's a given of the time). Colorful, rich backgrounds dress the levels and motivate the level design in something I can only compare to Banjo-Kazooie in being an example of how to create near-perfect levels.

This is one of the few games I've ever taken the time to 100 percent and don't typically care to do, yet couldn't help but want to capture every single ape in order to read about their personalities and see what it has to offer. A disarmingly charming game all around, Ape Escape stands a part from other contemporaries of the time striving for realism and a mature tone; it's a unique and memorable gaming experience proving platformers can innovate as well as show not every game needs to take itself so seriously to be compelling or engaging. The drum and bass, jungle, and house music soundtrack are worth playing for alone and is on the list of being one of the greatest of all time that perfectly captures the vibe. It's well-worth playing after its initial release, and is a near-perfect experience only held back by its dated camera. Its a slight mark against it, but does not nearly dampen the experience, nor its legacy.

Very few games end up feeling as dated as Ape Escape while still being as fun to play as it is. From a less competent team, this would be a fleeting tech demo for the Dualshock, but Sony's Japan Studio really pulled together something fantastic on all fronts. Ape Escape has a relaxed feel that really alleviates a lot of common frustrations with this era of 3D platforming, though a few segments still felt pretty bad (fuck that rollercoaster). I don't think I need to tell you how good the OST is, thank you Soichi Terada.

At first I wasn't totally sold on it, I disliked the fairly generic anime boy instead of the usual whimsical/weird protagonist that most of these platformer games have, the controls seemed unnecessarily weird and the ape catching didn't seem that interesting in the first levels. But the level design keeps getting progressively better: the apes start to use more tactics and are incorporated into the levels in really unique ways, add to that some really creative level themes, the gadget mechanics, and one of the best soundtracks of the ps1 and you get an extremely memorable experience.

Ape Escape as a series is just so good. The first game is no exception. This game was the first to ever require the need of two analog sticks, and they make good use of it.

The story here is simple. When a circus monkey named Specter gets his hands on a peak point helmet, he's granted super intelligence and incredible powers. Stealing a professors time machine, he sends himself and a bunch of other apes back in time. Now it's up to Spike to stop Specter and save his friend, Jake, who's been kidnapped and mind controlled by Specter. Again, it's simple but it works for a game like this.

The gameplay revolves around you using a bunch of gadgets to complete platforming challenges, and utilizing a net to catch any apes you find. The gadgets you equip all make use of the right analog stick in some way or another. Catching the apes is surprisingly more addictive and fun then it may look like. Each ape puts up a tough fight, so it's not as simple as walking up and swinging your net. When you do catch one they disappear in a flash of sparkly particle effects along with a satisfying sound and Spike exclaiming, "GOTCHA!" So satisfying...

And the music? It's Great! The soundtrack was done by Soichi Terada, and there are alot of catchy DnB beats in this one. The Mysterious Age set of levels has some really good tracks in particular.

There are some negatives. The game throws you out of level once you catch a certain amount of apes, meaning you'll have to go back later and catch the rest. Some of the platforming is a bit janky, and the draw distance is a fair bit short.

Overall, a great way to kick off a fantastic Playstation franchise. I personally prefer it's sequels, but it's still a wonderful game!

This was a really good time. The control scheme is pretty unconventional using the right analog stick to use your gadgets, the R1 button to jump & the face button to select your gadgets. I'm surprised how well the controls work.

The game uses its gadgets quite often making it a lot of fun & using one of them has a really cool glitch. The levels are colourful & well design with some of them having multiple methods of capturing the monkeys. The voice acting (at least in the US version) is hilariously bad bringing it some charm. Shoutout to Spectre & Natalie. The music is a bop to listen to with a lot of drum & bass. I only did the main campaign so far but this is something I can easily go back to.

Pretty wonderful until the home stretch of future stuff becomes fatiguing and highlights the PS1's particular 3D clunkiness (the roller coaster section specifically feels unplayable with this game's zero draw distance), I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just waiting for it to be over at a certain point. And the NA version's voice acting is some of the worst you'll ever hear. That being said, this is still a fun and extremely inventive gameplay loop - with controls that feel sophisticated for their time (maybe aside from the heavy, delayed R1 jump that never really feels good to use), vibey music, and poppy level design. One series that actually needs a remaster/remake - a modern version of this would rip.

