Ape Escape Academy E3 2005 Hands-On

Though it's been out in Japan for a while now, Ape Escape Academy is also heading to the North American market. A translated-into-English version of the game is being shown on the floor at E3 this year, and so far, it looks like it could be a fun diversion.

Ape Escape Academy is a minigame collection, similar to the Mario Party series, though the overall format is a bit different. Regardless of the game's academy motif, the core is the minigames themselves. You'll run into a bevy of monkey-themed minis here, including a sort of Pong Kombat-like rock-paper-scissors game, a quick trivia quiz, and the 1-meter dash, which basically asks you to hit X to win, since you only need to run one meter. The game seems to have a pretty decent variety of minigames, overall.

Some of the minigames take longer to play than others, but many of them are over almost instantaneously. This wouldn't stick out at us if the game didn't have to stop and load each time you entered and exited a game. The loads themselves are fairly quick, but they take just long enough to be noticeable.

Ape Escape Academy is due to hit shelves later this year.