Oh boy, a new game! I sure hope Santa remembered
that I wanted the hit crossover platform fighting game that features representation from series
like Metal Gear Solid, Tekken, and even Devil May Cry! Maybe I should have mentioned that Mario's
on the box. The Super Smash Bros. series forever changed gaming. It provided a more casual take
on the fighting game genre. Attack your opponents, number goes higher, send them flying, win the game.
No confusing combos to memorize, just your two big buttons. But the simplicity of the gameplay is
really only part of the success. More notable was the crossover aspect the series brought. A variety
of Nintendo properties that have never before interacted in a meaningful way suddenly all in the
same game letting you punch Mario square in the face. The meteoric success of the series didn't
go unnoticed by other developers and it seemed like they were far more willing to develop this
genre of game, or maybe it was just easiest to copy whatever Nintendo was doing. Regardless, it seemed
like every developer under the sun was creating this type of game using any properties they could
get their hands on: Digimon, Cartoon Network, tons of anime, even a strange crossover between video games
and toy lines. Anyone and everyone was crossing over and this trend still continues to this day,
but if there's one company that could have given Nintendo a run for their money, it was Sony. Already
dominating Nintendo for years with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, and with plenty of great series
really connected with their consoles, a Sony Smash Bros. seems like a no-brainer. But very few can
replicate the magic of Smash Bros., and while the developers definitely gave it a try, the final
product, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, fell short. But, it wasn't entirely the developer's
fault. The earliest concept for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was dreamt up in 2009, with
an incredibly high effort idea of PlayStation crossover. Sony had originally tapped Naughty Dog
to develop this crossover, however, they had their hands full developing The Last of Us and really
couldn't spare anyone. So instead Sony decided to form a brand new studio from scratch and handpick
experienced developers and those familiar with the fighting game genre, and they called this
new company SuperBot. At this time, the combat mechanics weren't even the primary focus. They had
multiple prototypes for this crossover game and the final one before the platform fighter was a
sort of 4v4 Capture the Flag game. Each character would have fallen into an archetype like speedy,
defender, or attacker, each playing a different role in this Capture the Flag game. While the
prototype was fun, the game required split-screen and SuperBot wanted to pivot so that all players
would be looking at the same gameplay at the same time. This reset what the game's primary gameplay
would be, and they ultimately landed on a platform brawler game, not too dissimilar to Smash Bros. As
it does, information about this game trickled out online. Job listings revealed a "combat heavy"
game was in production for Sony, early screenshots and gameplay leaked, domains were registered. All
of this peaked in April 2012 when the game was revealed on an episode of Game Trailers
TV with Geoff Keighley, because people still watched TV back then, I guess. And the game was revealed as
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. And can I just talk about this name for a sec? It's not even a
title, it's just an explanation. This title is a chore to say. It's like you start to say it, but
then halfway through you just give up because you know deep down it's not worth it. And even if
you try to abbreviate it, you just end up with PSASASSBR. You really only need two of these phrases. PlayStation
All-Stars, PlayStation Battle Royale. Either one of these are fine, but all three are just messy. But I think
the salt in the wound is that this game's early working title is leagues better than its final
name. When the game's gameplay and screenshots were leaked, it was under the working title of TitleFight,
which is just so cool for a crossover game. All of these titles coming together to fight. Even
if you want to throw in the PlayStation name just for the sake of branding, PlayStation TitleFight
is just so punchy while still summarizing just what the game is. So let's go ahead and take a look
at all of these Pspspsp all-stars. This is the base roster for PlayStation All-Stars, and I can only describe it as awkward. So there's no denying that some of these characters are definitely popular: Kratos,
Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Sackboy. These are some big PlayStation names. And they
even got some cool third party characters like Heihachi from Tekken. And then there's the classic
reps: PaRappa the Rapper, Sir Daniel Fortesque from MediEvil, Spike from Ape Escape. There's a good fusion of
modern and retro characters that you would expect for a PlayStation All-Star lineup. And I've got to
talk about Toro here for a second, also known as the Sony cat. This little guy made an appearance
in a few games, but had the notable role of being a mascot for Sony in Japan. And he appeared as a
playable guest fighter in Street Fighter X Tekken. Pspspsp actually references this by giving Toro
a stance change mechanic. He has three different fighting styles: one based on Street Fighter, one
based on Tekken, and one based on Mortal Kombat, of all things. It's honestly such a creative moveset.
