Sony Santa Monica: Crash and Spyro in All-Stars is “100% Not Possible”

On Twitter yesterday, Sony Santa Monica have confirmed that Crash and Spyro’s appearances in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is “100% not possible.”

[RmanX1000]

This was technically already confirmed but thanks for reassurance that no more work on the title, other than online support, will occur.

[Root]

Not really...Omar teased Crash a ton before the game came out

If they knew this then why tease us....morons

[jukins]

maybe at the time they were trying? Im sure all the characters people were asking for they tried to get I mean why wouldnt they? But business is business and im sure it was gonna cost too much for certain characters or the owners of whatever ip wanted too much control.

Its not easy for someone to give up control of an ip especially in a fighting game, and even though I am still enjoying all stars its easy to tell the budget it had was not big at all.

[pr0t0typeknuckles]

@jukins even if they were tryig to get crash and spyro they shouldnt have teased anything if they knew it wasnt 100% possible,they should have said no comment if asked,but they led everyone on and at the last minute decided to say oh they arent in the game,its just annoying.

[kupomogli]

After the poor development of Playstation All Stars, Sony and SuperBot mutually separated.

Instead of the constant baiting of the fanbase, Omar and the rest of the SuperBot team should have been working on fixing all the bugs in Playstation All Stars, but instead we got an incomplete product with more bugs and glitches than the average Bethesda game.

After playing the beta I praised the game, but after putting in well over 100 hours of the final release, I eventually got tired of it because the poor netcode, bugs, freezing, and every patch making the game worse. I think it was three months before they finally got the belt system patched properly, this is after the patch that they didn't fix for over a month that kicked you off a 2v2 team every single time you played a match forcing you to reinvite your ally. That's not even the half of it.

When the earlier patches are 10000 times more stable than the later released patches, there's something wrong. 17 things shouldn't break each time you fix one.

I hope that SuperBot doesn't work on any other franchise that I have an interest in because they're a garbage developer.

[showtimefolks]

it was already well know, i guess activision wanted a lot of money

[ZodTheRipper]

Greedy bastards. Spyro and Crash are for Sony what Mario and Yoshi are for Nintendo, this is ridiculous from Activision.

[CapsuleMonkey]

I said this last week and got disagrees out of this planet. I said getting crash and spyro cannot happen.

[ZodTheRipper]

It can, it's just a matter of $$$. For a sequel, this practically has to happen.

[admiralvic]

Welcome to N4G!

Pretty much if you say something that goes against what people want, then they will just click disagree. Like how I said Naughty Dog could have resolved the sex phone number thing if they simply called the numbers. Nothing to disagree with, since that is factually true. That is, unless they wanted to put in sex line phone numbers, but they would NEVER admit to that.

Anyway, perhaps you should have said why? I think Spyro wouldn't have been enjoying, since he is a little awkward when compared to everyone else in the game. Crash probably could have worked, but again we still don't know WHY it's impossible. Too much money? License holder said no? They wanted something that Sony didn't want to do? etc.

[Christopher]

Has nothing to do with support. Has to do with who owns the rights to the IPs.

[Smoovekid]

And there goes my dreams... thanks.

[dark-hollow]

I get that spyro is still used in skylanders (damn they made him very hideous) and still pretty relevant to Activision, but crash is not used at all recently!

They obviously don't care about it.
Come one, activision!! Just let them have crash already (or just sell the IP to Sony. I want my naughty dog crash goddammit!)

[GenericNameHere]

Why do people keep wanting Naughty Dog to make Crash or Jak games?? I get that these games might have been one of the first games these gamers played, and yeah these games are great, but shouldn't you want the developer to move on? I'd like a Jak 4, and Naughty Dog was actually working on it too. However, it was so far off from Jak, that they decided to turn it into a new IP instead, and out came The Last of Us. Don't whine that ND wants to make a new IP. Be happy that they are excellent developers who have a great track record, and that they are learning from their mistakes and fixing these mistakes and improving on parts from previous games. Who knows, maybe they'll make a new platformer someday, and you'll even like it better than both Crash and Jak combined.

[princejb134]

I agree. Crash was good for its time but is time to retire him. I would be slightly interested in jam 4 however I would rather ND move on to new ips

[coolasj]

Articles that are just Twitter screen caps are starting to get annoying. Phil Fish was probably onto something.

[Game4life]

fish wasn't as arrogent as people made him out to be. There is alot of stupidity in the industry. Believe it

[Halochampian]

There is a lot of stupidity in the industry and he is right up there with it.

As much as I loved Fez, he was someone that talked a lot of trash but couldn't take any criticism. He bashed PC gaming and the gamers. He was hard to watch in Indie Movie. And when asked by a Japanese man what he thought of Modern Japanese games, he replies with, "They just suck."

