SHUHEI YOSHIDA AND KENJI KAIDO SHED LIGHT ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF APE ESCAPE, THE FIRST PLAYSTATION GAME TO MAKE FULL USE OF THE DUALSHOCK’S ANALOGUE CONTROLS. THIS INFLUENTIAL 1999 GAME WOULD SPAWN NUMEROUS SEQUELS, SPIN-OFFS AND CAMEOS, MOST RECENTLY REAPPEARING IN SONY’S 2024 HIT ASTRO BOT

WORDS BY LEWIS PACKWOOD

IN THE KNOW

» PUBLISHER: SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT

» DEVELOPER: SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT

» PLATFORM: PLAYSTATION

» RELEASED: 1999

» GENRE: ACTION

A pe Escape was a landmark title in the history of the PlayStation, being the first game that was only playable with a DualShock controller (which launched in 1997, around three years after the PlayStation’s debut). Before Ape Escape’s release in June 1999, several PlayStation games had added support for the DualShock’s analogue controls in addition to the standard d-pad, but Ape Escape was the first title to be entirely built around the DualShock, packed with weapons, gadgets and vehicles that required full use of the two sticks, along with the newfangled L3 and R3 buttons.

Yet interestingly, right back at the start of development, there was no plan to use analogue controls. Shuhei Yoshida, who worked as an executive producer on Ape Escape, recalls that the team, “Wanted to create a 3D, open-field, sandbox game like Mario 64, and they came up with the idea of capturing monkeys. So that came first. But during development, we learned from the hardware team that they were working on a new controller with two analogue sticks.” That discovery inspired them to create gameplay that was only possible with the DualShock.

Yoshida had started working at Sony straight out of college in 1986, initially in the Corporate Strategy Group in Sony’s headquarters. But as a huge videogame fan, he ended up joining Ken Kutaragi’s PlayStation team in 1993. “They were already developing the actual PlayStation hardware, but they had a ritual that any new person joining the team was able to play the Nintendo version of PlayStation. Kutaragi’s team [had been] developing the all-in-one system with the Super NES and the CD-ROM as one unit, and there were a couple of games already near completion,” explains Yoshida. One of the games was an unreleased shooter that was similar in concept to Game Arts’ Silpheed, using 2D sprites over a 3D background that was streamed from the CD. Yoshida was the lead account manager for Japanese publishers and developers making games for PlayStation, but in early 1996 he became a producer for Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot, since the production team at Sony Computer Entertainment Inc needed someone who could handle English communication. “And because just handling one game wouldn’t make me busy enough, I was given an assignment to grow the internal Japan Studio,” Yoshida says. “At that time, there was only one full team, making Motor Toon Grand Prix games.” That group would go on to create Gran Turismo and would later be spun out as Polyphony Digital.

■ Shuhei Yoshida was executive producer on Ape Escape and later went on to become the president of SCE Worldwide Studios. He left Sony in January 2025 and now acts as an independent consultant for companies including Kepler Interactive.