The PS1 gem nobody asks for
Ape Escape, built for a controller that barely existed
- Critic score
- 90
- Player rating
- 4.3/5
- Main story
- 7.1 h
- Genre
- Platformer
Excellent score, almost nobody talking about it. Ape Escape is nonetheless the first game in history to require two analogue sticks — it was designed for the controller we still use today.
The premise is one absurd sentence: an ape named Specter gains enhanced intelligence through an experimental helmet, develops a malicious streak, and sends an army of apes through time to rewrite history. Spike sets out after them with a net.
The interest lies elsewhere. Released in 1999, Ape Escape is the first game to make the DualShock mandatory: it cannot be played any other way. The left stick moves the character, the right one operates the gadgets. Catching an ape with the net requires a motion of the right stick; the lasso, the glider and the club each have their own gesture.
That idea, radical at the time, has become the absolute norm — every three-dimensional game today runs on two sticks. Playing it now means watching the convention being born, before it was a convention.
The game itself has aged very well structurally: compact levels, a crystal-clear objective (capture every ape), each with its own behaviour — some flee, some attack, some hide. It is a collection of small hunts, closer to a capture game than a classic platformer, and the pacing still holds up.
Seven hours covers the essentials. It is in the Classics Catalog, and it is exactly the sort of title that justifies digging through that part of the catalog instead of stopping at the new releases.