Ape Escape Originape Soundtracks in a Box

Remembering "Ape Escape"
Soichi Terada, Composer

Time flies—it's been 25 years since Saru Getchu (Ape Escape) was released in 1999. We began production at the end of 1997, and it was the third soundtrack I worked on. The second project I was supposed to write soundtrack for was discontinued midway through development. Ape Escape was my first attempt to compose nearly 40 tracks in a six-month period. In fact, I ended up writing more than 50 test tracks, including those that were ultimately rejected. Looking back, this was a good exercise for me to come up with new compositions even when I felt like I ran out of ideas. 

At the time of development, the game was tentatively titled “kidz.” Apparently, the name came from the main character Spike and his friends, who always run after the monkeys. The director of production team told me, "Spike and his friends are always running in this game," and so I ended up writing a lot of fast-paced songs, which on average had the speed of 170bpm and more. I got involved in this project in the first place because of "Sumo Jungle" CD which was released from my independent label—I was ecstatic. 

“Sumo Jungle” was a remix I did of a Hawaiian song called “Tengoku kara Kaminari (Thunder From Heaven)” that celebrated a Hawaiian Sumo wrestler who was famous at the time. It was a bootleg release titled “Sumo Jungle,” and I believe CD version came out in the summer of 1995. Both the original song and the remix were broadcasted on Japanese FM radio, and someone from the Ape Escape production team happened to hear my track. 

Later in production, one day the team showed me the logo and told me that the official title would be Ape Escape. I went home feeling excited and thinking, “What an absurd and fun name!” When I told one of my friends that the title of the game was Ape Escape, he laughed out loud and said, "it sounds like a Kusoge!" And I remember instantly feeling uneasy about it. Ape Escape has of course become a popular PlayStation franchise since this conversation.

Although I was absolutely elated to create the soundtrack for Ape Escape, my friend’s comment reminded me of a past nightmare; I had been in charge of creating a soundtrack for a game that was discontinued midway through the project. I was told that the game director was unable to come back to reality from the virtual world of the game that was in development. For some reason, the word “discontinue” popped into my mind when my friend made the comment.

Despite my anxieties, Ape Escape was becoming well-known after its release, thanks in part to the famous commercial song. However, that song was written by a different composer. I often had conversations like:

"Did you write that commercial song for Ape Escape?"

"Oh, no," I would say, "that was done by another composer, Mr. J.S., hahaha."

"So you made the jingle that plays when a stage is cleared, right?"

"Oh," I would respond, "that was created by the sound designer, hahaha."

These kinds of exchanges made me feel down, as it seemed like no one cared about the stage theme songs I had composed.

I used a text-based song chart, which included brief descriptions of each stage, as a reference when composing the soundtrack. While I had the chance to see some images of the game still in development, sharing videos online was quite difficult at the time—in the late '90s. So, I relied on my imagination and the song chart to compose the music, primarily using an AKAI sampler for beats and bass parts (where I imported an original sound library for each track), along with Roland, Korg, or Yamaha synthesizers, and Logic to edit MIDI data. Later in the production, I was able to borrow a debug station to play the ROM in development and review how the music sounded in-game.

For about six months, I had been constantly creating fast-paced tracks, and that momentum led me to burn homemade CDRs to distribute to the staff after production was finished. The CDRs contained all the soundtracks compiled into one long medley without any pauses. At the time, I suppose only the production staff listened to the medley. In fact, the order of the songs in the medley influenced the vinyl version, which is why the track order doesn’t align with the stages in the game. Rather, the order was determined by the tempo and atmosphere of each song.

Then, an unexpected opportunity came in 2010 that made me think of the Ape Escape soundtrack. When I did "Omodaka" performances in some cities in the United States, there were audiences in some venues who said, "I like Ape Escape's soundtrack and I still listen to it."

I was thrilled to discover that some people actually listened to the stage theme songs in the game, which made me consider releasing the soundtrack on my label. I re-recorded and remixed the tracks to restore the atmosphere that had been lost during the SPU conversion at the time, and in 2011, the self-cover CD version was completed. For this box set, since we mastered the tracks from premaster files, which I believe added more color to the soundscape for each stage. I'm incredibly happy to now be able to deliver the music in a box set of four records this time around.

Looking back, it's funny how the main character was originally Spike, but over time, the Apes took center stage. That might have caused some frustration for the Ape Escape production team, but those flat-shaded polygonal Apes have become iconic game characters forever etched in my mind. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to compose music for a game with such captivating characters.

Soichi Terada
Far East Recording

Edited and translated by Rema Neufeld.