While a bunch of these could be called PlayStation all-stars, none of them are THE PlayStation all-star.
They're all featured on PlayStation, but there is no face of PlayStation on this roster. Of all the
characters and series represented there seems to be a big name missing: Putter Golf. Yes, the biggest
name for the PlayStation 1, and their unofficial mascot, Crash Bandicoot is totally missing from
this roster, someone you'd expect to be a part of a Pspsps All-Stars lineup. And honestly I think the
reason just simply boils down to money. Either Crash's owner Activision was asking for too much
money, or Sony was being incredibly stingy with the budget for this game, or both. But even just
this single addition would make the roster feel fuller somehow. Like, literally look at all the
same characters, but plop in Crash and yeah, that feels more like a Pspsps All-Stars. But plenty of other
characters are also missing that were considered to be PlayStation mainstays. Spyro the
Dragon was high on the list of hopefuls for this game, but unfortunately he was also purchased by
Activision, so again, that all fell through. Though Activision also had additional reasoning. They
recently had turned Spyro from this to that, and planned on using his popularity to pivot into
a brand new series that you may have heard of: Skylanders. So while they were planning on using
Spyro to some degree here, they weren't exactly willing to bend over backwards to license him out
when they were just going to phase him out soon anyway. While Tomb Raider was never exclusive to
the PlayStation, the game was so closely linked to the PlayStation brand that you would have thought
that it was. So getting Lara Croft into the game also seemed like a no-brainer. This time, the studio
Crystal Dynamics was actually willing to play ball, but the timing of PlayStation All-Stars just didn't
really work out. At the time, Crystal Dynamics was developing their reboot of the Tomb Raider series,
so they wanted their new game to release first before including Lara in a crossover. And that's
kind of fair, you don't want to include the old version in a crossover just to immediately
introduce a new one. A developer for the game also revealed that discussions were taking place with
Square Enix to get a Final Fantasy character in the game, but Square had some reservations.
SuperBot was literally a brand new studio and this was their first game, so it may have felt
somewhat careless to just license out one of their characters to an unproven developer. Also, they're
Square Enix, so it's just expected that they're going to be difficult. And then there are the
characters they did manage to get that were just so weird, man. The first three Devil May Cry games
were all PlayStation 2 exclusive, and even though DMC4 dropped on the Xbox 360 and PC alongside
the PlayStation 3, you wouldn't be laughed at for connecting Dante and the PlayStation in your
mind. But what you CAN laugh at is the Dante they chose for PlayStation All-Stars. For some reason,
Capcom felt it was time for a refresh for Devil May Cry, so they were developing a total reboot
for the series, DmC: Devil May Cry, with an all-new design for Dante. And it is laughable. They just
gave him such different energy from the Dante we got used to for the previous decade. And I think
they realized just how embarrassing this guy is because they immediately went "Where'd everybody
go?" But Pspsps came out before all of that, so we got this guy for the game. Yeah, they picked this design for
the game as a way to advertise for the reboot. And like, I get it, but the weirdest part is that this
game had big support for alternate costumes and that would have been the perfect place to put the
classic white hair Dante. Sure, advertise the new guy as the main costume slot, but throw in the old guy,
too, for the old fans. Instead we got Donte, Donte with less clothes, and Donte with less clothes. Metal Gear's Raiden
also appears, which is also kind of a weird one. Like when you think of Metal Gear, you don't
exactly think of Raiden immediately. You think of Mr. Boxman. Well, the reason for choosing Raiden is
twofold. First, Snake appeared in the then most recent Smash game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl,
so it's possible there's some kind of clause preventing inclusion in competitors, or something
like that from Nintendo. But the far more notable point is that Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
was right around the corner, a spin-off that starred Raiden, so this was, again, a perfect
promo opportunity. And then there's BioShock's Big Daddy, which is just weird. Like, this certainly
wouldn't be considered a PlayStation all-star. I mean, BioShock was technically an Xbox exclusive for
its first year, so if anything, you'd associate it with Xbox. I'm all for out-of-left-field inclusions
for these types of games, but when your roster is missing such core characters, it just makes
the already weird ones stand out even more. Like they couldn't get Crash, but they got Big Daddy. But
with all of that said, how does the game actually play? These characters could have been horrible
choices, but the game could still play really well. In a perfect world. In my opinion, the game
is almost really fun. Being one of the earliest prominent Smash Bros. competitors, I think they
felt the pressure of being in the same genre as Smash, while trying to be different from Smash. But
