Today's DualSense controller owes much to the original DualShock. While Nintendo and Sega placed single analog sticks onto their controllers, Sony's offering (itself an evolution of their Analog Joystick and Dual Analog controllers) offered two sticks and built-in vibration features. These now-standard features would be widely supported across many PlayStation games, but most games would not require the controller. But Sony's Japan Studio set out to make a title taking advantage of the dual analog sticks for innovative gameplay, cresting the first game to require the DualShock controller: Ape Escape.

Ape Escape places you in the role of Spike, a boy caught up in an Ape uprising. Specter, a monkey from the amusement park, has gotten his hands on a Peak Point Helmet, an invention that boosts his brain power - and his desire to conquer the world. He and his fellow apes have commandeered the professor's time machine to try and rewrite history, and it's up to Spike to travel through numerous eras and catch those mischievous monkeys.

Modern 3D platformers typically use the left analog stick for movement and the right analog stick to control the camera. Ape Escape takes a different approach. Camera adjustments are done via the directional pad and a camera re-center button. Instead, right stick is used to control the various gadgets you use on your quest, and you select these tools by assigning them to the face buttons. Need to catch a monkey with your Time Net? Tilt the stick in the direction of the monkey. Swinging your stun club? Tilt the stick, or spin it around for a spinning attack. Charging up your Sky Flyer or Super Hoop? Spin that stick. Have an RC Car to drive around? Move yourself with one stick and the RC Car with the other. This dual analog control extends to other aspects as well, from the occasional vehicle segment to the three unlockable mini games.

Even as someone who played the Ape Escape games as a kid, these controls took time to get used to again. Jumping initially felt very awkward (a combo of getting used to pressing a shoulder button and it being a little slow), and I wasn't getting the best view of my surroundings. Each gadget also required a bit of learning to get used to, something the game facilitates with its mandatory training rooms. In truth, I never got used to those vehicle sections, even as I improved. But as I played more, the rest clicked. While I wouldn't always get the perfect camera angle (mostly down to early 3D cameras more than the camera input), camera control on the move was as simple as pressing the re-center button to get my bearings and using the first person look if I wanted a specific angle. Jumping became easier to pull off, especially with the Sky Flyer gadget. And speaking of those gadgets - you get a fun selection to play with! Some are focused on catching monkeys or attacking enemies while others are focused on movement or puzzle solving. You have a solid balance of new abilities being introduced every few levels, and levels would have a good mix of level specific hazards and gadget specific sections (new and old).

Your main goal is to capture a specific number of apes each level. These simian sensations are a combination of enemy and collectible, fighting your attempts to capture them with various means. Banana peels, rapid swings, laser guns, missile packs, UFOs, all sorts of stuff. Sure, you can run upto an early monkey and catch them with a swing of the Stun Club followed by your Time Net, but you can often get better results by sneaking up on a monkey or using a specific gadget to stun or reach them. While Ape Escape does feature more traditional enemies to fight, the 204 apes you can capture are the highlight, making for a fun spin on the collectathon platformer that was so common in the era. And if collecting monkeys ain't enough for you, there are also 60 Specter Coins hidden throughout the game (collect at least 40 of them to unlock all three mini games).

When you capture the required amount of apes, it's onto the next level, and you'll steadily progress through the game's 19 main areas and two bonus races against your hypnotized best friend. That's all it takes to roll the credits, but if you want to take down Specter once and for all, you'll need to catch every single monkey in the game. While you can clear some levels as soon as they are available, others require the use of gadgets from later levels, including a gadget that unlocks in the postgame. Luckily, going back through levels with a fully decked out Spike ended up being pretty fun. You have all sorts of new tools at your disposal to nab even simple apes, and the postgame gadget excels at combat (dealing double damage and having more range than the stun club), exploration (opening new areas or shortcuts in existing areas), and monkey catching (the extra range makes stunning them a lot easier). And if you really want to go above and beyond, there are optional time trials to get that 100% rating on your file.

