called Sly Raccoon, Sly Cooper or even sly short, the famous license of Sucker Punch Productions celebrates its 20th anniversary this week. Sly Raccoon aka Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was indeed released on September 23, 2002 in North America, marking the beginning of a saga of 4 episodes that marked PS2, PS3 and PS4 players. Unfortunately, the developers recently cut short rumors about an upcoming sequel, either in-house or from a partner.
They are still celebrating this anniversary with several initiatives, starting with the arrival of the series in the Catalog of games from PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium. They also prepared a logo and a special illustration by Dev Madan, which you can purchase as a poster or in a framed and potentially numbered version, priced up to $225. And they also planned a commemorative t-shirt for sale on playstation gear and a stuffed animal sly to come to Fangaming. the Communication Manager Andrew Goldfarb presented it all on the PlayStation-Blogalongside comments from key developers to celebrate the anniversary.
Happy 20th birthday, Sly Cooper! We are happy (and a bit amazed) to celebrate 20 years of Sly Cooper and Volus Ratonus today! How time flies ! First released on September 23, 2002 on PS2, it was both the first adventure for Sly (known as Sly Raccoon in some parts of the world) and the very first PlayStation game developed by our studio!
Before we break out the pointy hats and the birthday cake, we have some never-before-seen items to unveil to celebrate this milestone. But first we wanted to look back at how important Sly is to the whole franchise and share the memories of a few of our team members who helped make Sly Cooper the series we all know and love, memories of a time when some had more hair or less gray in it.
Designing the levels in Sly 1 taught me a lot. From making prototypes in LEGO to design the roof of Muggshot, to the countless level iterations we had to go through to create the perfect atmosphere and gameplay. I remember so many versions of the levels I worked on that when I play them now, I’m sometimes surprised by the final version!
– Rob McDaniel, Senior Technical Artist
Sly 1 was our first big title, yet on multiple occasions the game was very clearly at risk of being cancelled. For me, the biggest breakthrough for the project was the invention of the Binoc-u-com through which Bentley and Sly concocted their plans: it was actually a great way to give instructions to the player without it seeming clunky .
While designing Sly, many games were going overboard with visuals in their cutscenes, which was way beyond our capabilities at the time. One of our best decisions was to reverse the trend by making our cinematics simpler graphically: it allowed us to stand out, to make ourselves unique, while avoiding us struggling in an arms race that we would never have won. A great choice that we picked up in all Sly games, then developed for InFamous and everything that followed.
Sly was our first game with flesh-and-blood characters, and one of our biggest challenges was getting his tail right! We found a whole bunch of failed ideas, including custom spline controls for animators. The “right” solution was actually to animate just the base of the tail, then build a real-time simulation for the rest. We still sometimes use this type of simulation today!
My favorite moment ? The end of Sly 1: among all those that we produced, it is surely one of my favorite sequences! The very end, with the ten second advance, is really perfect.
And I finally remember how small the team was! The 25 names in the credits was the entire studio, including our testers and administrative staff! That was ages ago!
– Brian Fleming, co-founder
In one of Sly 3’s missions, I hosted a lemonade drinking game. Bentley had to quickly press buttons for several phases to drink his lemonade faster than the NPCs before a bar fight broke out. It was primitive, but enough to keep us going until three weeks before launch, when one of our animators finally replaced it with something better. I don’t know if it was a good idea or a situation not to reproduce, but this anecdote shows the importance given to teamwork that still drives Sucker Punch to this day. We used tons of custom mechanics in Sly 3: NPC psychic control, piloting pirate ships, treasure maps, biplane battles, disguises, fireworks battles, red-cyan 3D and hotseat multiplayer mode. None of this would have been possible without a ton of teamwork.
– Adrian Bentley, Director of Development
Back in the days of Sly Cooper, the team was much smaller, so each of us worked on a wide variety of projects. It was great to lay out routes one week and then help refine the pirate ship the next week. Sly’s cartoonish reality allowed us to add whatever piqued our interest that month. We made our decisions based on what made us laugh the most. It was a bohemian atmosphere and I’m glad I was part of it. There was also the Bentley voice actor (Matt Olsen) who worked at a record store near my house. I would chat with him on the weekends and he would recommend bands I had never heard of, it was fun.
– Nate Fox, Creative Director
We find it hard to believe that two decades have passed since the world discovered Sly, but we owe it to ourselves to celebrate this anniversary in style. The celebrations kicked off earlier in the week with The Sly Trilogy, Sly Cooper: Thieves Through Time and Bentley’s Hackpack joining the Classics Catalog for Premium subscribers on PlayStation Plus*. To go further, we are happy to launch new articles and illustrations today to salute the importance of the franchise.
First, Sly Cooper’s first art director, Dev Madan, created an absolutely splendid tribute to Sly’s 20th anniversary: original artwork filled with references and easter eggs.
We could spend hours contemplating the incredible details of the image: that’s why today we offer you two ways to acquire this magnificent poster to be able to enjoy it at home.
For the first, we have partnered with our friends at Cook & Becker to print ultra high quality reproductions of the anniversary illustration. The reproductions, printed on FSC-certified 27gsm Radiant White paper, come in two sizes: a 70x100cm version limited to 40 hand-numbered copies, starting at $225, and a 50x70cm version limited to 150 hand-numbered copies, starting at $120. These two versions will be available while stocks last and come with a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist, Dev Madan.
Shipments will start in early October 2022. You can pre-order today at Cook & Becker (shipments worldwide).
An alternative reproduction is available from the PlayStation Gear store: a 45x60cm version printed on 145gsm glossy text paper. It will retail for $24.95 (expected shipments December 2).
Dev Madan has also created a never-before-seen Sly Cooper 20th Anniversary T-Shirt design, available from the PlayStation Gear store, featuring all-new artwork by Bentley, Murray, Carmelita Fox and Sly himself! This 145 gsm, 100% combed and ring-spun cotton t-shirt features the Sly Cooper 20th Anniversary logo on the right sleeve. It will retail for $33.95 (expected shipments December 2).
Shipping for PlayStation Gear items is available to the following regions:
- AN: Canada, United States;
- LATAM: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay;
- EU: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom.
Pre-orders of t-shirts and posters are possible from today in the shop playstation gear !
And to finish off in style, our friends at Fangamer have created a brand new Sly Cooper 20th anniversary plush! This adorable 23cm tall Sly even has a cane that attaches to his hands with a magnet. Fangamer will begin shipping Sly plushies worldwide early next year; you can now register with Fangamer to receive an alert as soon as it is possible to place an order!
Thank you for 20 years of supporting Sly Cooper! In a few short weeks, Sucker Punch will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its creation; and even though we have evolved into new universes since then, we know that our work on Sly has contributed enormously to this legacy and we will always be proud of it. We hope everyone will enjoy discovering or rediscovering the series on PlayStation Plus. If you fall for the items announced today, show us your collection on Twitter by sending us your photos at @SuckerPunchProd!