some things just missed the mark. There's only one speed you can move at. There's no walking and then
running, you just sort of half-jog exclusively. And you really feel like you've got gum on your shoes
the entire time. A platform fighter really needs to feel good when you're just moving around, and
this game just doesn't. Instead of having standard and special moves, your moves are spread across
these square, triangle, and circle buttons with different directions changing the move, just like
in Smash. And that's totally fine. It works well, but the fundamentals of how you actually fight are
very different. Rather than having a damage counter that racks up, or a health bar that depletes, Pspsps just
has... nothing! No matter what you do, there is no feeling like your moves are doing anything. There's
definitely an element of psychology at play with these types of games. When I see my opponent at low
health or high percent in other games, I get a dopamine rush because I know they're close to death and
it's because of my attacks. In this game, I can hit them with 100 moves in a row, and feel absolutely
nothing, because I don't have any indication that anything is happening to them. And because there is
no percent damage, or anything like that, you also don't have any knockback scaling. Every move does
the same knockback, whether you've hit them with it once or 50 times, they will fly the exact same way.
As a result, there are characters that can perform infinites because you will never earn a knockback
multiplier to pop you out of the combo, and that is just really lame. So if there's no health mechanic,
how do you KO opponents? Well, the bar at the bottom increases by collecting All-Star power orbs, or AP
orbs, generally by attacking your opponent. Filling the bar once lets you perform a super move, or
you can continue to earn AP up to level 2 for a slightly more powerful super, or level 3 for
the most powerful super. Using these super moves is the only way to get kills, and man, is it lame. I
can kind of see what they were going for. Something like super moves in more traditional fighting
games, or Final Smashes, but those games have your attacks actually matter on top of charging
your super. You're doing more than just charging it. In PlayStation All-Stars, I can be killed, respawn,
and then immediately die again, and it's not like the other player pulled off an incredible string,
they just pressed the R2 button. And there's just no balance with a lot of these. Some have very tiny
hit boxes, while others are just insanely huge or full screen wipes. I can appreciate what they
were going for, but building the entire KO system simply around earning your supers really just
creates boring gameplay. Aside from the combat, one other element suffers from this super-focused
system: the stages, or rather, the philosophy of how these stages are developed. Because supers are
the only way you can die, falling off of a stage doesn't result in a death. You'll simply respawn,
taking an AP penalty and a slight stun. Because of this, most stages aren't built with falling off in
mind, and they truly just end up being a sealed up box. They're fighting in there. This might just be
my Smash Bros. brain talking, but it does seem like removing the entire concept of falling off
the stage takes away half the point of it being a platform fighter in the first place. These games
sort of evolved out of the platformer genre, where falling down a pit was fatal. I don't know if that
makes a ton of sense, but this aspect just doesn't really click for me. Despite that, the stages do
something incredibly creative that I truly don't think many other crossover games do: they actually
cross over. Each stage in the game is a fusion of two different game series. They start out in a
base form then element from a different game series shows up in one way or another. For example
the Sandover Village is a stage from the Jak and Daxter series. After a while golf carts, a 19th
hole sign, and golfers appear from the Hot Shots Golf series. The golfers hit golf balls onto the
main stage, draining AP from anyone hit. The Hades stage, the literal underworld, gets invaded by cute
Patapon singing a happy little song. The vibrant LocoRoco stage gets invaded by a Metal Gear
launching missiles and attacking. There's even a LittleBigPlanet stage that turns into
a game show based off of the game Buzz!, asking you a whole bunch of questions about the series
represented in the game. Taking two series with totally contradictory art styles and mashing
them together is such a fresh idea that really I don't think has been done before, or since. Most
crossover games, including Smash, only focus the crossover aspect on the character roster, while
the stages entirely represent just one series. I guess the closest Smash got is, like, the stage
morph mode, but that's not really the same. Sadly, one of the areas the game really suffers in is
just how little there is to do. You can play the single player arcade mode, local multiplayer, and
online multiplayer. So you can play the single player arcade mode and local multiplayer, which
just isn't a ton. However, what I will say about the arcade mode is that they did get creative
with it. Each character in this mode has a mini story that kind of explains why they're fighting
all of these other characters. At the end they have a face off with a specific rival fighter, and these
scenes are pretty cute. Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter square off to see who is the better duo.
