Japan Studio was one of my favorite developers in the entire industry, I loved their willingness to experiment, their consistently high level of quality, and impeccable taste when it came to finding new creative talent. They've made a lot of truly stellar stuff, but my favorite series of theirs has to be Ape Escape. Blending the playful spirit of Nintendo with the bite of Sony, the Ape Escape games have pretty much everything I want from a video game. Experimental yet intuitive mechanics, an addicting gameplay loop, loads of content, a lovable cast, colorful and charming visuals, and awesome DnB scores. I adore the original platformer trilogy and will get there, but first, I want to rave about the series' most underrated game, Ape Escape: Million Monkeys.
Before I talk about Million Monkeys, though, I want to talk about the games that led up to it. So around the PS2 era of the series, Ape Escape did this thing where the mainline games introduced new protagonists like Jimmy and Yumi, while the spinoffs focused on the cast of the original game, notably Spike, Natalie, Professor, and Casi. But weirdly enough, those spinoffs were often just as important to the series' lore and continuity if not moreso. For example, the Japanese exclusive Ape Escape 2001 was about Spike trying to vacuum all the titular monkey's pants (don't ask) so he could wash them, which led to the events of Ape Escape 2 where Spike's cousin Jimmy accidentally sends back brainwashing helmets with the pants. But even more interesting is Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed, a pretty okay party game that not only introduced a brand new cel-shaded artstyle, but it also served to flesh out that original cast a bit, introduced a bunch of new lore, leaned way harder on the sci-fi elements, and took the series in a surprisingly darker direction. Each character had their own intermission summing up their personality, which ranged from silly shenanigans, to surreal visual experiments, to... Helga's story. Helga is a new character introduced in Pumped & Primed who at first just seems like a new love interest for Spike, until you watch her intermission and learn that her dad was kidnapped by a particularly evil group of monkeys and she still has no idea where he is. It's such a shocking but well-executed tonal shift that would only pave the way for Pumped & Primed's far darker sequel, Ape Escape: Million Monkeys.
If I had to compare the also Japanese-exclusive Ape Escape: Million Monkeys to anything, I'd compare it to something like Super Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time. This is a game where a fairly cute cast from an otherwise lighthearted series get thrust into a far darker story in a more realistic setting with a more dangerous antagonist than ever before. Million Monkeys starts with what seems to be the game's usual antagonist Specter letting a army of armed monkeys out to wreck havoc on the streets of Tokyo, and they're far more violent than usual, even though the actual Specter was on vacation the whole time. Thus, Spike and his friends have to fend off the army of monkeys and figure who's really responsible, while the usually evil Specter has to actually save the world for once, meaning we get a Sonic Adventure 2 type of plot where you can either play as a "light team" or a "dark team". What makes Million Monkeys's story so fun is twofold. First, the sheer novelty of seeing these otherwise silly chibi characters in a far more serious situation is really cool. But more importantly, Million Monkeys continues that character focus that Pumped & Primed set up in a bunch of neat ways. Casi, the helpful robot AI (and my favorite character), gets a mini-subplot where her city-wide system of clones get infected with a virus. Helga, while her storyline sadly never got properly resolved, is repeatedly forced to team up with various monkeys like Specter despite her history with them. And Specter himself is a joy to watch in his cutscenes as he struggles so very hard to be a good guy. The character interactions we get in this game are just so endearing and enjoyable, and really hammers home while I love the Ape Escape cast as much as I do.
On a gameplay level, Ape Escape: Million Monkeys is one of the most unique games I've ever played. Ape Escape in general has always been a pretty experimental series in terms of gameplay, from its twin-stick platforming to that weird vacuum spinoff I mentioned, but Million Monkeys goes the extra mile by basically being a musou game, but with Ape Escape controls. Essentially, each mission tasks you with getting to the end beating up hordes of monkeys along the way, all the while you use a slew of gadgets just like you would in a normal Ape Escape game. It's surprisingly intuitive and fun, each gadget serves a purpose from the roller blades that let you blaze through enemies to the sword for close-up melee for the several projectile gadgets, and they all transition into each other incredibly fluidly. Once you get to grips with how Million Monkeys plays, you can pull off some impressive and satisfying combos and it just feels incredibly good. The missions themselves are also pretty fun, often throwing you into large real-life settings like a mall or a harbor with lots to explore. There's also a lot of boss fights and setpieces, from stopping a runaway truck to disabling a series of bombs to solving a bunch of puzzles in virtual space to taking out a ton of monkeys in a stadium. It's not all mindless action though, Million Monkeys has some serious teeth and gets pretty damn tough, especially in the final act where you go backwards through some of the earlier stages while having to fend off a ton of armored and invisible enemies and swarms of aliens. By the end, you'd have to really master the controls and it feels really good to improve my skills at the same rate as the game's smooth difficulty curve.
Million Monkeys also stands out in terms of its customization, offering a ton of different characters to play as and weapons to use. As I mentioned before, Million Monkeys has two campaigns, the Spike route and the Specter route, each with four characters to pick from. By beating missions with a given character, you'll get chips that you can combine to form a range of rewards from new weapons to costumes to Monkey summons that you can equip to help you out. And even beyond that initial eight, there's a ton of hidden characters like Helga and Jake, making this the largest character roster in any Ape Escape game. The massive amount of characters to play as gives Million Monkeys a ton of replayability, and that's not even getting into all the other side content ranging from 100 hidden Monkey Coins to find scattered around, to the pretty robust multiplayer, to the arena-based Colloseum Mode that basically works as a more refined version of Pumped & Primed. Like most great Warriors games, Million Monkeys is the type of game that you could sink hours into if you wanted.
In terms of presentation, I adore Million Monkeys. The blend of hyperrealistic city backgrounds and cartoony chibi characters looks so unique and striking, while maintaining the level of visual polish you'd expect from the Ape Escape games. There's also a bunch of prerendered cutscenes that pretty much maintain the same artstyle, and look just as charming! Soichi Teraba, composer of most of the other Ape Escape games, is still around for Million Monkeys and offers up a fantastic blend of memorable original tracks and top-notch remixes, like the several great Mission themes, the Stadium theme that remixes Molten Lava from the original game, and the groovy Colosseum theme. Terada also carries over some of Pumped & Primed's best character themes, particularly that of Helga, Jake, Casi, and the Pipotrons, making for an overall fantastic musical package.
There's one other thing I need to bring up about Million Monkeys though, it's that it has one of my favorite menus in any video game ever. It perfectly toes the line between slick Y2K vibes and Ape Escape charm with the animations of Casi in the background, with the same clean linework you'd expect from an early Wii or DS game. Hell, the caution warnings whenever you save or load data just straight-up remind me of Nintendo's health and safety warning from the mid-to-late 2000s, it just strikes a weird nostalgic chord that I didn't know I had. And when you couple it with the best music in the game playing in the background, you get a menu where I often found myself stopping what I was doing just to soak in the vibes.
And that really sums up my feelings on Ape Escape: Million Monkeys. It's a very weird and experimental game that not everyone may mesh with, but it's one that I really vibe with. It hits on a lot of concepts that really appeal to me. It takes a cast of cartoon characters, puts them in a realistic and darker setting, and uses that to expand on their characters. It builds an incredibly unconventional and strange combat system with an impressive amount of depth and customization if you want to dig into it. And it boasts an incredibly engrossing presentation that feels so nostalgically 2000s. Despite my unadulterated love for that original Ape Escape trilogy, I think the sheer audacity of Million Monkeys is what truly solidified this series as one of my favorites.
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