The new development studio was formed in March 1989 with Shigesato Itoi as the company’s CEO and the director of the studios first game, Mother.  The small development team leased an apartment in Ichikawa City in Chiba Prefecture, Japan which Itoi would travel too from Tokyo every night after his day job as a copywriter.  The studio finished and released Mother exclusively in Japan on July 27, 1989 for the Famicom.  As soon as the project wrapped up early prototypes and general concept work began for a sequel.  During the early planning stages of Mother 2 the development team primarily served to assist other developers on separate projects.

Tsunekazu Ishihara joined Ape Inc. after Mother’s release and became very involved with the company. In 1991, Ishihara became vice president where he took charge the production of such games Mother 2 and Mario’s Picross.  With the sequel set to be developed for Nintendo’s new 16-bit system, the Super Famicom the development team outgrew the apartment they leased and moved to the 7^th floor of Nintendo’s branch office in Kanda.

The development of Mother 2, a.k.a. EarthBound in western markets spent five years in development and faced many challenges with repeated threats of cancellation until Satoru Iwata joined the team. Development of EarthBound hit a wall with the programming of the game coming to a complete standstill. Nintendo suggested that Itoi meet with Satoru Iwata, a skilled programmer at HAL Laboratory at the time. Iwata inspected the programming and believed it would take 2 years to fix. He suggested starting from scratch as to complete a ground up rebuild would only take 6 months. Iwata was appointed lead programmer and the team moved forward with the rebuild. Since two companies were now working on the development of the game, responsibilities were split between two studios. Ape Inc had more resources working on the title and oversaw data aspects of the game while HAL Laboratory worked on the programming.  Iwata lived up to his word, and the team was able to finish the game in six months and spent another six months polishing the game prior to release.

After the completion of Mother 2 (EarthBound) Shigesato Itoi wasn’t sure if he was going to make another game in the franchise or not and Ape Inc was dismantled in 1995.  A new company, Creatures Inc. was formed on November 8, 1995 by Ishihara along with former members of the EarthBound development team with Nintendo investing in the newly formed developer who would become known for their involvement in the Pokémon franchise.