Spike and PaRappa sort of represent a classic PS1 character fight. Heihachi and Toro fight as a
reference to their previous appearance together in Street Fighter X Tekken. Sweet Tooth and
Kratos fight over spilled ice cream. Arcade even featured a final boss: Polygon Man, which is a deep
Sony cut. Polygon Man was a mascot used to promote the PlayStation for E3 1995. However, the mascot was
designed by Sony's American branch and Sony Japan did not vibe with it at all, so it was quickly axed.
Even taking into account that it's clearly meant to just be their Master Hand, using this little
known nearly 20-year-old mascot is just so clever. Alongside the PlayStation 3 version of the game, a
PlayStation Vita version was released on the exact same day. This was actually one of the earliest in
Sony's cross-buy program, where you could receive a free download for the Vita port of a game if you
purchased the console version. Amazingly, this version of the game is pretty much a 1-to-1
port of the console version. Naturally, there are some adjustments needed to accommodate for screen
size or less powerful hardware, but other than that, you are playing the exact same game. So much so
that prior to the shutdown of the servers, the online multiplayer was fully crossplatform, meaning
you could play PS3 and Vita in the same lobby. that's amazing. Obviously, I think the console version
is the way to go. Portable versions of fighting games have never really been my cup of tea. They're
entertaining and it's always interesting to see how they get executed on inferior hardware, but
I never feel like I'm playing optimally on such a small device. Still, I think it's super cool
to see this game running in this form. Despite all of the hiccups that I just got done talking
about, the public was more than willing to give Pspsps a try, resulting in more than a million copies sold
around 6 months after release. But this apparently wasn't good enough for Sony, who felt this was
lackluster and did not encourage continued DLC development or an outright sequel. Unfortunately,
this put SuperBot in a weird position because they made plans for DLC and had already begun work
on some new characters. But Sony did something actually kind of crazy: they cut ties with SuperBot,
the studio that they literally made and handpicked developers specifically to make this game. And
they just handed the mostly finished DLC to the internal Santa Monica Studio to polish off. That
is ruthless, literally assembling and supporting this team and then just abandoning them because it
didn't pan out how you'd hoped. Oh, and they did all this just 2 months after the game came out. Like
they really just said "Peace." In February 2013, two new DLC characters were released: Kat from Gravity Rush and Emmett Graves from Starhawk. Along with this came a Fearless stage, representing the Heavenly
Sword and Wipeout games. And there was another wave: Zeus from God of War and Isaac Clark from Dead
Space. They were released alongside a graveyard stage fusing MediEvil and The Unfinished Swan.
