Ape Escape

Often cited as the first console game to require dual analog sticks, playing Ape Escape now feels like both a time capsule and a glimpse at alternative possibilities. In fact, many games of this era seem to have this quality, the advancement in console technology from 2D sprites to 3D polygons meant a lot of games were grappling with big questions of how to navigate a 3-dimensional space, or how to best visually represent a real world object. And since conventions have not yet been set for these types of games, there were a lot more experimentations.

In Ape Escape, the left analog stick controls the character’s, in this case Spike’s, movement, and the right analog stick controls the direction that the character will use their equipped item. The left corresponding to legs, and right to arms. It’s an intuitive solution that allows a player to run in one direction and swing their arms down in another.

This added flexibility means Spike can be running forward and then at a moment’s notice swipe his net down to his left to grab an escaping monkey.¹ The drawbacks are pretty apparent too. Nowadays the right analog stick is often used to move a free-swinging camera, without those controls, the player has to rely on a single button that resets the camera behind the character, or otherwise hope that the camera follows the character and on-screen action. This can be tricky in a fast-moving 3D space, and there were definitely a few janky moments where the camera is not facing the right way or missing out on the action.

Genre conventions will prioritize the left as character movement, and right as camera control over Ape Escape’s dual sticks for player movements. This simplification or streamlined-ness of the action might make the player move more smoothly, but something is definitely lost.

This prioritization of controlling the camera is also interesting because it’s putting the focus on moving an element that is not part of the game world. Shifting the camera around is a “god view” of sorts, changing what window of the virtual world the player gets to see without changing or affecting anything in the game itself. What happens when a control scheme prioritizes movements that acknowledge the player? Ironically, it doesn’t take the player out of the game, if anything this overall shift is to keep players immersed.

Maybe Ape Escape can only exist with a bit of jank. Maybe there should be times when the camera just swings wildly around a tight corner, the same way when we frantically round a corner, we don’t quite know what’s ahead. Ultimately, the loss of 360 degrees of net control is less a loss of precision, but a loss of multiplicity. One can argue the conventions we’ve settled on for 3D game controls is the best one, and it would be hard to tell anyways since we’re so deeply immersed in this configuration,² but the real loss here is that this alternative future is sidelined. Luckily, there will be more Ape Escapes (I’m actually not sure how they control from here on out.), and there is always an active indie scene that does continue to push the boundaries of how we control and connect with our onscreen characters and in a 3D space. As long as Specter is still out there rewriting the history of which species has control, maybe he could also change the number of control options we eventually settled on.