Founded by Simon Barton as Virtual Stores (NZ), Ltd. in 1999, the company began by selling computer and video games under the GameZone brand.

Simon Barton first founded Micro-World in 1993, a small retail store in Mt Eden, Auckland, that sold Amiga computers.

GameZone created its first e-commerce website in 1998, allowing the company to begin selling video games online and cater to a wider customer base.

As GP Store grew, the product range gradually expanded to include DVD movies, PC hardware and music.

With the increasingly diverse range of products on offer, a new brand was sought that would fit better with the company's ambitions, and in November 2008, the business was relaunched as Mighty Ape and began selling books and toys.

[6] In November 2020, Mighty Ape delisted right wing blogger and author Olivia Pierson's book Western Values Defended: A Primer following her controversial Twitter post mocking the newly appointed Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta's Māori face tattoo.

Pierson alleged that she was the victim of "cancel culture" while fellow blogger Cameron Slater claimed that Mighty Ape was being hypocritical for stocking books published by Oswald Mosley and Joseph Goebbels.