Thank you all so much again – keep the letters coming, everybody here loves to read them. 2012 will be a big year for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, so stay tuned!

When we played the old Sly Cooper games on the PS2, we loved the stories about the Cooper clan ancestors and their various thieving abilities. Something that is really exciting and fun for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is that you can not only travel back in time to meet these ancestors but you will also have the ability to play as the Cooper Clan ancestors! As you proceed through the game each episode you encounter features a new time period with a new playable ancestor. Each new member of the Cooper clan has their own unique and powerful abilities that opens up a whole new range of game play in the huge environments. This is one of the coolest aspects of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time – meeting these characters, learning more about them, and then getting to experience a whole new set of kick-ass game moves and skills that you have never seen before. Each time a new character in production comes on line and is added to the game, they instantly become my new favorite character of the series!

The first ancestor we want to show off is Rioichi Cooper, the master of the Ninja Spire Landing! We were introduced to him back in the original Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus and learned about his cool Ninja ability. Now, when you get to play as Rioichi, you will see how much more powerful the original master’s techniques are. For instance, by focusing his energy Rioichi can execute his Leaping Dragon Technique and span great distances between spires.

Rioichi, it turns out, is not only an uber-Ninja but is also the inventor of sushi, his famous restaurant providing the perfect cover for a night-stalking ninja thief. We really wanted to explore the character of each of Sly’s ancestors (they are all very different in both ability and personality), and this leads to some very entertaining dialogue as they meet and get to know their descendant and his crew. But of course, once Sly is united with his ancestor he becomes one of the gang, hanging out in the hideout ready to venture out for some Ninja Thieving fun at a moment’s notice.

Keep your eyes peeled for the December issue of Game Informer magazine, Tim Turi stopped by the studio last month and took a look at Rioichi in action so you can get to read about his impressions of the game there. Anyway, that’s it for now, but don’t worry, I will be back soon to talk about new characters and other cool stuff in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time as we head towards the new year!

In case you missed it last week, here’s a broadcast segment we did with the PlayStation.blog live from the SCEA booth on the E3 show floor. We knew Jeff Rubenstein was a big fan of the series and this was the first time he had a chance to see what we had been up to. He had a bunch of great questions for us, and a bunch more that we’ll be answering over the next few months!

Seven of us founded Sanzaru Games back at the beginning of 2007 and since then we have been hard at work, steadily increasing the size and quality of the games we work on. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time will be our third game with SCEA; last year we released The Sly Collection for the PS3. It’s been great to work with the SCEA world class production team behind Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter, inFAMOUS, UNCHARTED, Resistance and, of course, The Sly Cooper series!

We realized back in 2008 when we pitched the idea of working on the next Sly Cooper that it was a pretty crazy idea, but we absolutely love the series and are glad that once people saw our hard work they responded enthusiastically.

A question I was asked several times at the show was “Isn’t it a huge amount of pressure to take on such a big franchise like Sly Cooper?” I think my answer really sums up the spirit of Sanzaru: we are infinitely more excited about the fact that we are working on something as cool and fun as Sly Cooper and this excitement feeds on itself as people are constantly coming up with cool new ideas to incorporate into the game. So while I wouldn’t describe the process of making such a big game as easy we are more excited to see how it all comes together.

So thanks again for the support and stay tuned for more cool announcements about the game over the next few months!

It seems like E3 was just yesterday and I was rolling out details on The Sly Collection to you along with some screenshots. This time I am back with not only more screenshots but a very cool new video put together by my good friends at SCEA that re-introduces the story behind Sly Cooper and his gang. But, most of all, I’m here to let you know when you can purchase The Sly Collection: the game ships just under 2 weeks from now on November 9 for the totally sweet price of $39.99!

The Sly Collection is a single Blu-ray disc that includes all 3 of the original Sly Cooper games: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. All three games have been completely remastered to play back in widescreen HD and 3D.

But wait; there’s more! We are also including a set of 4 custom minigames playable with the new PlayStation Move in full HD and 3D. We wanted to add a little more multiplayer fun to the Sly Collection and with the advent of the PlayStation Move motion controller we figured this was a perfect opportunity. There are 4 minigames on the disk, one each for Sly, Bentley, Murray, and Carmelita. Each minigame captures an aspect of the character and presents it in a way that’s great fun to play with the PlayStation Move, but you can also enjoy with your DualShock controller. And of course like everything else in The Sly Collection you can play it all in 3D! (cue echo effect)

We at Sanzaru Games are all huge fans of the Sly Cooper franchise; it has been an honor to work with the super cool folks at Sucker Punch to bring the Sly Collection to you. Sly, Bentley and Murray are such great characters and the games have such a great sense of humor, we can’t wait to see them thrust back into the spotlight. So without further ado, check out the latest trailer and delve further in to the Sly Cooper legend!