100%

I'd been wanting to play this one for AGES. I hadn't such luck since, back in the day, I was one of the few PSX owners in my city (or country, maybe?) that didn't mod their console to read pirated games. I never saw an original version of this floating out in the wild, so I thought I'd missed out for good. Thank God for emulation!

Took me a while to get used to the twin-stick control scheme, trying to approach it with a "any other game would play like this" mindset, but it set in a couple minutes. I barely even had to look at my controller for a second when in a rush. It makes sense once your head wraps around it. Thank ye gods for that, because once you get into the groove of this thing, it's an amazing game that doesn't really feel like it takes a toll on you or forces you to grind, and it doesn't take itself seriously to boot. I mean, it's basically a controller tech demo about a super smart albino monkey that decides to enhance other apes' minds and liberates them through time portals and your main weapon is a literal time-machine-net. It's very very Japanese, and also very very ridiculous. I love me those two descriptors combined, tho.

I really enjoyed it and I could see myself playing it again some time soon.

Except for the mini-games. Those I didn't really enjoy. They weren't bad, they were just gimmicks I just couldn't care less about.

After getting over the unique control scheme, there's a lot of fun to be had here. Wacky, silly antics at the core of a frantic but grounded platformer. Add in the colourful visuals and fantastic soundtrack and this is one of the PlayStation's greatest games. Slightly let down by some unfair design later on, but nowhere near in the same league of frustrating as most games of the era.

Another window into an era of the PlayStation that's long gone. Sad to look back at in that regard, but that's not the fault of Ape Escape and other incredible titles that really define the early years of the brand for me. A standout hit from the library that any PlayStation fan owes it to themselves to play.

Most recounts of this game focused on it being a strong representative of what the dualshock controller was capable of, and by that extension what console gaming would homogenize into over the course of the next two decades.

Playing through the game, I don't think that's necessarily true, in the sense that the control scheme would still keep one foot in antiquated design. I didn't care though because the game was still really well put together. The camera never got in the way. The right joy stick didn't feel weird to use. They seemed to compensate for a lack of control with level design that makes it so you never have a hard time seeing what's going on. For whatever influence this game might have had, it more deserves a legacy of being a colorful and engaging platformer that goes down smooth.

This is going to be kind of more of a personal anecdote than just talking about Ape Escape. Ape Escape isn't a game I have childhood nostalgia for, I never had a PS1 growing up and was always more of a Nintendo (and for a while Xbox 360) kid. I played it once quite a few years ago and I can't exactly recall when, but I know that I was playing it while sitting in a call with friends, some that I still know today and some that I don't really know where they went off to afterwards. Maybe it was when we were still on Skype too before Discord? I'm not fully sure. I know that at the time I had thought it was cute and fun but I also hadn't really paid it too much mind and again stopped at some point without finishing it. Years passed since then, and I hadn't really thought about the games besides the Discord server with my closest friends having a goofy little GIF from one of the games set for our server icon. I've been dealing with my own life issues after graduating from my community college several months ago with games and my friends having been both an escape and way to pass time as I wait anxiously for hopeful good news on things like jobs, but a problem I've slowly grown to notice has been my utter lack of patience with things in general.

I used to think about it jokingly with friends but as of late I feel like it's began to directly affect things I enjoy including media and entertainment. A lack of patience with little annoyances in games that grow exponentially more than they really needed to that I would reflect back on later and think "I didn't need to be that harsh towards that", or the growing frustrations I've had from my own addictions to social media. I don't like saying that modern gaming sucks because I genuinely don't believe that and think it's an absurd overexaggeration; there's massive issues with this industry, but the same can be said for other media like film and TV. There's more of it than ever before alongside a wider audience that's also more vocal than ever before thanks to how prevalent and almost unavoidable social media has become. That constant attention to social media, the need to endlessly scroll through posts and comments no matter how incessantly obnoxious and stupid it can get, the constant feed of news that angers and annoys in the personal hobbies I follow and care about. I personally do and should know better than to be opening up Twitter on my phone and end up scrolling that "For You" tab because it continues feeding that cynical cycle of frustration, but I continue to do it anyways out of habit and it finally came up to a breaking point recently. Making myself read posts from people I don't know and don't like talking with their head up their ass about things like tech or, with this industry, how game development supposedly works or how one platform is so much worse than the other and how dare you for enjoying something from name brand here. How dare I be excited for something that I want to play because it came from so-and-so and because it's so chock full of bad thing this and bad thing that. There was a realization I had that I had this feeling, this need to defend the opinions I had, that I somehow had to justify why I felt the way I did on media I played or watched, like I needed to convince others of my own feelings towards something.