Ape Escape definitely feels of its era, in both good and bad ways. We have some really charming 3D art, but we also have a pretty short draw distance. We have a delightful DnB/electronic soundtrack by Soichi Terada, but we also have some not so great voice acting in the U.S. dub. The control scheme is creative and innovative, but it isn't the modern standard and it definitely takes getting used to. But this is an adventure worth getting used to and one I recommend to any 3D platfomer fan who doesn't mind a little PS1 novelty and jank.

Hours played: 5
Gameplay: The camera movement was atrocious in Ape Escape. Blocks your view constantly and doesn't pivot quick enough. It made navigation difficult, especially on tight walkways. Falling off ledges was a common occurrence. The character movement is kinda slow. I enjoyed hunting down monkey initially. Exploration just wasn't that fun and getting knocked over constantly by enemies and apes became tedious and annoying. Having to switch which gadgets were active was also tedious. Too many instances where you only use them once in a level.

Music and visuals
The music was fine and not notably good or bad. Visually I enjoyed the saturated colors and streamlined world design. I think I big problem was that each area didn’t feel distinct enough and lacked character. This game could really use a remaster. I think if the visuals were improved with more particle effects, better textures, more detail in general, I would have enjoyed exploration more. There’s a fine line though because too much detail can become distracting and overwhelming.

The Minigames
I only played the skiing and boxing mini games. Both are unwieldy and irritating. They could be fun with a friend though.

I had to abandon this one because of the gameplay issues. Platforming movement is slow and doesn’t feel good, the gadgets are annoying to keep swapping in and out, the apes are irritating to capture, and the camera keeps getting in the way.

Good-ish game.

Overall the game is good with a lot of nice levels, but the janky controls and 2 specific levels made me want to die. I gave it a 60/100 since I believe thats what it deserves. Including all bullshit its probably a 40.

GGs, fuck me.

Ape Escape is sick, it's probably most notable for using dual analogue in a fairly ingenious way requiring the right stick to be used to swing a net or spin a propeller, also you can compress the stick to crawl and dive. I like the quirks and adjusted to the controls easily.

The mini-games you unlock use the dual sticks further, like a skiing game where you control where each ski independently to race a course.

Story is straightforward, some ape called Spectre gets a hat that makes him smart, he hijacks a time machine or something and you're tasked with collecting apes and catching up with Spectre to save the day.

The apes themselves are fairly funny, I like that it is a collectathon where you have to strategise a little, going in guns blazing could be chaotic whereas using a stealthy approach may trivialise some ape encounters. I can see how they became a mascot character going into the Eye Toy era, they're also sorta proto-Minion in many of their behaviours.

I don’t listed to much Drum and Bass but Soichi Terada has an absolute belter of an OST, I’d recommend listening to Sumo Jungle and Sun Showered to hear a broader selection of his music.

I had a good time playing through the game originally, but upon beating the final stage you're told to collect all the apes for the true ending... problem is I often prioritised apes sitting at the beginning of a stage, this meant I had to play through full stages to find the remaining apes which is a real turn off, especially given the length of many of the late game stages.

As of April 18th I have collected every ape and finished the second Spectre fight , I have no time for Spectre coins and time trials.

Ape Escape was one of the first games to require mandatory use of the DualShock controller, using both analogue sticks for gameplay.
It's a 3D Platformer, where you explore stages from many different time periods to capture monkeys, that are causing chaos, and stop their leader, Specter, from taking over the world.

The control scheme that this game has is quite odd, as the D-Pad controls the camera (which is pretty awkward), and the face buttons are used for the gadgets, but in order to use them, you use the right analogue stick.

With some of the gadgets, I think this is fine, but with others, it can get quite awkward, especially in some of the game's platforming challenges, where you need to use the Sky Flyer for that extra 3rd jump, and I guess you didn't rotate the stick enough.
Those sections can get a bit annoying, but eventually, you'll get used to it.

The PSP version was actually the first version of this game I played, a couple years back, but it was nice getting to experience the PS1 original.
And this time, I tried out the American version, which contains a different English dub than the European one.

Ape Escape might be one of the few games out there that has both an American English dub and a British English dub, depending on the version you're playing.
The American English dub kinda sucks, gotta be honest. It feels very stilted, and the actors barely give emotion behind it. I wonder how they were directed.

