30 years of the Playstation: Ape Escape

On September 9, 2025, the Sony Playstation will turn 30 years old in North America. Throughout the month of September, I’ll be exclusively covering games released for Sony’s first entry in the console market, with an emphasis on those that explain, in some way, its unprecedented success. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

The Playstation didn’t begin its life with analog controls. This is known to those who picked one up in its early years, or are familiar with the history of the console and its competition, but given the focus on 3D from the start and that the original Playstation ended its life with a game pad that looked an awful lot like the one that Sony would utilize on its next two successors — and that the Playstation first came out in North America 30 years ago now — you would be forgiven for being unaware that the dual sticks were a later add.

Sony was attempting to add analog control options from early on, though. The Playstation Analog Joystick released in April of 1996 — a couple of months before Nintendo released the N64 with its native analog stick — and its analog controls ended up compatible, to some degree, with over 80 games on the system by the end of its life. The ability to effectively turn the sticks into digital-based arcade-style sticks for the rest of the library was also a plus, since you didn’t have to switch it out for a standard pad if you didn’t want to. The problem was that it wasn’t a gamepad, and looked more like a flight stick with an arcade button layout in between sticks — and it cost enough that reviewers pointed out that this alone would likely turn off potential buyers.

Sony would rectify this by releasing the Dual Analog Controller in April of 1997 in Japan (August in North America, September in Europe). This is the predecessor to the DualShock controller that Sony would stick with not just for the rest of the Playstation’s life, but through the Playstation 4 (with a little detour taken for the Playstation 3’s initial pad, the Sixaxis, along the way). It looks quite a bit like the DualShock, though, the thumbsticks were concave, the L2 and R2 buttons smaller, and the grips were longer — long enough for Japanese players to complain about their comfort level. Throw in that only the Japanese version of the Dual Analog had a vibration feedback feature, and someone everywhere had a reason to complain about this first Sony effort at analog via standard gamepad on the Playstation.

In November of 1997, Sony would release the DualShock in Japan, with a May 1998 release in North America. The redesigned PSOne edition of the console that arrived in 2000 came with a DualShock, and it was the standard controller that came with any Playstation beginning in 1998. Despite this massive shift toward a dual-analog controller as the default, it would take until June of 1999 for Sony to release a game on the Playstation that actually required the thing.

Why the wait? A need to populate the userbase with DualShocks, for one. All three of the Analog Joystick, Dual Analog, and DualShock controllers might have supported analog control, but they didn’t necessarily all support the same games. You could play Parallax Software’s Descent, for instance, using the first two, but not the DualShock, and because of the differences in force feedback between the Dual Analog and DualShock, even some games that do support either pad don’t work the same way, since developers started to take advantage of the new features in the DualShock that didn’t exist previously.

There is also the idea that Sony was teasing a dual-analog future more than actually living in it at this point in time, so there was no rush or pressure to release the new controller alongside a game, as happened with Sega and the 3D Control Pad for the Saturn, or with Nintendo using Super Mario 64 at launch to show you why their newfangled controller was designed the way it was. Consider the life of the Super Nintendo. Nintendo began to release genuine 3D games on it with years left to go before it was replaced as their primary concern: Star Fox came out in the spring of 1993, three years and change before the N64. Nintendo didn’t fully dedicate themselves to these true 3D games all at once, however, but instead picked their spots. A Star Fox here, a Stunt Race FX there, all in service of releasing a notable title look-what-we-can-do title in the present, yes, but also serving as something of a practice round for learning the ins and outs of 3D before releasing a console built from the ground up for games like those.

Similarly, Sony was making Playstation games with an eye on their own future: the Playstation 2 was announced in 1999, the same year that Ape Escape — the first game on the Playstation to require the DualShock to play — arrived on the scene, and that system had been in development for years already. The DualShock, and Ape Escape, have a lot more in common with Stunt Race FX in this way than with Super Mario 64 — the future was coming, but not quite here yet.

