Happy 20th birthday, Sly Cooper! A celebration is in order, right? Well, Andrew Goldfarb at Sucker Punch Productions just announced that alongside this event's immense happiness, he also shared some kind messages from the team that brought this video game legacy to life:
“Today, we are so happy (and a little bit shocked) to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus! We wanted to look back on Sly’s legacy across the franchise and share memories from some of our team who helped shape Sly Cooper into the series we know and love back when some of them had a little more hair or a little less gray in it.
Thank you for 20 years of support for Sly Cooper! In just a few weeks, Sucker Punch will celebrate our 25th anniversary overall, and while we’ve moved on to new worlds since then, our work on Sly is an incredible part of our legacy.”
Among the team who shared their experience, this is what Brian Fleming, Co-Founder, had to say:
“Sly 1 was our first BIG game, and there were multiple milestones where the game was clearly at risk of getting canceled. But, to me, the biggest breakthrough was the milestone we invented, the “Binoc-u-com,” where Bentley and Sly would hatch plans – but really, it was a great way to give the player directions without it feeling ham-fisted.
At the time we were building Sly, so many games had been pushing the visual execution bar upwards in their cutscenes – way beyond what we were capable of at the time. One of our best decisions was to reverse that trend and make our cutscenes more graphic instead—which gave us something distinct and unique but also avoided fighting an arms race we’d never win: great choice, and one we used for all the Sly games and evolved for InFamous and beyond.
Sly was our first game with skinned characters – and getting his TAIL right turned out to be one of the trickiest bits. We created many failed solutions, including custom spline controls for the animators. The “right” answer ended up being to animate just the base of his tail and build a real-time simulation for the rest. To this day, we still have “tails” simulations we use in places!
Favorite moment? The ending of Sly 1 is one of my favorite sequences we’ve ever shipped! The final bit with the 10-second head-start is perfection.
Finally, I remember how small the team was! The 25 of us in the credits were the entire studio, including our testers and the office staff! It seemed a long time ago!”
It’s hard to believe two decades have passed since the world first met Sly, but Sucker Punch Productions wanted to make sure to throw him a birthday party in style. So they kicked off the celebration earlier this week with The Sly Collection, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, and Bentley’s Hackpack joining the Classics Catalog for Premium members on PlayStation Plus.
Also, original Sly Cooper art director Dev Madan created a stunning tribute to 20 years of Sly, with a beautiful original piece of art jam-packed with references and easter eggs.
The prints will begin shipping in early October 2022. You can pre-order at Cook & Becker, with shipping available worldwide.
They will also have an alternate poster print of the art available on the PlayStation Gear store – an 18″ x 24″ print on pound 100 gloss text paper. It will be available for $24.95 with an estimated ship date of December 2.
Dev Madan has also created a brand new Sly Cooper 20th Anniversary t-shirt design available on the PlayStation Gear store, featuring the brand contemporary art of Bentley, Murray, Carmelita Fox, and Sly himself! This 4.3-ounce, 100% combed ring-spun cotton shirt also features the Sly Cooper 20th Anniversary logo on the right sleeve. This will be available for $33.95 with an estimated ship date of December 2.
Pre-orders for both the shirt and poster are available today on the PlayStation Gear store!
And finally, a team at Fangamer has created a brand new Sly Cooper 20th Anniversary Plush! This adorable version of Sly sits about 9 inches tall and includes a plush cane that can attach to Sly’s hands via a magnet. Fangamer will begin shipping the Sly plush worldwide early next year, and you can sign up now at Fangamer to be alerted as soon as orders become available!
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