Also, in terms of presentation, the music is really fucking good! Not every track is a winner, but there are a lot that are, and the D'n' B-like songs really are a bop. And its art-style makes this game age really well in the graphics department.

Either way, one of the things that I like the most about this game are the monkeys! Capturing them is the main objective of the game, and you'll find them throughout the stages, but either they can be in a position ready to attack you... or they're relaxing and doing some activity, like playing snooker, and I find that very charming!

For a first game in the series, I think it was good, and I had fun with it!

This game is bananas!

^Initially that was gonna be my entire review, but this game surprised me without how much I like it so I'll give some brief thoughts.

Fantastic look and sound. I think this game has a real nice aesthetic even if it doesn't hold up as well technically compared some other games on the ps1(There can be slowdown at times and the draw distance is pretty low). The monkeys look really silly and helps make them endearing. The music by Soichi Terada is fantastic, really good. It constantly surprised me with how good it was. Crumbling Castle and the final boss theme are probably my fave songs from the game. The dub is what you expect for the time, pretty cheesy and stilted but it's fine. I think Specter's voice fits the character pretty well at least. The game feels pretty great to play, finding the monkeys was fun and replaying a level I already finished with new gadgets was really satisfying. It felt so good to skip parts of the level that took a bit of time the first time I went through with it. The camera did get in the way sometimes and the controls could feel a tad bit unresponsive at times even if I felt the game-feel was really nice overall. Some of the gimmicks like the boat felt kind of finicky too, but overall I really enjoyed my time with this game.

O melhor: A jogabilidade original e a ótima trilha sonora
O pior: Controlar a câmera é sofrível em alguns momentos
O melhor/pior: A dublagem americana é bisonha, mas é do tipo que dá a volta e acaba ficando engraçada

Dos vários jogos de plataforma 3D da quinta geração de consoles, Ape Escape era um dos poucos que nunca havia jogado. É muito interessante ver essa abordagem nos controles antes da padronização de como utilizar dois analógicos que temos atualmente. Cada gadget é bem simples de usar e, tirando o incômodo de ter que acessar o menu para trocar algum dos quatro que podem ficar nos botões de atalho, é muito divertido usar cada um deles para explorar as fases, muitas delas surpreendentemente grandes para um jogo de PS1.

O visual é muito charmoso, apesar de limitações técnicas como o campo de visão mais limitado. E a trilha sonora é, em sua maior parte, excelente. Os pontos negativos ficam para o controle de câmera, naturalmente limitado ao digital devido a jogabilidade única do jogo, mas que pode ser bem problemático em lugares que exigem mais precisão na plataforma. E também para a dublagem americana, que é bem, bem ruim.

No geral gostei muito de Ape Escape, especialmente porque é muito bom revisitar as fases com todos os gadgets disponíveis em busca do 100%. Mais um clássico do PS1 do saudoso Japan Studio para riscar da lista. E também pretendo jogar as sequências de PS2.

I'm normally not a huge fan of late 90s 3D platformers. I like Super Mario 64 a lot, but I normally think things like the Banjo games or the Crash and Spyro trilogies are just alright. Then there's Ape Escape. I love Ape Escape. This isn't a nostalgia thing since my first exposure to the game was the PS4 release of Ape Escape 2, but I still absolutely adore what the game is trying to do. I'm someone who likes controller gimmicks, so using the right stick for something other than camera control is more fun than annoying to me, and the variety of tools here coupled with the occasional vehicles meant that I was always having to think about what my hands were doing. Directional flicks for the net. Pull back and release for the slingshot. Circles for the hoop or propeller. It adds an extra layer to the gameplay of what would otherwise be a pretty standard, but charming, collectathon. The music has a kind of weird synthetic feel to it, but that fits a game where you're traveling through time to catch super smart monkeys that sometimes have guns.