Which is not a criticism of Ape Escape in any way, simply an explanation for Sony’s priorities and the lengthy delay in between the release of the controller required to play Ape Escape, and the actual game’s availability. Ape Escape is one of the best platformers on the Playstation, even if it is — very obviously — a game that released with dual-analog controls before it was clear what the best and agreed-upon use of those were actually going to be.

Despite the presence of twin sticks, the camera is still controlled in the kind of ways that games of the era were: the shoulder buttons and the four-button D-pad of the DualShock handled the camera, while movement was controlled with the left stick. The right stick was utilized specifically for item use: you mapped your tools to one of the face buttons, and would press that button not to use said tool, but to select it. Then, you pressed a direction with the right stick to use the currently equipped tool with that direction in mind. So, you push up on the right stick to swing your sword or net that way, pull back on it to swing that way, and so on.

It’s… awkward. But really only in the present, where we’re used to a different definition of things. In 1999, it was simply another control scheme to learn, as there was no shared universal language for how these kinds of games were supposed to be controlled. As I wrote in Lost in Cult’s Joysticks to Haptics, the 3D space was being figured out in real-time to the point that the Atari Jaguar released in 1993 as a (then) powerful 3D console featuring a controller without shoulder buttons, despite the fact that Nintendo’s 16-bit SNES, with only faux 3D at its disposal at that point, had released F-Zero as a launch title and Super Mario Kart in 1992:

There were attempts at using the D-pad and face buttons as a proto-form of dual analog character and camera control — to bring up Descent again, this was on that beat, but you also saw it in the likes of Rare’s GoldenEye 007: more in the first-person realm than in platformers at this point, since the viewpoint requirements for first- vs. third-person were significantly different. So, Ape Escape, being a third-person platformer, stuck to what everyone was used to on the camera side for the most part, and instead used the right analog stick for action and the face buttons for switching between tools.

So. Ape Escape. You play as Spike, whose job is to capture all the escaping apes… who have traveled back in time in order to build an empire of super-intelligent monkeys that humanity will never evolve quickly enough to catch up to, and will therefore never become the dominant species on the planet. Specter, an albino ape who dons a helmet that grants him said super intelligence, comes up with this plan for world domination, and the creator of that helmet, the professor, wants to stop him. So he hands Spike the tools he has developed for capturing monkeys — the net isn’t just a net, for instance, but actually warps the monkeys back into captivity the moment they’re contained within it — and sends him back in time to do the deed.

You have to sneak up on the apes, and, failing that, stun them with the stun club you’ve got equipped in order to get yourself a second to switch to the net and capture them in it. You can run right after them and be aggressive about it, though, have to worry about banana peels and punching counters early, and later… well, ape technology advances as the eras do, so let’s just say that later apes have moved on from hurling bananas at you to firing semi-automatic assault rifles and grenades instead. So yeah, maybe crawling toward them on the ground and laying prone when necessary is a better tactic sometimes.

You have some standard puzzle platforming kind of stuff to do here — the slingshot will let you hit hard-to-reach buttons and switches and even monkeys, you have a hula hoop that, when used, lets you run fast through doors that will shut fast or over bridges that are slowly raising, you can eventually take flight just like the monkeys in their aircraft do — and you have to worry continually about your health and lives. Collect 100 golden triangles, and you get an extra life. Pick up a little cookie- item, and regain some of your health.

Each monkey’s helmet has a light attached that will let you know their status. Blue lights means they don’t feel they’re in danger. Yellow means they’re being actively cautious. Red, of course, means they’re in full-on alert mode, which means running away, leaving traps like banana peels for you to slip on, or, if they’re equipped with serious firepower, they’ll instead get aggressive and start attacking you outright. There are other enemies to defeat, and while none of them are particularly difficult, they are where you’ll get additional golden triangles and most of your health recovery from — depending on how you play, or how quickly monkeys recognize you, or how often you fall from too great of a height, you will need plenty of both. The game isn’t exceptionally difficult by any means, however: don’t fight against what it wants you to do, and don’t rush through the stages, and you’ll both stay healthy and pick up plenty of lives and health.

