Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Encyclopedia : S : SL : SLY : Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (named Sly Raccoon in Europe) is a platform game by Sucker Punch Productions, released on the Sony PlayStation 2 in 2002.

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is notable for its use of cel-shading, which is used to create a film noir feel instead of that of a cartoon, something popular in cel-shaded games.

Two sequels have been produced. ' and '

Contents

1 Beginning Plot
2 Gameplay
3 Worlds/Levels
4 Security Systems
5 The Fiendish Five (Bosses)
6 Awards
7 Localization Differences
8 See also
9 External links

Beginning Plot

Sly Cooper is a raccoon who is descended from a long line of master thieves. However, that lineage became crippled when a gang known as the Fiendish Five killed Sly's father at a young age. The Five also take the Thievius Raccoonus, a book recording the journeys and skills of all the ancestors of the Cooper line. The Thievius Raccoonus was split into five pieces and the Fiendish Five took them to their various personal lairs.

From that point on, Sly knows that he must defeat the Fiendish Five and find the Thievius Raccoonus in order to keep his heritage intact and learn the secrets of his family. In addition to battling the Fiendish Five, however, Sly and his friends also have to contend with Inspector Carmelita Fox, a fearless detective from Interpol who is obsessed with trying to catch the notorious thief.

Gameplay

Following the traditional platformer video game genre, Sly visits five different "worlds" in search of his family heirloom, the Thievius Racoonus. With the exception of the prelude and final worlds, the game follows a basic structure. The player, as Sly, sneaks into a villain’s lair, and steals first a total of three treasure keys to unlock new areas. Sly must then steal the rest of the treasure keys to fight a boss. After each world Sly gains a new thieving skill from the Thievius Raccoonus that is used in later levels.

Sly is the primary playable character in the game, navigating through the environments with a set of ninja-like jumps and attacks. Using the left analog stick the player can control the speed of Sly's movements. A slight tap directs Sly to tip toe. A heavy push forces him to run. He uses his cane, another family heirloom, to snag hooks, catch ropes, and attack villains. The player also controls Murray when in a racing level, and a cyber-space version of Bentley in the final world.

The environment is largely destructible, and the player can find coins by destroying enemies, signs, poles and other things. When 100 coins are obtained, Sly receives a lucky horseshoe. This charm allows Sly to take an extra hit before dying, as well as allowing him to survive a falling death once. If Sly collects another 100 coins without using his horseshoe, or if Sly finds another, then Sly receives a golden horseshoe, which can take an extra hit. If Sly collects another 100 coins while wearing a golden shoe, then Sly gets another life.

Most of the levels within the game have a set path with alarms, walls and enemies in the way. The enemies can be destroyed with one hit, but they can also destroy Sly with one hit unless he has a lucky horseshoe. The alarms (floor sensors, laser beams, and spotlights) start yellow and, if they detect Sly, they turn red and an alarm is sounded. Not only does this attract enemies, but if Sly is now detected, he gets fried. Walls, along with open water and empty space, must be circumvented by using super sneaky thief moves.

Each level in this style has a set number of clue bottles hidden within the environment. Once all of the clue bottles are collected, the player must find and unlock the level's vault to collect a lost page of the Thievius Raccoonus and a new thieving skill. Sometimes, however, the vaults control blueprints to the world. The pages are in a specific order, so if you open the fifth vault first, it will still contain the first move. Because the clues are hard to find, the player is allowed to return to any level at any time (except the prelude level). And when Sly returns, all the clues he found before are still recorded as found. The clues and vaults were changed radically in the sequels.

Once a level has been unlocked the player can select it the world map. This feature was dropped in the sequels, which featured missions across larger game worlds (similar to Grand Theft Auto III) rather than the smaller more linear levels featured in the original.

These levels also include boss fights at the end of each world, as well as vehicle, shooting, and racing levels. The boss fights are varied as well, including a rhythm-based battle, as well as one featuring vehicular and on-foot sections.

If the player collected all the clue bottles in every level then Sly can return to selected levels and take the Time Dash Challenge. If the player can complete the level in a set time the game unlocks a hidden audio track, featuring commentary from the game's creators. These challenges usually require the player to find shortcuts using Sly's special skills, avoid combat and detection, and make no mistakes in moving through the level. Some of the vault moves also help. Completing all clue bottles/skills and every timed run unlocks additional movies including (in the US version) the Japanese opener done in a more traditional animation, as opposed to the Macromedia Flash style graphics used in the English cutscenes.

Worlds/Levels

Sly Cooper has 27 levels not including boss battles or the prologue level. There are five worlds, with seven levels in the first four worlds, and six levels in the last world. Many levels sport a gameplay style unique from any of the others.

