It has been revealed (more accurately, leaked) that Metal Gear Solid Delta is keeping the Ape Escape hijinx in MGS3, in a move that gamers everywhere are calling ‘oh cool, yeah, I forgot the original had that’. It’s important that we don’t lose sight, in the increased reverence Kojima has built year on year in the gaming industry through his cultural mystique as much as his games, that Metal Gear Solid is extremely weird.
Between Kojima’s divorce from a series that will always be indelibly Kojima and the reevaluation of Metal Gear Solid as another marble sculpture in the man’s museum of masterpieces, it would have been easy to let this weirdness fall by the wayside. To cut out the silly miscellany and sell our childhood back to us as a serious game for serious gamers. It’s spy stuff. It’s army guys. It’s not, in our rose-tinted memories, running around after cartoon monkeys. Except it is. It always has been.
Ape Escape Is A Forgotten PlayStation Legend
But it’s all well and good bringing back Ape Escape in Metal Gear Solid Delta, but why not go a step further? Why not bring it back altogether? I think of Ape Escape as a core franchise for Sony, a key player in the early days of PlayStation domination and fully embodying the mascot-heavy, colourful action themes of that era. But unlike Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon, Ape Escape doesn’t appear to have endured in the hearts and minds of gamers.
Partially that is simply because it went away. The last true Ape Escape game (Ape Escape 3) released in 2005, while the last Ape Escape game of any description (PlayStation Move Ape Escape) released five years later in 2010. And really, did anyone have a PlayStation Move? We don’t like to confront the passage of time, but that means Ape Escape’s last appearance was 15 years ago – that’s a much longer hiatus than Crash or Spyro ever had to endure.
But Ape Escape wasn’t just any old game that I personally happen to remember and so give outsized importance. Ape Escape was considered amongst PlayStation’s elite. It was the game that introduced analogue sticks to the world. It made the cut for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. It was one of the faces of the EyeToy rollout, a big deal back in 2003. And, as you already know, the apes then appeared in Metal Gear Solid 3.
For the record, the game I place an outsized importance would be the rarely discussed Kula World.
Could Astro Bot Pave The Way For A New Ape Escape?
In a way, Ape Escape has been brought back recently – it’s the first of five PlayStation tie-in levels included in Astro Bot, and for me, it’s not only the best of the collection but also the one that most feels like the game it’s… wait for it… aping! Oh, we do have fun here at TheGamer. Maybe it’s because Astro Bot’s Team Asobi is the child of the legendary Japan Studio, which made Ape Escape in the first place. Maybe it’s just because Ape Escape has such a distinctive style of gameplay that its magic is timeless.
Whatever the reason, Ape Escape seems primed for a modern revival, and I have hope that one could be underway already. Herman Hulst talked about bringing back some older Sony series (albeit in the dullest way possible), and Ape Escape feels like a good one to take off the shelf – there’s still not really a game like it around, fan expectations wouldn’t necessitate expensive graphics or an elongated runtime, and coming in hot after Astro Bot, Sony knows that ‘Nintendo-style games‘ still sell well on the chunky white box.
Even I am not cynical enough to suggest that adding Ape Escape to Metal Gear Solid Delta is a way to test the ground for a real sequel. For one thing, Konami doesn’t own Ape Escape, so has little to benefit. I might believe that Team Asobi were nudged into the Ape Escape level by Sony, but it seems strange to let so much time pass with no reveal if it was part of a masterplan and not just coincidence or synergised thinking – which is what corpo types call coincidences that also make money.
Team Asobi also put LocoRoco in Astro Bot to honour Japan Stuudio’s legacy, and there’s no chance that’s coming back.
I am cynical enough to suggest that if Ape Escape does come back, it would be as some part of 3-in-1 collection like Crash N.Sane Trilogy or Spyro Reignited. I’m probably just about a big enough sucker to buy it, but I remain here yearning for the days when we’re passed pretending remakes are testing the waters for new games. I’ve been waiting since 2005 for a new Ape Escape – Ape Escape 4 was even announced in 2006! – and that’s still what I want. But if I can’t have that, I’ll take a remastered collection. And if I can’t have that, I suppose I’ll have the Ape Escape minigame in Metal Gear Solid.
- Released
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June 18, 1999
- Developer(s)
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Japan Studio
- Publisher(s)
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Sony Computer Entertainment