This week's request comes from an unexpected source... my little brother! This is also the first Variety pick of the year, for the record.
Yappari Saru Getchu (やっぱりサルゲッチュ)| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x3 (156) | x3 (200) | x3 (301) | x6 (421/375/331) |
Taiko PS2 4
152
none
saruThe 4th PS2 Taiko's songlist is small in comparison to the volume-centric Taiko games of today, but it had a lot of exclusive niche songs you will not see anywhere else, mostly songs from TV commercials (like the Meiji Karl song we reviewed last year).And that's what today's pick is, an ad for one of Sony's flagship game series during the PSX era.
That game series is Ape Escape, known in Japan as Saru Getchu (サルゲッチュ, 'gecchu' is the romanized form of 'get you'). As the title implies, the game revolves around intelligent monkeys which have escaped from the zoo. Thanks to a large stock of intelligence-enhancer helmets, they plan to rule the whole world guided by their leader, an albino ape called Specter. The player, controlling a kid, has to prevent this invasion by capturing all the monkeys using several high tech gadgets.
The first game of the series was published on 1999, and is the first game specifically designed for the console's DUALSHOCK controller. It was a massive success, performing excellently both critically and in sales. This led to the production of many subsequent sequels and spinoff games, some of which are exclusive to Japan. There is even an animated series of 2 minute shorts produced for Nickelodeon in America, and an anime adaptation for Japan, and also a manga series. With 58.9 million units sold around the world, Ape Escape is the 12th best-selling franchise of all times.
'Yappari Saru Getchu' was used for the commercials of the 2001 sequel, simply named Ape Escape 2. Several years after the events of the first game, the monkey park is being monitored by Hikaru (Jimmy in the U.S. version), a cousin of the first game's main character, Spike. But one day, the kid accidentally delivered a pack of Peak Point helmets to the monkeys along with their laundry. Specter takes advantage of the situation by rebuilding his army again, and Hikaru has to fix up the mess he has caused.
The Taiko version of Yappari Saru Getchu was sung by a different artist than the one for the TV commercials, and still unknown. Its 6* Oni notechart is one of the few to feature forked paths, making for a decent challenge. The song features some of the game's monkeys as special dancers, like in Meiji Karl no Uta. Like in the games, the apes' personality depends on their pants' colour: yellow pants for regular monkeys, blue for the speedy ones, green for the ones with the most enhanced sight, red for the fighters and black for the armed ones. When the Tamashii gauge is entirely filled up, other monkeys with particular clothing come up like the mechanical Pipotrons on the right, the main villains of the Ape Escape spin-offs.
