The Sly Collection is a compendium of three of the best-loved PlayStation 2 adventure platform games, with some additional PlayStation Move minigames too. To find out more about how the three titles made their journey to PS3, we sat down with Glen Egan, President of Sanzaru Games, to talk Move, minigames and shiny, shiny trophies.
Movemodo: For gamers unfamiliar with the Sly series, could you please describe what can be expected when purchasing The Sly Collection?
Glen Egan: The Sly Cooper Collection is huge, there is so much gameplay packed on this disk - it is absolutely the best PS3 game value on the market today; there are 3 complete action packed adventures! The games feature Sly Cooper the debonair Raccoon and master thief and follow the exploits of him and his gang as they elude the law and rob the corrupt. At its core are action adventure mechanics with a healthy dose of platforming, a little stealth and dozens and dozens of minigame challenges.
MM: The Sly series hasn’t seen a release in over 5 years until this updated release of the collection. Were there any worries that the games might be too outdated for today’s audience?
GE: I think the Sly Cooper games were so well ahead of their time that other action adventures are only now starting to catch up!
MM: The Sly collection has made the transition to HD wonderfully – how challenging was it to update the graphics to HD? Did the cel-shaded graphics make a difference in the transition?
GE: Graphically the transition to HD was not particularly challenging, the assets have an art style that is scalable and translates easily. The more challenging aspects were in carefully unravelling the extremely intricate code Sucker Punch had created and redirecting it to the new hardware. Sucker Punch has very strong kung fu in this regard and they did an amazing job with the original PS2 hardware.
MM: Sly 3 for the PlayStation 2 released with 3D capabilities 5 years ago, where in The Sly Collection the game features an advanced Stereoscopic 3D utilizing newer technology. What problems had to be overcome to make this transition?
GE: Again I don’t think the transition aspect was particularly difficult as it was just a matter of tuning the 3D depth to a range which worked for the players and the environments. The more challenging part of creating the experience in 3D was maintaining the high frame rate with HD stereoscopic rendering.
MM: Were the mini-games specifically designed for PlayStation Move or was that a nice bonus?
GE: The mini-games were all designed around multi-player motion gaming, I think the Move lends itself to the on and off the couch multi-player and we wanted to create something that plays into that.
MM: What were the reasons behind the games themselves not being fitted for PlayStation Move support?
GE: The original games are masterpieces and we really didn’t want to change the gameplay mechanics and behaviour to support the newer peripherals. I think motion gaming should be created from the ground up, there are some titles where retro-fitting will work straight out of the box but I think it would not have done the franchise justice.
MM: What is it like to develop for the PlayStation Move? How difficult a peripheral is it to develop for?
GE: It’s not particularly difficult to develop for the Move I think it is important to understand the device first and make the gameplay second. If you come into it with assumptions about behaviour and visual feedback and build around those things the designs will often fail. So as long as the designer and gameplay engineer have a clear understanding of the device you can quickly start to make fun mechanics.
MM: As a developer who has worked with PlayStation Move, what do you see the future holding for the device?
GE: I think the Move will broaden the PlayStation 3 as a mass market brand, I think there is a lot of potential for quick and fun downloadable games that take advantage of the device, I look forward to seeing these pop up on PSN.
MM: The Sly series is known not only for being a great series of platforming games, but its comical cast of characters as well. Which character in the series do you find to be the "favourite"?
GE: Dmitri – he is so greasy sweet!
MM: The Sly Collection boasted a total of 116 trophies, including 3 Platinum trophies on one disc. Was it difficult to get approval for this amount of trophies to be allowed for the collection? Could the individual games have received the full 50+ trophy treatment?
GE: We wanted to treat each title as its own entity since each game delivers so much fantastic content. There are more than 10 hours of gameplay for the individual titles so we felt each game deserved its own platinum. If a consumer is going to more than 10 hours to play our games they deserve a platinum trophy for their efforts.
MM: This is the second “Collections” title to hit the PlayStation 3 behind God of War Collection. Are there any other PlayStation series you would like to see updated into HD?
GE: Hmmmm, well everyone talks about Ico and Shadows so I don’t think I need to hit that one again, personally I want to see Dave Mirra BMX on the PS3 (but that’s just me!)
Comments 7
Hmm... I don't really like this guy's attitude
And Ico and Shadow of the Colossus is the one I'm most looking forward to... I don't think I'd buy some BMX game collection.
How hard was it to make the Move mini games controls: It was super easy because all we did was use the pointer aspect and really didnt use the move functionally at all, the mini games could have been easily done with a dual shock but then the game wouldnt sell as much.
Sly collection is great and its definitely a great deal but the Move aspect was pretty pethetic and I dont understand why the full game was reviewed on this website but LittleBigPlanet 2 and Dead Space 2 which both came with far more Move functionallity were not and instead only the Move aspect was reviewed.
I absolutely adore these 3 games, and this collection will never leave my gaming collection.
@zezhyrule... Dave Mirra BMX consisted of a few titles from the PSone and PS2 era. They were a fantastic alternative to the Tony Hawk series, which was exploding the gaming scene at the time. If you ever see a Dave Mirra BMX game cheap anywhere, pick it up as they are loads of fun.
the Bmx games died when tony hawk added bikes into the fray in american wasteland, then they did a major reboot and destroyed the franchise.
I had always thought Mat Hoffman BMX was the Tony Hawk of BMX games.
Ha, ha, I like the way that Glen Egan describes Sucker Punch's intricate code as, "Sucker Punch has very strong kung fu in this regard", that is a nice way to put it.
He makes a fair point about motion controls being most effectively implemented when they are built into games from the ground up, although I still think that there is plenty of scope for full motion support to be retro-fitted into older games, Resi 5: GE did a decent job of it. Perhaps retro-fitting motion controls suits certain genres more than others, racers and shooters in particular (third or first person).
He seems very positive about the potential of PS Move, I hope that it does broaden/ expand the PS3 market and it is good to hear that Move is accessible to develop for.
Quality interview, Chris.
@y2josh... you are correct. Matt Hoffman BMX is a BMX game built on the Tony Hawk game engine as it's an Activision title. Dave Mirra BMX lands more in the realm of Skate, as it has a more realistic feel to the game play.
@JamieO... Thanks man. I do agree with retro-fitting Move into some games, but The Sly Collection, I think, would result in more camera fighting, and probably waggling than actual benefits to the game play.
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