If you’ve played Astro Bot already, then you know that its best levels are it’s “hero” stages. After beating the boss in each of its five worlds, players must complete a special end challenge that puts Astro in the center of a different PlayStation game. One level turns him into Kratos and has him tossing a tiny Leviathan Axe at enemies. Another sends him on an Uncharted adventure complete with shootouts and chase sequences.
The best hero level, though, is the very first one. At the end of the first world, Astro is tossed into the world of Ape Escape. It’s not just a nostalgic throwback to a forgotten PlayStation classic; it’s a reminder that Ape Escape is a darn good game that deserves to make a full-scale comeback.
For young readers, Ape Escape was at one time a major PlayStation series. It began in 1999 on the original PlayStation and got three mainline entries in total. It had several spinoffs outside of those three games, but its final installment was a PS3 game built to showcase Sony’s Move controllers. It’s been dormant ever since then — well, at least until Astro Bot.
Astro Bot’s Ape Escape level is a pitch-perfect recreation of the original games. In it, Astro gets an oversized butterfly net and needs to run around a small open area catching wandering apes. He can use a radar to point him in the direction of hidden monkeys, some of which are well-hidden. Once he figures out where they are, he needs to chase them down and snag them in his net.
Despite being a recreation of a 1999 game, the formula holds up remarkably well. Part of that is a credit to Team Asobi and its ability to create tight, responsive gameplay that takes advantage of the PS5’s DualSense. But even beyond that, the core Ape Escape hook is still enjoyable in its own right. The series is a clever puzzle-platformer hybrid that rewards players for sleuthing around every corner of its colorful levels. There’s brainy satisfaction that comes from finding a well-hidden monkey, followed by a great hit of tension as you chase it down while it flees. It’s still remarkably unique and Astro Bot‘s nod to it has gotten me hungry for a full game.
Naturally, Team Asobi seems like the best candidate to create a revival. After all, the studio was originally founded in 2012 as a sub-team within Sony’s Japan Studio. That’s the studio that created Ape Escape (and several other obscure games that cameo in Astro Bot), so it’s no surprise that Team Asobi would create such a fitting tribute to it. The studio has this in their DNA.
There’s another part of me, though, that wants another studio to take a crack at it. Team Asobi has shown that it’s able to create a beloved new series in an era where PlayStation is doubling down on safe franchises. Astro Bot itself is a reminder of that fact, as virtually no PS5 characters represented come from new first-party franchises aside from Returnal. Sony needs to invest in new ideas rather than rehashing a few bankable ones. Team Asobi feels like the studio that’s best positioned to deliver that, so saddling it with bringing back an older series almost feels counterintuitive.
It’s all a bit of a Catch-22, but this still feels like the right moment for an Ape Escape comeback, just as 2016 was the perfect time for Ratchet & Clank to return. Players clearly seem to have a hunger for more family-friendly games on PS5 after four years of heavy, narrative-driven adventures. Sony seems to be all-in on that idea too considering that Lego Horizon Adventures is still set to drop later this year. How about we push that momentum with a little bit of monkey business?