And what does that one-penny-less-than-40 price tag get you? Let’s start with all three original Sly Cooper titles…this includes Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2: Band of Thieves and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, all re-mastered in glorious HD graphics.

Next, Sanzaru Games has added 3D support for all 3 games, as well as new PlayStation Move mini-games which you’ll be hearing more details about very soon. And finally, PSN trophy support will be integrated into the entire collection, with three platinum trophies up for grabs.

Sly’s return to PlayStation couldn’t be more grand, and The Sly Collection couldn’t be more complete. We’ll be showing off The Sly Collection this week at San Diego Comic-Con (July 22-25), so be sure to come over to the PlayStation booth and check it out. And, as always, keep coming back to the blog for more information about the The Sly Collection.

The game will feature all three titles in the Sly Cooper series: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus; Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves and Sly Cooper 3: Honor Among Thieves. They have all been remastered in HD with up-rezed textures and full 16:9 widescreen rendering to deliver the most vibrant, crisp Sly Cooper experience yet. Sly Cooper 3 will also be playable using the latest 3D televisions, which are extremely cool — I wish there was a way to demonstrate it online, but I think the best thing to do is to swing by your local Best Buy (or whoever) and checkout a demo of the Sony Bravias. It is a very nifty new way to experience the game and from the moment you see it you will be hooked — I know I am! Players will also now be able to earn Trophies as they play through the games and yes, I can confirm officially that there will be three platinum trophies awarded, one for completing each game. We will also be adding a series of cool PlayStation Move mini-games to the collection. We’ll have more information on the mini-games in the coming weeks.

We are all big fans of the Sly Cooper series and the opportunity to work with Sucker Punch and Sony to bring the games to the PS3 is awesome. Sucker Punch created the amazing Sly Cooper universe and we have learned so much from working with them — their kung-fu is very strong as I am sure you can tell from the spectacular game inFAMOUS! The guys have been super helpful getting everything together for us to work on and things are coming along great.

So that’s it for now, we will definitely have more info on the game to share shortly, so watch this space!

Cheers,
Glen

P.S. Go try a 3D TV — they rock!

Just wanted to let you know to look for Secret Agent Clank on the store shelves beginning today! Sanzaru Games did a fantastic job of bringing this game to the PS2 adding and increasing textures, geometry and just raw numbers of models to make a more beautiful, richer game experience. Characters and the animation for them were rebuilt and augmented.

Couple this with an all new camera system, customized controls for the DualShock 2 and a whole lot of additional polish and love from the team and you end up with a really great game.

You might ask yourself, why bring PSP games to the PS2? The answer we’d tell you is there are a lot of folk out there that are still hungry for content. We believe Secret Agent Clank will deliver this. Sanzaru did a fantastic job of really customizing the experience for the PS2. They went in and rebuilt whole sections of the game in order provide for a deeper richer experience.

Even with all this change, we kept the fantastic game that High Impact Games put together for the PSP, just now taking advantage of everything the PS2 has to offer.

We are really lucky at Sony to get to work with top tier developers. This is our first game with Sanzaru, but as you can see from the quality of the screenshots alone, we’re eager to do more!

Seven of us started Sanzaru Games in January 2007 with a mission to bring together a group of talented individuals to share a common vision to develop fun to play, visually stunning and technically spectacular console games. Over the last couple of years the team has grown to nearly 30 and will continue to expand as more talented and experienced developers are drawn to the studio. The name Sanzaru refers to the famous 3 wise monkeys – the founding philosophy for Sanzaru Games is that great games are a function of good design, beautiful, clear visuals and a strong technology base to deliver these. Should any one of these three pillars be missing then the game will suffer.

We are all huge fans of the Ratchet and Clank series of games and when Sony talked to us about helping bring Secret Agent Clank to the PlayStation 2 we jumped at the opportunity. Insomniac has created one of the most awesome and enduring console game experiences ever and it has been an honor to help add to the series!

High Impact Games put together an awesome game and we wanted to make sure that all the great gameplay moments from Secret Agent Clank were preserved from the original PSP title. We have therefore focused a great deal of our time and energy on rebuilding all the levels, characters and effects to take advantage of the additional power of the PlayStation 2. Here are a few screenshots to give you an idea of the visual changes.

Also given the different controller we wanted to bring back the lock-strafe camera mode seen in previous games, since a lot of us have enjoyed using it to great effect to blow stuff up over the years! We hope you all have as much fun playing the game as we have had making it, and we look forward to working with Sony to bring you more action, adventure and blowing-stuff-up good times in the future!

Cheers,

Glen