Ape is the company that turned Shigesato Itoi’s idea of a role-playing game set in ordinary places into Mother and EarthBound. When Nintendo Power introduced Itoi to American players in 1995, it explained that he had “teamed up with a company called Ape in Tokyo”, and added a detail that sounds odd for a games developer: “Ape is best known for its books on video games, but their artistic talents perfectly matched Itoi’s vision.” Out of Ape’s staff came Tsunekazu Ishihara and Creatures Inc., one of the three companies that own Pokémon.
Fast facts
- Based in: Tokyo.
- Founded: March 1989, according to later accounts, by Shigesato Itoi with backing from Nintendo’s president, Hiroshi Yamauchi.
- Games: Mother (Famicom, 1989), Mother 2 (Super Famicom, 1994; EarthBound in America, 1995) with HAL Laboratory, and Mario’s Picross (Game Boy, 1995) with Jupiter.
- Books: guidebooks to video games, published with Nintendo.
- Successor: Creatures Inc., founded by Tsunekazu Ishihara in November 1995.
Mother
Itoi, an advertising copywriter and television presenter, took his idea for an RPG without swords and dragons to Shigeru Miyamoto, and Nintendo’s president Hiroshi Yamauchi approved it. Itoi then took the project to Ape. Mother came out on the Famicom in 1989. Later accounts date Ape’s founding to March of that year, with an investment from Yamauchi, and its first guidebook, Encyclopedia Mother, to October 1989; both dates rest on secondary sources.
Mother 2
The sequel nearly sank. Ape’s work on Mother 2 for the Super Famicom stalled, and Itoi asked Satoru Iwata, then at HAL Laboratory, to look at it. Iwata’s verdict, as Itoi remembered it: “If we use what you’ve got now, it’ll take two years to fix. If we start from scratch, we can get this done in six months.” HAL helped rebuild the game, and Mother 2 came out in Japan in August 1994 and went to number one in the Japanese chart that Edge printed that December. Nintendo of America released it as EarthBound in June 1995. See the EarthBound entry for the game itself.
Ape’s name also appears in the small print of a quite different Nintendo game. Mario’s Picross, a picture-logic puzzle game for the Game Boy, carried the copyright line “© 1995 Nintendo © 1994 Ape, Inc. © 1994 Jupiter Co., Ltd.” when Nintendo Power covered it in April 1995.
Creatures and Mother 3
Tsunekazu Ishihara, who had worked at Ape, founded Creatures Inc. in Tokyo in November 1995. Iwata later said he had been “involved in setting up Creatures Inc.” and had sat on its board while he was president of HAL. Creatures took a share in Pokémon, which Game Freak released in Japan in February 1996, and later accounts describe it as Ape’s successor.
Ape’s name did not disappear at once. In 1997 N64 Magazine reported that “HAL Laboratory along with Shigesato Itoi’s APE team” were making Mother 3 for the Nintendo 64. That version was cancelled in 2000, and Mother 3 finally came out on the Game Boy Advance in 2006, developed by Brownie Brown with HAL; see the Shigesato Itoi entry. Secondary sources say Ape’s guidebook publishing ended in January 1997 with a revised guide to the Pokémon games, after which Shogakukan took over the work.
Sources
- Nintendo Power issue 73, June 1995, p. 17: Shigesato Itoi profile (Ape in Tokyo, “best known for its books on video games”).
- Nintendo Power issue 71, April 1995, p. 88: Mario’s Picross (copyright line naming Ape, Inc. and Jupiter).
- N64 Magazine issue 6, September 1997: Mother 3 (“Shigesato Itoi’s APE team”).
- Edge issue 15, December 1994: Japanese chart (Mother 2 at number one).
- Shigesato Itoi, “Shigesato Itoi Visits Arino Kacho’s Challenge Room”, Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, 17 September 2019 (web): Iwata and Mother 2. https://www.1101.com/gccxmother/en/2019-09-17.html
- “Iwata Asks: Pokémon HeartGold Version & SoulSilver Version” (Nintendo, 2010), English transcript at PocketMonsters.net (web, secondary): Iwata on setting up Creatures and sitting on its board. https://www.pocketmonsters.net/content/Iwata_Asks_HGSS
- Wikipedia, “Creatures Inc.” (web, secondary): Ape’s founding in March 1989, Yamauchi’s investment, the guidebooks from Encyclopedia Mother (October 1989) to January 1997 and Shogakukan, Ishihara’s foundation of Creatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatures_Inc.
- For Creatures’ founding and Ishihara, see the Creatures Inc. entry; for Mother, Mother 2 and Mother 3, see Shigesato Itoi and EarthBound.