And I must steal their shorts.
No, my neighborhood hasn’t been overrun with manic, pants-wearing monkeys.
My TV has.
Hmmm. Perhaps I should explain.There’s a series of games that started on the Playstation (and since expanded to the PS2 and PSP) involving monkeys. A lot of them.
The first game was called Ape Escape.
And it was good. No, not just good – it was excellent. The premise was a bit odd, though. There were these monkeys, you see, and they had escaped (thus the title). Not only had they escaped, but they had traveled back in time to change history and remake the world in the image of monkeys. I know it sounds weird, but the gameplay was very solid and the game was fantastic. As Spike (the kid on the cover of the game) you had to travel through time, catching the monkeys and returning them to the present.
With Piposaru 2001 (it only has a Japanese title, as it was never released outside of Japan), things got stranger.
This was the first appearance for the simians on the PS2, and it was a bit of a departure from the original game. This time it wasn’t the monkeys you were after – it was their shorts. Yes, you have to swipe the monkeys’ pants.
With a vacuum cleaner.
I just got this one yesterday, so I’m not too far into it. And I’ve got a ways to go. You see the name not only refers to the year the game was released, but also to how many monkeys are in the game. That’s a lot of pants to swipe! But it’s not just simple theft. Monkeys aren’t known for their cleanliness, so they have to have their shorts forcibly removed for washing. After the shorts are tossed into a giant washing machine, the monkeys all go to an onsen to get cleaned up.I don’t have the next game in the series (Ape Escape 2) yet, so I can’t really comment on it.
However, I did pick up Piposaru Academia (Ape Academy) for the PSP last week.
I’m not entirely sure what the monkeys are supposed to be studying at their academy, as the bulk of the game isn’t very academic. Instead of being one big game, this one is a collection of minigames, all starring monkeys.Games include Monkey Soccer, the one meter dash (yes, one meter), air hockey, dodgeball (played near lava), soccer and a shooting gallery. Most of those I can do fairly well. There are a few that involve a bit of Japanese knowledge (understandable, seeing how the whole game is in Japanese), and those I really suck at. In one of them flags of different countries are flashed on the screen, and the player has to correctly identify them. Sure, I may know what they are, but damned if I know how to say them in Japanese!
I lose that one a lot.
Even so, the games are a lot of fun, so losing one game over and over is worth it to play the rest of them.I really can’t pin down what it is about the series that grabs me, but there’s something there that keeps me playing. Maybe it’s the absurdity of the premises, or maybe it’s just the monkeys.
I don’t really care.
I’ve started playing the first game over again, and will keep going with the other two I’ve got as well. Once I need a different monkey fix, I’ll go pick up Ape Escape 2. And there’s also an Ape Escape 3 in the works, so I imagine that one will be finding its way into my collection once it’s out.And speaking of collecting, I found this while searching for the images I used in this post:
Yes, a special Piposaru memory card, complete with monkey case to keep it in. I’ve yet to see one of these in a shop, but if I do – it’s mine!
Such is the power of the monkeys. ^.^