I understand the internet is not a nice place but the man needs to hold his emotions in check or get off twitter.

Edit: Had a dyslexia moment

[Game4life]

true we is a bit harsh though. reading some of what hes said makes me think he needs to shut up buti suppose im just contradicting myself

[chrispseuphoria]

Twitter is a credible source of news as the message has officially come from the developer itself. Plus, it isn't a screen cap, it's an embedded version of the tweet.

Need I remind you that Phil Fish blurted out during a panel that modern Japanese games suck without any elaboration until Jonathan Blow stepped in? Whether he's right or wrong, it's childish/arrogant to say they suck like that.

[coolasj]

PM me for more discussion if you'd like. But, there's a lot of Phil Fish having the right idea but doing it the wrong way.

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

That sucks big time. Confirms that greedy Activision is to blame.

[mitchell1188]

Hence why I sold PS all stars. I was expecting more backup from Sony. It was good while it lasted tho. Had a lot of fun.

[talocaca]

I liked The game but my head is still bleeding over how much I scratched it...

Why Dante and not Megaman?
Why Raiden and not Snake?
Why evil Cole and not crash/spyro/cloud?
Why Vectorman as final boss?
Why no Ridge raaaacer references?
Why not offer optional "normal" life bar?

I feel whoever directed this is stubborn and ignored what everyone wanted.

[Soldierone]

Answer to all of the above, this was a game that was supposed to be for the fans that business people turned into a giant advertisement....

New Dante, not old Dante = New DMC just came out.
Cole = Sony wants InFamous to stay around since its a major PS4 title
No Ridge Race = No Ridge Racer to advertise

No life bar = They didn't want to directly advertise SSB, thus had an excuse as to why its "different."

[Veneno]

So it was Super Smash Bros that created the life bar? Interesting.....

[Caffo01]

The super system is deeper than the classic life bar... You can disagree all you want but if you played the game enough to understand its mechanics you know I'm right.

[Soldierone]

@Caffo

I own the game, and no matter how "in depth" it is, you still want to play a life bar. Its so in-depth, yet allows characters to sit on the edge of maps and shoot across constantly because you can't knock them off.

[Caffo01]

if you let them shoot constantly and cannot do much about it then maybe you're simply not good enough at the game.. and no, I don't want to play a life bar.

[Soldierone]

Fine I'm not good at the game, but looking at the community I'm sure not the only person complaining about it.

You can hit them, but once you focus on someone else they just run back to that spot and start shooting across again. It's annoying.

If we could knock them off the map for points, we'd knock them out, then go fight elsewhere. If they were getting knocked off maps, they would be stupid to sit right on the edge of it.

[Reborn]

Because Cole is within Sony.

Spyro has a nest at Activision, and he's not allowed to fly out.

[TooTall19]

The boss is Polygon Man. Vectorman is an awesome old sega game.

[Y_5150]

My favorite Sega game. They need to bring him back! Also Gex.

[r21]

Alot of the answers you seek is 3rd party companies. They have the say and not Sony.

[yewles1]

Polygon Man is actually the only fitting final boss for PlayStation lore, it's just about everything else that's out of whack in PSASBR.

No Gran Turismo reference
No Tomba
No Jumping Flash reference
No SCEI JRPG characters
No Mark of Kri/Rise of the Kasai characters
No Philosoma reference
No Cool Boarders stage
No Krazy Ivan reference
No Disruptor reference
No Kileak reference

You notice I haven't even touched on the 3rd party stuff? 5 times as big...

[zebramocha]

Don't forget tiny tank.

[yewles1]

There's A LOT more I didn't mention than just Tiny Tank...

[zebramocha]

@yewles Are you going to video on the ps4 ram?

[TryMe]

why would tomba be relevant?

it was an obsecure japanease game (that got a sequel). It was cute, it was well made, and is clearly holds alot of nostalgia.

That said, it was a game that never hit the jackpot when it came to sales in america, and was never on the same plan as the rest of the sony mascots.

[yewles1]

@zebramocha

I kind've did already in my "Console Gaming/OS Resources: Where's the Beef?" vid, which later expanded to a blog:

http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...

[Smashbro29]

Polygona man fits theme wise but the way he was implemented is incredibly stupid and boring.

[maniacmayhem]

In all fairness it is the first game in the series. Not to mention a lot of the characters you mentioned are from other companies, you need the rights, permissions and other legal technicalities that take a long time.

[pr0t0typeknuckles]

megaman is more of a nintendo character,hes evn in smash bros now,but i wouldnt have put new dante in,people hate the character,and literally dropped pre-orders cause hes such a terrible character.

i still dont understand why raiden is in and no snake,old snake,or big boss,even though i like raiden,hes not as important to playstation as snake is

we have evil cole to fully represent infamous,dont understand how sony couldnt get cloud,but crash and spyro is pretty obvious why they arent in.

thats not vectorman thts polygonman,the original mascot of the PS1.

cant explain why there is no ridge racer or gran turismo references.

no life bar cause they wanted to do something risky,even if the super kills get boring it was a risk,and to a degree you gotta respect a developer that takes risk.

