Ape Escape gets a major cameo in Astro Bot and we’ve been dreaming of an Ape Escape revival ever since playing it.
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.