I also just really like monkeys

As much as I love the 2nd and 3rd Ape Escape games, I couldn't remember if I'd ever played the first one, let alone beaten it. Having played through it in Japanese now, I can say quite confidently I had never played it before XD. It is simultaneously quite surprising how similar it is to Ape Escape 2 and also shocking just what an improvement the sequel is by comparison despite how little overall is changed. It took me like 8 or 9 hours in total to get all of the Specter Coins and all of the monkeys.

Story-wise, Ape Escape 1 is much more grounded than its sequels. There's a big monkey park run by The Professor, and one day their star attraction monkey gets his little hands on one of the experimental new Monkey Helmets. It corrupts his mind and gives him super smarts and telekinetic powers which he then uses to build monkey helmets for all his monkey buddies. Now dubbed Specter, he attacks the Professor's lab, and uses his time machine to go back in time and rewrite history to make monkeys in charge of the world instead of humans. It's up to our intrepid boy hero Kakeru to catch all those monkeys messing up history and stop him!

I say it's more grounded, but that's mostly in terms of the locations and the villains, as the Freaky Monkey Five are an invention of the sequel. Your main rival here is your childhood friend Hiroki, whom Specter has brainwashed into being his servant, and even then the rivalry isn't that present up until your final encounter. You could also say the story has somewhat of a point of strength not being about power (and by extension, technology), and technology itself being a potentially horribly corrupting influence, as is at least implied to be the case with Specter's relation to his original monkey helmet. Regardless, it's a 3D action platformer from late-ish in the PS1's lifespan, so the plot isn't really the most interesting thing here.

The most interesting thing is capturing those monkeys, and the game does a pretty good job of that. This is the only game I know of on the PS1 that outright requires the dualshock controller to work, and was clearly developed as a vehicle to convince people Sony's new controller was worth the upgrade. The D-pad handles camera direction and the face buttons change your weapons. Movement is handled by the left joystick and your attacking is done by the right joystick. Compared to the sequels, it takes a bit of getting used to with how you attack, as there isn't any tracking in how you swing your baton or your net. This does have the effect of making the baton a far more useful weapon, as trying to catch a feeling monkey with just the next is far harder to do with how much slower and less accurate your net is in this game.

Other than that, the overall formula of the game is really similar to how the mainline games would go on to do. You start a mission, you gotta collect so many monkeys in order to pass it. There are some slight differences such as there being hidden Specter Coins in each stage to also collect, but they're just an extra thing to collect to unlock some extra mini-games. Other than that, it's just Ape Escape on PS1.

However, being Ape Escape on PS1 DOES carry with it some unfortunately conditions. The game has a pretty poor draw distance which can make navigating some levels a bit of a pain when you're hunting for monkeys (even with your monkey radar). Even worse, some levels have really significant slowdown, and it makes the already somewhat clunky/awkward controls even worse by affecting the latency (especially for jumps). I was beginning to think my controller was broken because the button delay was so bad for jumping, but no. That's just the slowdown. That slowdown is the main reason I would say this game might be difficult to stick with for fans of the PS2 games like I was. However, it's not all bad. The game looks quite good for a PS1 game, even despite the low polygon count. The music is also good, and I'd say even better than the sequels, as well as the VA being excellent as well (at least in Japanese).

Verdict: Recommended. Somewhat clunky controls and fairly annoying slowdown aside, this is still an excellent game. Good music, good gimmick, good level design. It's all things that are improved in the later games, but they're still really solid here as well. If you're a fan of the series or a fan of 3D platformers in general, you can certainly do better than the first Ape Escape game, but you can easily do a lot worse as well.

Крайне оригинальный платформер, который использует возможности дуалшока по полной программе.
Местами игра довольно душноватая (будь то из-за неудобной камеры или дизайна в целом), но большую часть игры было весело.
Музыка просто супер. По моему здесь нет ни одного саундтрека, который был бы плохим. Геймплей - пушка. Ловить обезьян при помощи гаджетов одно удовольствие, хоть и попадаются сомнительные моменты. Графика красочная и работает на атмосферу каждого уровня. Попалась бы игра в детстве, то возможно могла быть одной из любимых.

Из реальных минусов отмечу до смешного дебильную озвучку на английском. Ее хоть на мемы режь.