Some members of the Sly modding community recently got his hands on a bunch of documents from the original pitch to sneaky 4, giving us a rare behind-the-scenes look at how developers can get the approval / money from big companies like Sony to make their games.
Sly Cooper: Time Thieves was finally released in 2014, for the PS3 and Vita, but this presentation dates back to 2008-09 and focuses only on the portable version, whose platform at the time is simply called “NGP” (the original working title of the Vita before Sony finally decided on its name).
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The main point of interest is a 6 minute video presentation, which traces the history of the series, explains why the Vita would have been so perfect for its gadget-rich gameplay, and then has to explain everything in the simplest possible terms imaginable. so that PlayStation can be convinced to officially give the game the go-ahead.
The team really went to great lengths – with the video capture explaining it – to show that the Vita’s smartest features, like its touchscreen, motion control, and rear cushion, could be used to all kinds of game systems, from moving Sly to driving to performing hacking mini-games.
Because this game is finally released, seeing the first images of it isn’t as important as, say, seeing a presentation document for a game that never came out at all. But there’s a lot of interesting footage to see from the early days of the Vita, when it was essentially a huge black piece of prototype, with wires and ports all over the place.
Screenshots and, best of all, concept illustrations were also included:
Along with the main pitch video, there are also a number of smaller, commercial-like demos of some of the game’s more advanced features, including a QR code idea where users could have scanned a code from. from the PlayStation Blog and then unlock in-game items.
If you want to download the archive and have a look for yourself, you can find the files here. Including this introductory description showing that the game’s original release schedule was … just a bit off.