The cynicism of social media and more especially within the video game community made that feel like justifying myself was something I had to do even if it was towards my own friends, towards my boyfriend when I absolutely did not need to. And while it's an incredibly silly feeling to be writing such a long wall of text about all this (and especially when at the time of writing, it's plainly obvious I'm mad about how much pure vitriol Twitter loves to push to me about Starfield, a game that I'm excited for because I just vibe with everything I've seen of it and just want to play for myself regardless of what I hear about it), there was a point where I needed to just make myself stop looking at those feeds. I tried to make myself stop opening Twitter or Reddit that much late at night and if I was going to stay awake that late, I should just go play a game that I could take the time for and just try to enjoy, feel the vibe of, let the little frustrations relax themselves and just spend time playing and appreciating.

Ape Escape came to mind first. It might have just been because I saw somewhere that it was relatively short, it might have been remembering that it was kind of fun for a platformer, maybe I had a curiosity for playing PS1 stuff again and I wanted to just play something from that console on an emulator trying to make it as faithful to the original experience; good old 240p and none of the enhancements DuckStation allowed for. It was probably all of those things but regardless of the reasons, what I hadn't expected was just how much this time around, all this time later and purely on a whim needing a break from everything, Ape Escape was the game that I think I needed most right this moment.

Ape Escape isn't just a game that is "full of charm", it's utterly bursting at the seams with such a love and care for pure joyful experimentation down to a player input level. The colors have such intense vibrancy to them, with not just every world theme being uniquely distinct but even down to a per-level basis that exudes playfulness in these time periods that you travel between. These places never feel generic thanks to not just distinctions like one level in the first world being in a rainy swamp with lots of water navigation to the next having you climb up to a volcano area where you try figuring out how you're going to capture a monkey that's riding a dinosaur, but also a soundtrack that absolutely pops the fuck off. I have no idea how it came to be that they picked the composer they did for this game, and I have no idea how it led to a 3D platformer that's full of high upbeat electronic music with a slamming drum and bass but it works to such a genius degree. The handful of levels that catch you off guard too like the one where see this big beast that's just, chilling out inside a wall on the beach; there's no music, just ambience as you walk around exploring a bit, realizing that oh the next area is inside it, and once you're in the music just suddenly kicks in and blasts off with this high intensity strangely electric sounding tune that I just can't get enough of oh my god

But what made my time with Ape Escape so joyful and wonderful was how much passion you could feel emanating from the developers in the final product just playing it. Every single creative choice here was clearly made because the developers thought it would be fun and unique, something that you wouldn't have seen in another game like it at the time even within the 3D platforming genre. A lot of it stems from the forced requirement of the DualShock controller which at the time, most developers didn't really know what to do with and Sony themselves needed something that would sell the accessory. Before the standard for making that second stick work the camera was made years later, Japan Studio's solution was to go absolutely hog wild and see what weird ideas for tools and mechanics could involve using the sticks for and it's such a creative approach to game design that not only have I not really seen even in today's games, but one that has still aged shockingly spectacularly well. Every single tool in your arsenal on the hunt for catching monkeys makes you use the right stick to use them, but it never feels gimmicky or unintuitive because every tool just makes sense to do so. Your saber for hitting enemies and stunning monkeys can be swung in any direction, but twirling the stick makes you spin around too which has its own uses for stuff like switches in the environment or keeping yourself safe from multiple enemies. Being able to swing the net in any direction regardless of if you're standing, running or crawling, and importantly regardless of the direction you're facing doing any of those makes capturing monkeys feel snappy and precise; I never felt like I was fumbling with my movement in difficult areas to catch something in the heat of the moment, and mistakes that were made were purely my own fault. The ideas for other gadgets are just as strange and creative, but they never feel out of place in the full arsenal like an RC car that of course you control with the right stick that works wonderfully for puzzles and hazards that make you multitask, or a hula hoop that you spin around to go faster and hit enemies with, or the slingshot that makes you pull back on the right stick to ready and fire. These tools don't just fit the playful tone that the game aims for across the board, it importantly makes them feel natural to use at all the right times rather than gimmicks.

