The closest we'll likely ever get to a true Ape Escape 4. Ape Escape: Big Mission is a Japan exclusive PSP spinoff. If you are an Ape Escape fan, do yourself a favor and play this game! Don't be scared by the fact that it's in Japanese language only. This game can VERY easily be played even if you don't understand a single bit of it.

The story has Specter shrinking down Spike, Natalie, and the Professors lab to a miniature size. He's also kidnapped the Professor, Aki, and the previous protagonists Jimmy, Kei, and Yumi. Now Spike and Natalie need to pilot the miniature lab to save their friends and family and return to normal size.

If I had to compare the gameplay to another game that's more modern, I would say it's like Mario Odyssey. The twist here is that instead of controlling Mario you can only control the cap that possesses things. That's this game in a nutshell. When you begin a level, you start off piloting the small lab and need to locate an Ape to possess and control before your battery runs out. From there, you move through a linear level swapping between apes with different abilities to clear platforming challenges. Catching apes feels almost exactly like it does in the console games, and playing as them feels like the different gadgets you use in those games as well. If you decide to play this game here's the basic controls so you understand what you're doing since everything will be in Japanese. X will always be jump no matter what you are controlling, triangle will always be the capture/unpossess ape button, and square and circle will always be the attack or special move button depending on what your ape specializes in. That's basically the gist of it and what you'll be doing throughout the whole game. Easy as hell to get!

Soichi Terada composed the soundtrack for this game and honestly, it's some of his best work for this series. If you don't want to play this game because it's japan exclusive then at least give the soundtrack a listen.

There are a few nitpicks. Sometimes the game spawns WAY too many enemies at once in some rooms and you can easily be overwhelmed. Also for some reason, the game only lets you have 2 lives and no more then that. A baffling choice but you likely won't be dying too often. If you get nervous feel free to save state. Further, when you are presented with an obstacle you are almost always given the ape needed to proceed through it, so it feels like there's not really much challenge in finding the apes like you do in the mainline titles.

Overall, this is a very good Ape Escape game and it's a shame it was never translated. It feels like a culmination of the previous games, bringing back all the protagonists from series history and having them work together against Specter and the Freaky Monkey Five by controlling all the apes they've fought before. If you are an Ape Escape fan that's hungry for more content, please play this game! You'll see what I mean when I say it feels like it could be the closest to an Ape Escape 4 that we'll ever get.

TNA Impact released around the time where TNA was probably at their peak with one of the greatest rosters in pro wrestling, shows being viewed by millions of people with people even hoping and thinking that TNA would at one point become an actual competitor to the WWE which why TNA's first video game was highly anticipated since it's not only TNA's first game but it was also the first major non WWE game in quite a while. TNA Impact released in 2008 and received luke warm reactions at best and is nowadays even viewed by some as a "bad" wrestling game. the game's roster selction while offering a lot of TNA's strongest draws at the time is a bit too slim and there are no female wrestlers found the matchtypes are also very bare bones with only 9 matchtypes that also don't offer a whole lot since every match in theory is a hardcore match so no DQ's though the only weapons at your disposal are a couple of chairs that lay on the ground. no tables and no chairs. the abscence of content is only a little understandable since it was TNA's first game and the first major non WWE in years so both TNA and Midway couldn't be quite sure how successful the game could become which is why I get that Midway tried to play things safe since every dollar you'd spend on feauteres could be a dollar you'd potentially lose. still a ladder match and having the ability to also use tables wouldn't have hurt. plus there aren't nearly enough moves in the game. a lot of wrestlers share at least 2 or 3 moves which does make them all play very similar to play. even though TNA Impact is very lacking in content and was very much begging for more variaty I still think it gets way too much hate since it's far from being bad. visually the game is simply stunning even today, the core gameplay is despite the lack of movesets, matchtypes and things of possibility still very smooth since it runs on 60fps and fun even. it's very arcady and I love it for that you can even catch people mid air with a dropkick when they try to pull off a top rope move which is awesome and it surprises me that no game prior gave you that ability. the moves also all feel so impactful, chairshots are straight up nasty with the way the wrestlers sell them, the ultimate x matchtype is also a lot of fun and probably one of more unique ones since no other wrestling game feautered it (probably bc it's a TNA original made for their X division so it wouldn't make sense to feauture it in a non TNA match or game), the story mode while feeling like it was written by Vince Russo while he was on a heavy drinking binge is also actually enjoyable. despite the difficulty spikes and the lack of arenas (which why TNA? like c'mon you got PPVs like No Surrender and Victory Road yet none of them are featured in the game) it still offeres an entertaining story that doesen't take itself seriously and the reversal system while unrefined is really cool with the player being able to reverse reversals there are moments where you will see a chain of reversals happening which is awesome shame though that timing on a lot of these is weird. TNA Impact had a lot of potential there are many puzzle pieces of a fantastic wrestling hidden throughout. puzzle pieces which could have been put together as one in a sequel which at one point was planned but unfortunately Midway declared for bankruptcy not long after however some of that potential was realized since the same development team then went to work on WWE All Stars which has TNA Impacts DNA all over it. TNA Impact is a flawed but earnest attempt which in my eyes didn't fail. is it as good as the WWE games that came out during the same console generations or even as great as the WWE games that came out the generation before that? no. but it remains a very unique game of it's kind that can deliver the Smackdown or rather the Impact!

remarkable wrestling game. i don't feel like it's a very popular sentiment, but this is (in some ways) leagues ahead of what WWE (and other wrestling game companies) were cranking out at the time. that's mirrored in the actual wrestling product at the time -- this is practically right at the height of TNA greatness.

PROS: there's an incredible chain wrestling system that feels intuitive and rewarding the more you play, the roster is diverse and the characters feel accurately represented, the animations are crisp and weighty and the story is camp as hell

CONS: the main character's name is suicide, which was problematic even then, there's a lack of any real commentary, there's a pretty wild lack of mode variety and after beating the main story, there's not much to do

highly recommend returning to this on a PS2/emulator if you've got the means to: it aged very gracefully

basically a kamp krusty rehash in video game form, nothing remarkable but still rather subversive conceptually as far as simpsons games goes

really makes proper use of the dystopian color palette of the game boy to fit the thematic

giving this game an extra half star simply because they had the gall to name one of the kids "rebound rodney" to serve as a hint for you to steer the trajectory of your boomerang on the way back to you so that it hits him

pikachu pioneered reaction channels before youtube even existed

I feel like a lot of people got this for the shiny Jirachi link up functionality to the GBA with Ruby/Sapphire but the whole idea of essentially beta testing Oak's weird broadcasting phase was surprisingly novel to me

a lot of these channels felt like watching friends without the laugh track with the lengthy pauses but the interactive functionality made it a lot more engaging than if they had just overlayed a bunch of real episode footage and used it as a cheap workaround to justify the mechanic

the Pichu Bros special was one of the outliers in this respect but I enjoyed the gradual reveal of it as a kid and getting to unlock new channels while decorating the house with impulse purchases made off of that squirtle grift channel

you could also accompany pikachu certain places which made it also a bit of a spiritual successor to Hey You, Pikachu! in a sense

it may not be something that necessarily rocks my socks off nowadays but this game was my shit back then and I'm glad it exists