Tide Of Terror

This first mission is set in the Welsh Triangle near Great Britain, home of Sir Raleigh, the Fiendish Five's Chief Machinist. His hideout acts as a ship, and is composed of an engine room, a furnace area, a library, an art gallery which shows Raleigh's plunder, a flooded basement, a small underwater cavern, and the storm machine where Raleigh himself resides over his hideout.

Sunset Snake Eyes

The 2nd mission takes place in a fictional town called Mesa City which is set in Utah of the United States, acting as the hideout of Muggshot, the Fiendish Five's Chief Enforcer. Key settings include Boneyard Casino (Muggshot's personal casino), a former race track now used by Muggshot to store his rides, a rundown part of Mesa City, the multiple back alleys, the rooftops of the town, the mesas and outer wasteland, and lastly Muggshot's own penthouse.

Vicious Voodoo

The 3rd mission takes place in the Haitian jungle, home of Mz. Ruby, the Fiendish Five's Chief Mystic. Various setting within this mission include the swamps, the guard camps around the hideout, a piranha-infested lake, a prison-like area housing a giant serpent, and the upper, drier areas of the swamps. Areas within Mz. Ruby's hideout include an ectoplasmic production facility, a chicken coop, and the skull temple that acts as the center of Mz. Ruby's operations.

Fire In The Sky

The 4th mission takes place in the Kunlun Mountains of western China, home of the Panda King, the Fiendish Five's Demolitions Expert. The hideout includes a training ground for guards, various makeshift factories disguised as pagodas, and the surrounding guard-patrolled mountains.

The Cold Heart Of Hate

The 5th and final mission takes place in the fictional Krack Karov Volcano in Russia. This is Clockwerk's hideout and unlike previous worlds, this one in not composed of separate stages, but as one large level. Clockwerk's world is composed of a straight mine-filled path to Clockwerk's fortress, a small lava cavern that contains fire slugs, a small laboratory for world domination, a lava dam, and lastly Clockwerk's death ray.

Security Systems

During the course of the game, Sly will encounter various security measures the Fiendish Five have put up in order to guard their Treasure Keys. Some of them are listed below:

Spotlights: These things move in a predictable pattern or stay in one spot searching for intruders or waiting for someone careless to step into the path of the beam. Once something is spotted, the alarms will go and the yellow patrol lights will switch to red hunter lights that will incinerate any intruder that gets caught in the light. Destroy the alarm stations to rid of them. They appear a lot in Raleigh's world, but their appearance decreases as you progress.
Infrared Lasers: A more bit of an annoyance, these lasers usually go in sweeping patterns along floors, walls, or just plain hover abover the ground. Like spotlights, they are yellow when untouched, but when something passes through they will turn red and fry anything that touches the lasers again. Seen common in Raleigh and Muggshot's worlds.
Floor Sensors: These follow the same pattern as the spotlights and lasers, they are only found in Muggshot's world. If Sly steps onto a part of the floor where there's yellow lights, the alarms will go off. If Sly steps on them when they're red, they'll electrocute him.
Disguised Turrets: Seen only twice in the game, once in Raleigh's world and once in Clockwerk's. They are activated by pressure pads which if Sly steps on, they'll activate and blow darts at Sly.
Sensor Wall: SOmetimes a whole transparewnt yellow wall is in place. If Sly crosses thourgh, the alert will sound off.

The Fiendish Five (Bosses)

Sir Raleigh (The Welsh Triangle)
Muggshot the Bulldog (Mesa City, Utah)
Mz. Ruby (Hatian Jungle ,Haiti)
Panda King (KunLun Mountains ,China)
Clockwerk (Krack Karov Volcano ,Russia)

Awards

Sly Cooper won "Best New Character" at the Game Developer's Conference for 2002.

Localization Differences

The Japanese version of the game sports a vocal theme song called Blackjack, set to a flashy intro not seen in the North American or PAL versions of the game. While the singer of the song has a distinct Japanese accent, none of the lyrics are in Japanese and the entire song is in English. Its a bit puzzling why this song was excluded from the other releases for this reason, although the most logical explanation is that the song was made after the initial release of the game in North America, and the extra song was added in order to tailor to the Japanese market similar to what was done to Crash Bandicoot earlier.

Another addition in the Japanese version not present in the other versions is alternate animated introduction and ending sequences. These sequences feature full animation, as opposed to the limited flash-style animation seen in the other animated sequences present throughout the game. These alternate sequences are drawn in a typical anime [style]. The style is highly reminiscent to the anime Sherlock Hound.

The Japanese introduction is unlockable for view in the North American and PAL versions, though the ending is not.

External links

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.