And even then, the times the game does want to have gimmicky stuff that plays with the controls, they never really annoyed me in any sense and I still found joy in the times the game wanted to use them because they further express that creativity and experimentation. Sure, the rowboat is janky as hell and is next to impossible to steer straight forward consistently, but it's never punishing to actually use and it's still entertaining in its own way! Did the tank need to use both sticks to move and turn? Not really, but it felt silly and somehow satisfying to eventually get the hang of using the thing and especially that one time the game made me try to drive it along a narrow track which felt great to make it to the end of. This playfulness even extends to the three optional minigames you unlock for just exploring and collecting the big tokens you sometimes come across, all of which experiment with the controls in fun ways that match up with the rest of the game. Hell, there's still more insane attention to detail and fun like every monkey in the game being named and having silly little descriptions that would regularly get a laugh out of me along with stats if you spend the time to check the radar on all of them. The developers didn't need to put these little extras in or needed to go this hard with a game that was meant to just "show off what the DualShock was capable of", but the passion to do something special and creative oozes out of every part of Ape Escape in a way that I can't help but utterly admire.

It didn't really matter those brief couple of seconds now and then when something didn't go the way I expected or a platforming mishap because of the sometimes janky depth perception given by a sometimes nutty camera and wobbly polygons the PS1 was known for, or maybe that last level that goes on for just a wee bit too long for my liking. Even during those moments, the sheer joy Ape Escape has was a vibe that I could just continue to jive with in a way that made me respect it so much more. It was enough so that even after the credits had rolled, I still kept playing because I wanted to catch every monkey on the second go-around for that extra secret final boss. Even if I don't really want to bother with 100% completion (because that involves doing the time trials which, yeah no thanks lmao), I'm more than okay with that. It seems silly sitting here now heaping so much praise onto a goofy little 3D platformer collect-a-thon where you run around capturing monkeys with silly outfits and sometimes silly weapons, but it was the right game I needed at the right time. It's the game I needed to just sit back and take a break from things, and play something that dances to the sound of its own tune hoping that you dance alongside it. I'm glad I did all these years later.

Impressively sleek game design for a 3D platformer of this era -- chock full of gimmicks, but able to back them up at every turn.

Seriously, if you told me that you have to twirl the right analog stick to hover jump in this game, I'd have laughed at you... but it works. It works well. Everything in Ape Escape feels deeply thought-about, playtested, crafted just-so. (In another world where anyone cared about cutsey 3D platformers, I would love to see an Insomniac take on this).

The difficulty curve is almost the most impressive thing. It was essentially a rule back in the Playstation era that your game had to have some absolutely ridiculous, frustrating spike near the end, something that you'd have to look up a GameFAQ guide for, or get a friend with mysteriously-way-better skills to help you complete; but Ape Escape walks the tightrope between that and so-easy-it's-sleepy. Every ape capture feels just hard enough to provide a little jolt of satisfaction, but not so hard you want to throw your controller, and the later levels are masterful in their scattering of brisk, bite-sized challenges.

The controls here are from an alternate dimension: R1/R2 to jump? Right analog stick for all actions, and face buttons only to... select different gadgets? And it feels... fucking great?

Nothing could be more indicative of how in-a-rut we are with current AAA games, how beholden we are to a specific set of withered conventions and muddy aesthetics, than playing this game for a while. It's a cliche, but it's true (and it's all the more impressive considering I never played this when I was younger!): it made me feel like a kid again.

The All time great. A marvel created at the Apex of the platformer popularity, utilizing the all important collection-goal oriented design and presenting them as iconic mascots with their own personality.
A killer soundtrack with killer sound design that still echoes in my head to this day.
The pioneer of the analog stick. You may complain about the strange control scheme from the time but without it's success the control schemes of today may still be using triggers to move the camera.
This game is perfect and you can't tell me otherwise