MVI Ape Escape 1

Ape Escape (1) is the primary game here. Ape Escape: On the Loose will also be mentioned here, due to being a modified PSP port of the PS1 game. Info about the other games will naturally have their own sections.

Dejiko's Notes
Ape Escape 1 Ape Escape is one of those games that to be perfectly honest, I don't think is possible to "hate" unless you just don't give it a chance period. I can understand someone not quite liking it, but you'd have to be blind to not see how ambitious it was. Like others, what cements Ape Escape as a good, if not GREAT, game to me, is, among other things, the solid controls and use of every button. Far too often do you see buttons listed as "NOT USED" or even worse, having multiple buttons do THE SAME FUCKING THING (devs of recent Mario games, I'm looking at you, ya assholes). Ape Escape is fucking awesome in this regard. I will say that the actual "control" of Spike could stand to be better. He runs a little stiffly (not entirely, but just notably) and my biggest complaint is how he sort of jumps "Classicvania" style (slightly delayed, primarily one direction, unable to change direction mid-jump (at least not easily)). This is alleviated somewhat with double jumping, the Sky Flyer, and the Super Hoop (sometimes called Dash Hoop, it seems), but it can still be a bit of a problem at times (most notably that goddamn Specter Circus segment). Other than that, I don't have any complaints about controls or control. The slingshot (or whatever the game calls it) is a little slow in FPS movement and TPS turning, but it's not something that will fuck you over in the long run. When it comes to gadgets though, that's probably what I personally enjoy the most about Ape Escape. The gadgets and sense of progression. It makes it feel rather adventure-like in a way, since you can get a new gadget, then backtrack to find secrets or apes that you missed before or could see, but couldn't get. What's great too is that each gadget is just enough, improving your capabilities while also not making the others suddenly useless (with one exception). The radar let you find apes you couldn't see or might not be aware of, slingshot meant you can hit stuff from a distance, the hoop let you run faster, the sky flyer let you (triple) jump higher, the car let you squeeze through places you couldn't crawl through and also stand two places at once. On top of that, each one was just enough. Like I said before, getting the Sky Flyer didn't suddenly make the Hoop useless, or the car make the slingshot pointless. To some extent, you might use the hoop over the stun club, sure, but the club was still better at precise attacks and you didn't have to worry about running past a target on accident, or accidentally being bounced back by a target at excess speed to the point where you run off a platform. The exception mentioned being the Magic Punch. While somewhat goofy looking, it was the perfect "main game" reward. You could finally break those damn blocks you couldn't before, most foes fell in one hit to it, and you could fully complete the game for radical True Final Boss to challenge and get the real ending you deserved. Sure, it pretty much kicked the shit out of other methods of attack, but at the same time, you already "beat" the game, so at this point, you were just trying to get all the stuff you missed. What I would call equal points of greatness would be the music and levels. Ape Escape has some sweet tunes, that even years later, I still listen to. At first glance, you might think "Drum and Bass? Aw hell no." But you'd be wrong. Unlike the wub-a-dub-wubwubwubwubwubwub shit that comes out of no-skill asshats, Soichi Terada's efforts are all neat and sweet. Damn near every stage has its own song, and is better off for it. In games, one often sees the same sort of generic instrumentation and melodic tropes used for certain stage types, like say grunts, drums, and low woodwinds, for "prehistoric" stages or slow string choirs and orchestra for "medieval" stages. Ape Escape's soundtrack defies this quite well. Instead you have an upbeat, almost pop-like song for its prehistoric stages, and while some of the timbers sound "primal", you can clearly tell they're meant to be modern instruments, evidenced by the delayed synth that lies in the background along with the later soft but low brass. Sometimes, sure, it gets a little typical and traditional, but not to the point of cliche, and mostly for the sake of remix. A perfect example being its medieval stage's song, which starts with an almost club-like vibe, and uses deep strings, but not slowly rather as a beating pulse, and builds on it with faster and lighter strings, but never to the point of what you'd call "classical music". The strings are being used in a percussive manner, rather than a vocal or choir style as they typically are. In terms of level design, Ape Escape starts small and simple like most games, but also gives you multiple things to climb on and practice your jumping. It's also big enough for the monkeys to run away from you, but small enough to cut them off and catch up to them. After that, stages grow almost exponentially. Having several rooms and sections eventually. Each one is a essentially a hub though, which means you can always backtrack, and at times, even find passages between segments to gain entry into areas that you couldn't before, such as an area in one segment of a stage that's divided by bars that you can't fit through, but has an alternate path to get to the other side. A lot of this seems pretty simple, and something of a given nowadays, but Ape Escape was one of the first to really do it "right", making it something of a pioneer in game design to come, and why it is both fondly remembered, but also remains a classic and an inspiration. I'm not going to say that I know what goes through every dev's head, but I think a lot of people who had played early 3D platformers may have thought "Hey, this is a neat idea."

TBC...

AE: OtL is actually a pretty good port, all things considered.

User 2's Notes
Add anything you feel like adding here.