Hey all,

Zelda 1 runner here considering taking a stab at a 3D game for the first time and nostalgia has me thinking Ape Escape. For those of you who run the game, would anybody have any suggestions for a good category with which to start? I was thinking of possibly starting with All Monkeys - No IJ then if I like it moving trying out an IJ category but would love to hear suggestions if ya gottem.

Cheers!

The movement in Ape Escape has a very low barrier to entry but a very high skill ceiling. The Infinite Jump is super easy to do, and i would suggest starting off with those categories. If you want more of a "vanilla" experience you can go with No IJ, but know you'll be attempting much harder tricks in its absence. Other than that it's completely up to you whether you want to go for all monkeys over any%. The monkey routing is different between the 2 categories because you want to leave monkeys that are in the front of the levels for the forced revisits later on to cleanup the levels. I'd like to see what others have to input aswell.

The infinite jump is pretty easy to perform in this game, so learning a category with or without it is probably pretty similar in difficulty. I would personally recommend any% over all monkeys as a starting point, but there really isn't a bad choice to start with. Here's some pros and cons from someone who's done them all:

Any% - shortest category, best resources specific to it, no really annoying monkeys necessary, boss luck has a huge impact on final time All monkeys - route is slightly fragile (getting an incorrect monkey on the wrong visit can cost a ton of time), some monkeys are very luck dependent or require knowing how their AI works to catch efficiently Any% no IJ - no really annoying monkeys necessary, run has to platform through most of the platforming gauntlets in the game, lots of unique ways to use the level design and terrain to skip places early All monkeys no IJ - few/no good resources/reference runs, everything from All monkeys and the no IJ changes

Personally I find the movement in no IJ extremely satisfying, especially for any%, but find that the routes for all monkeys categories are more interesting with IJ. In the end, though, there's still no bad choice. Give whatever you want a try and switch if it doesn't click.

Thanks for the responses folks! Working on getting the tech setup going (have been on NES emulator so far). After that will probably go through it casually on stream and see how I feel. Gotta get a copy of the game first though. I seem to have lost the disc case that had all my PS1 games in it :( :( :(