It was clear that most of these were really just meant to be promotional inclusions, with
every character having a new game either just released or coming up. And just like that the game
was done. No more DLC characters, stages, nothing, and that is such a shame, because it seemed like
the team at SuperBot had some really cool ideas. In the 10 years since the game was released,
former developers have given us glimmers into their plans. Abe from the Oddworld series and Dart
from The Legend of Dragoon were both planned to be DLC. Dart even had a model done before work was
terminated, indicating that they were a decent way into his development. Further down the line, Tomba
from the PlayStation classic Tomba series, or Tombi if you're European, and even Ryu Hayabusa from
Ninja Gaiden were both planned as characters. A DLC stage was also cut, which would have combined
Gravity Rush with the indie PlayStation Network game Journey, and who knows what more could have
come. Like Lara Croft could have actually been DLC since the reboot was released only 4 months
after All-Stars, but unfortunately none of this would ever see the light of day. And with that
final nail in the coffin, the great Super Sony Bros. experiment was finished. I really can't
decide what this game's ultimate downfall was. It isn't exactly one huge thing, it feels like a bunch
of tiny things that didn't work out and just threw everything off. The biggest struggle is, I think,
the gameplay. In an effort to differentiate itself from Smash, it made the gameplay into something
that, while fun for a short time, doesn't really grip you in a way that keeps you coming back. The
ironic part is that making these changes didn't even stop the Smash comparisons. So they could have
just fully used Smash's model, kept their super moves and their crossover stages, and it probably
would have done a lot better. But honestly, I don't blame the development team at all. It seems like
everyone in the core team really wanted to make the game that the fans also wanted. They wanted
the iconic characters, more content, years of DLC. Negotiations were held with the companies that
owned the iconic characters, but it really just seemed like Sony did not care whether or not
they were added. What they saw this game as was a simple vehicle to promote PlayStation games. A
majority of the additions were purely seen as a way to potentially move copies of other games, or
even consoles, and nothing more. But even butting heads with the higher ups, you can tell the
development team really had passion for this project. The movesets for all these characters
just overflow with faithfulness to each franchise. Like, they really wanted to give it their best.
Dante has the ability to cancel his moves into other moves. Sly Cooper doesn't block any attacks,
but instead uses Shadow Power to turn invisible. With the exception of being a bit more acrobatic,
Heihachi feels like he's yanked right out of Tekken, even having certain button combos execute
moves differently. Nathan Drake can literally spawn a concrete barrier to take cover behind. They
weren't half-assing it, these developers were really giving it their all with the cards that
they were dealt. And that's why I truly think that this is a game that should be given a second
chance. Nowadays, there are plenty of really good platform fighters that all use the foundation
Smash helped popularize, but then they deviate in really cool ways that make them stand out as their
own game. Sony could easily go for a second attempt with this game if they just work out the kinks
from the original. Even the president of Sony's video game branch stated in an interview that he
liked the concept of PlayStation: All-Stars and that he'd like to see them revisit the idea, but not
with the same mechanics. And with the hindsight of 10 years of platform fighters and 10 years of
new game development, the roster could have a ton of new faces. Sony has made some huge games in the
last decade: The Last of Us, The Horizon series, Neo, Ghost of Tsushima, their new cute mascot Astro.
Dude, they could add Spider-Man and Wolverine to this game. It would also be a great opportunity
to rework some of the characters from the first game. God of War was given a total refresh with
different combat and an older Kratos. Ratchet and Clank have, like, three or four new games,
including a reimagining of their first game to pull inspiration from. Capcom even abandoned the
edgy Dante so proper Dante could join. But again, a huge element of a potential sequel would
be securing the classic characters that the first one missed. In the case of Crash and Spyro
especially, they both had beautiful HD remakes that were unbelievably successful, with Crash even
receiving a back-to-basic sequel later on. Imagine this was the roster you could pull off. If the
gameplay didn't blow chunks, this could be such a successful game. And I think in the current era
where, you know, a Smash Bros. reveal literally broke Twitter, companies might be a tad more willing to
have their characters featured in a big crossover game, assuming that game is handled well. I mean,
just go count all of the characters that exist in Fortnite, do I really need to say more? PlayStation
All-Stars Battle Royale really seemed like it was set up for failure from the jump. Having to
negotiate with these third party companies to get them to lend their characters out is one thing,
but having a home company, Sony, that really didn't seem like it cared whether this game got made
or not, it's a miracle anything got done. But if they do get the chance to make a sequel, they need
to fix this one major problem: put in Putter Golf.
