Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

***Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus*** (known as ***Sly Raccoon*** in Europe and Australia) is a platform stealth video game created by Punch Productions that was released on the PlayStation 2 in 2002. The game was followed by three sequels, *Sly 2: Band of Thieves*, *Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves* and *Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time*. On November 9, 2010, *Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus*, as well as its first two sequels, were released together as *The Sly Collection*, a remastered port of all three games on a single Blu-ray disc as a Classics HD title for the PlayStation 3.

The game focuses on master thief Sly Cooper and his gang, Bentley the Turtle and Murray the Hippo, as they seek out the Fiendish Five to recover his family's *Thievius Raccoonus*, a book with the accumulation of all of Sly's ancestors' thieving moves.

## Gameplay

*Sly Cooper* is a third person platforming video game which incorporates stealth elements; as noted by an *Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine* retrospective, the game "tries to mix one-hit-kill arcade action with *Splinter Cell* sneaking". The player controls Sly Cooper, the title character, as he moves between each uniquely themed lair of the Fiendish Five and the sub-sections of those lairs, avoiding security systems and the watchful eyes of enemies. While Sly is equipped with a cane to attack his foes, he can be defeated with a single hit, and so the player is urged to use stealth maneuvers and the environment to evade or silently neutralize potential threats.

To assist in these stealth moves, the environment contains special areas colored with blue sparkles of light, identified in the game as Sly's "thief senses." The player can trigger context-sensitive actions in these areas, such as shimmying along a narrow ledge or wall, landing on a pointed object such as an antenna or streetlight, climbing along the length of a narrow pole or pipe or using the cane to grapple onto something. The player must avoid detection by security systems and enemies, otherwise an alarm will sound and the player will either have to destroy the alarm, avoid or defeat foes alerted by the alarm or hide for several seconds until the alarm resets. The game uses a dynamic music system that changes depending on the state of alarm in the area: the music will increase in volume and pacing when Sly attacks or is detected, and then will quiet down as the disturbance goes away.

Each sub-section of a lair contains a number of clue bottles which, when collected, allow Sly to access a safe in the level that contains a page from the *Thievius Raccoonus*. These pages grant Sly new moves to aid in movement, stealth, or combat, such as creating a decoy or dropping an explosive hat. Defeating each of the bosses also gives Sly moves, and these abilities are typically necessary to pass later levels. Coins are scattered about the levels and are also generated by defeating enemies or destroying objects. For every 100 coins collected, Sly gains a lucky horseshoe that is the color blue and when you have two horseshoes, it turns gold. It will allow him to take extra hits, or if he currently has one, an extra life. If Sly collapses and loses a life, the current sub-level will be restarted or at a special "repeater" that acts as a checkpoint; if the player loses all of Sly's lives, they must restart that bosses' lair from the beginning. Besides the regular gameplay, there are mini-games that include driving levels (based on Murray), shooting levels to protect Murray as he ascends certain levels, and a cyber-tank game representing a hacking attempt by Bentley. One notable boss battle includes a rhythm-based sequence similar to *[wp:Dance Dance Revolution|Dance Dance Revolution]]*.

Levels can be returned to at any time to gain additional coins or to seek out special moves. When a level is completed, all of the clue bottles are collected and the secret move is found, the player can then attempt a "Master Sprint", a timed sprint through the level to try to beat a set time. The player can unlock additional artistic content by completing all the levels in this fashion. For each level that has the "Master Sprint" completed, a developers commentary for that level is unlocked.

## Plot

Raccoon master thief Sly Cooper, with the help of his friends Bentley, a talented hacker and technician, and Murray, the gang's getaway driver, breaks into Interpol's offices in Paris to obtain a police file on the Fiendish Five, the world's five most wanted criminals. Despite being ambushed by his love interest, Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox, Sly escapes. As the gang returns to their hideout, Sly explains that he is descended from the Cooper Clan, a family of thieves who specialize in stealing only from criminals throughout history, who maintained a book, the *Thievius Raccoonus*, to record their unique skills and abilities for posterity. The night Sly was to inherit the book, the Fiendish Five murdered his father in front of him and stole the book, dividing it into five pieces before going their separate ways to commit dastardly crimes. Sent to an orphanage, Sly formed a gang with Bentley and Murray, vowing to one day track down the Fiendish Five, avenge Sly's father, and restore the *Thievius Raccoonus*.