Worlds are broken up into three levels each, so you get a real sense of not just moving through different environments, but also time. You start to see the technological progress of the apes in more ways than just their added firepower: monkeys gain the power of flight, they start to construct actual buildings and bases, they adorn these structures with art in their own image. You are not capturing the monkeys fast enough or in great enough numbers, basically, and their plan is coming to fruition.

Every two worlds, there is a solo stage that’s a battle of some kind against Jake, a human who has decided to work for Specter. There is a Stadium Attack that’s a race on foot against Jake, a Gladiator Attack that is also a race but this time lets you use your Sky Flyer to take flight, and last is the Chariot Attack, which has you in a go-kart. You don’t actually have to win these races to proceed, and humorously the localization actually swapped the post-match comment from Jake so that it sounds like you won when you’ve lost, and vice versa. You do get a bunch of Specter Coins if you win a race, though, so it is worth trying until you manage it — Specter Coins unlock various minigames when you collect enough of them, and they are scattered throughout levels as well as serving as prizes for these races with Jake.

As was the style at the time, a level isn’t actually 100 percent completed until you’ve found all its hidden goodies — monkeys and Specter Coins — as well as completed its Time Trial variant. You get a special final tool, the Magic Punch, after beating the game the first time, so it’s pretty clear that the expectation is that you’ll keep going even when you’ve rolled the credits. It will likely take you another 3-5 hours to collect everything if you just kind of go through the game normally without attempting to get as much as possible the first time around — there is anywhere from seven to 12 hours of game here, on average, which is certainly plenty.

As for those gadgets, you’ve got the aforementioned Stun Club and Time Net, both of which let you swing in a direction with the right stick or be used in a 360 motion if you move the stick around in a circle. The Water Net lets you swim faster and also catch any swimming apes, while the Monkey Radar lets you determine what direction an escaping ape might be in. The Slingback Shooter is a slingshot that you’ll understand intuitively if you have ever played a Zelda from the era — including a toggleable first-person aiming mode — while the Super Hoop doubles as a way to run fast as well as to just crash into certain enemies to defeat them while it’s active. The Sky Flyer lets you fly through the air for brief moments, letting you reach otherwise inaccessible areas that even your double jump can’t get you to, and the RC Car can reach areas that Spike is too large to enter on his own. Then there’s the post-game Magic Punch, which breaks through certain walls and doors, in addition to being a strong attack for combat on its own.

Ape Escape doesn’t necessarily do a lot of inventive, first-of-its-kind design or gameplay. It didn’t have to, however. It’s just a solid game from top to bottom that borrowed from the right sources, and mixed all of that together into something that still easily stood out. The apes are the star of the show, and are a far more recognizable part of the experience than Spike even though this is a third-person platformer where you see him the whole time, and they bring so much to the proceedings that it doesn’t matter if the platforming or items or some design elements are found in other titles. Those other games don’t have super-intelligent apes wearing helmets and occasionally lobbing grenades at you as you chase them throughout time in order to stop their plan of world domination. Ape Escape does, though!

Sony’s treatment of the game (and franchise) over time is a bit mixed. Since 2022, it’s been included in the Deluxe tier of a Playstation Plus subscription for Playstation 4 and 5 users, so it’s not as if they have forgotten about it by any means even after the era of selling Playstation titles on the Playstation 3, but there are also some real obvious misses in their history. The last new Ape Escape title released in 2005, on the Playstation 2. And how was Ape Escape not part of the Playstation Classic mini console? It would have required a DualShock controller rather than the initial, analog-less pad bundled with the system, which might be why Sony didn’t bother, but they should have. Ape Escape is one of their finer titles on a system not lacking for it, a standout platformer to this day that’s a lot of fun to play once you realign yourself with the control scheme sensibilities of the day, and its absence is felt from the Classic’s lineup.

And it’s also a vital game in Sony's and the Playstation’s history, owing to its place as the first title to require use of the DualShock and its dual-analog features. It’s difficult to imagine that the Playstation ever lacked dual-analog controls, these many decades and Playstations later, but you can thank Ape Escape for its part in making the dual-analog future a ubiquitous one.

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