Their first target is Sir Raleigh, a greedy aristocrat who uses his mechanical skills to prey on ships throughout the islands of Wales. After bringing down Raleigh and leaving him to be arrested by Inspector Fox, the gang then heads to Mesa City, Utah, where Raleigh's old friend Muggshot has taken over the city center for his personal gambling empire. Once Muggshot and his gangsters are dealt with, the gang heads to their third target in the Haitian jungle; Mz. Ruby, a voodoo priestess, who plans to create an army of ghosts to terrorize those who rejected her as a child. The fourth target, the mysterious Panda King, resides in the Kunlun Mountains of China, where he extorts nearby villages by threatening to bury them in avalanches triggered by his fireworks. With four of the five locked up, Sly analyzes the collected pages of the *Thievius Raccoonus* and determines that the final target is Clockwerk, an immortal metal owl who has been stalking the Cooper Clan since its earliest days. Bentley traces metal used in some of the Five's vehicles to a remote volcano in Russia, where the gang heads next.

Using special upgrades to the team van, the gang breaches Clockwerk's lair, only to discover that Carmelita has been captured. Sly tries to save her, but nearly dies after being gassed before Bentley is able to rescue him. With Carmelita's help, Sly lays waste to Clockwerk's base and confronts him in aerial combat. Clockwerk reveals that he has always been jealous of the Cooper Clan, and that he turned himself into a machine fueled by his own jealousy and hatred toward the Coopers and recruited the Fiendish Five for the sole purpose of destroying the Cooper family's legacy. Sly replies that he doesn't need the *Thievius Raccoonus* to be a great thief and proceeds to destroy Clockwerk's body and head. Carmelita moves to arrest him, but agrees to give him a ten-second head start. Sly kisses her at the last second while also handcuffing her to a rail, running off with his gang in celebration as Carmelita angrily swears to hunt him down.

After the credits, one of Clockwerk's eyes flashes open, indicating that he is still alive.

## Development

### Graphics and visual design

Brian Flemming of Sucker Punch called the rendering style as "Toon-shading", comparing the detailed backgrounds with cel-shading foregrounds to that of animated movies. An interview with the Sucker Punch development team identified that they took this route because "We wanted Sly and his world to look illustrated, but one step away from a flattened graphic style." To prevent slowdowns with framerates, the team "had at least one engineer working on nothing but performance for the entire development of Sly." The game art team "collected hundreds of photos and drawings of areas that looked like the worlds [they] wanted to create" to generate the backgrounds. The characters themselves underwent up to "six or eight major revisions" before the designs were finalized.

### Sound and music

The music was inspired by the artwork from the game; Ashif Hakik, composer of the game's music, stated that "Stylistic influences came from a combination of instrument choices and musical character defined and inspired by the locales in the game, and similar composer works like Yoko Kanno and her work on *Cowboy Bebop*, Henry Mancini, and Carl Stalling." He continued to note that "the interactive music engine we used made us consider the gameplay for each specific level a sort of starting point that would influence the way the music would be written."

### Localization differences

There are two different covers for the game and they both have two different names, depending on location; *Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus* in North America and *Sly Raccoon* in Europe.

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 group singing the song, Tokyo Ska Paradise, has a distinct Japanese accent, none of the lyrics are in Japanese and the entire song is in English.

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 Japanese introduction is unlockable for view in the North American and PAL versions, but the Japanese ending can only be unlocked in the PAL version.

## References

1. ↑ "Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus – Release Summary". *GameSpot*.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Parish, Jeremy (2005-09-28). "OPM Classics: Sly Cooper 1 & 2". *Official U.S. PlayStation Maazine*. Archived from the original.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Sucker Punch, ed. (2002). *Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus instruction manual*. Sony Computer Entertainment of America. pp. 10–21.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Omni (2002-10-16). "Sucker Punch (Sly Cooper) Q&A". The Armchair Empire. Archived from the original.
5. ↑ "Sly and Saavy". *Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine*. Archived from the original.

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