[admiralvic]

The problem with your logic with Rockman, is that neither game really follows a strict "These characters make sense, so we put them in" logic. Like Snake was in Smash, though he has long since been seen as a PlayStation icon (with several exclusives appearing on Sony platforms and many Solid games not appearing on Nintendo platforms), plus Sonic is probably the absolute least Nintendo thing out there (he was LITERALLY made to counter the popularity of Mario...) and he still made it in brawl. The same can be said for Big Daddy, since BioShock was ORIGINALLY a M$ exclusive title and the PS3 version came out a year later.

"i still dont understand why raiden is in and no snake"

What about that is so hard to grasp? I am 99.99% sure they went to Konami and asked for Snake and they said "No, but with Rising coming out we will be more than happy to give you Raiden if you design him off the Rising look."

",dont understand how sony couldnt get cloud"

They asked Square and they offered Lightning. No source, but that's what these games come down to... marketing. It makes sense to include Lighting, since she was in the upcoming Lightning Returns.

--

A lot of people seem misunderstand how these games REALLY work. Most of the characters fall under one of the following groups. They're either added to hype an upcoming game, gauge interest for an upcoming title, or "fan favorite" (like how Morrigan appears in every cross over, yet we don't get anymore Darkstalkers.)

[admiralvic]

Dante? DmC was coming out.
Raiden? Rising was coming out.
No Crash / Spyro? Some unknown reason, which might have been the IP holder refusing or simply too much money.
Cloud? I am sure SE would have pushed Lightning (as they can't seem to move past XIII no matter how many people say stop), which probably would have annoyed more people than nothing (sadly, I am being honest, though I would take anyone over no one.)
Vectorman? That's a Sega game and a pretty good one at that. The end boss is Polygon man and to be perfectly honest, he was the MOST requested final boss character.
Ridge Racer? Namco might have said no or it might have gotten confused with WipEout, so they avoided it.
Life Bar? Probably avoiding the SSB comments.

[Master-H]

Scumbag Activision

[ShadowGhost]

I hope Sony buys them or gets them as a 2nd party developer in order to get Crash and Spyro back on the PS platform.

Check this out:

http://www.businessweek.com...

[Mikefizzled]

I stopped reading when they said Activision was "investing heavily to engineer deep, high-quality products"

[Darkfist]

wait i thought activision owns crash and spyro?

[ShadowGhost]

Yeah when they acquired Vivendi, but I guess since Vivendi is trying to gain some market share, maybe they can get the rights to Crash and Spyro back. Who knows.

[tristanwerbe]

the game sucked anyway

[ritsuka666]

Yeha.It sold pathetically bad, Sony gave these guys a truck load of money and the best they could do with this dirge weak clone of Smash Bros that got average/meh reviews.

[tristanwerbe]

yup my thoughts exactly

[XisThatKid]

Wasn't expecting them anyway never needed em never wanted em. Would've been nice for those fans hangin onto that dream but no skin off my d.ck. Still a great game would love to see it on the Plus IGC. More should try this out.

[CrossingEden]

That kinda sucks considering that unlike the majority of the other characters, these characters are originally from playstation -_-

[Hicken]

Um... actually, only two of the characters(Big Daddy and Isaac) didn't make their debut on PlayStation. The other 22 are either Sony-owned, or got their start on a Sony console(exception for New Dante, which would make 21).

Wanna tell another lie?

[_FantasmA_]

Seriously? Do you even know how to count? The majority of the characters are Sony owned. I think only 5 of them are from multiplatform games. So 19/24 of them are from games only on PlayStation consoles. But hey 10/9 people do have trouble with t3h fractions.

[Kevlar009]

Reminds me of how much I want Banjo-Kazooie and Geno from Mario RPG in Smash Bros.

[USMC_POLICE]

Sony needs to buy back the rights to spyro and crash and rayman.

[Tctczach]

Doesn't Ubisoft own Rayman now?

[DoctorJones]

It's always been owned by Ubisoft. And the Crash Bandicoot ip was never owned by Sony either, they just published it and had an exclusivity deal.

[nevin1]

How much do think it will cost?

[princejb134]

Why those are all characters that fell off

[MetalNCarnet]

And they wonder why nobody is playing the game anymore...

[chrispseuphoria]

1000's of people are playing the game every day....

http://www.playstationeupho...

[BLKxSEPTEMBER]

I stopped playing it after about a week. It had a better combo system than smash but that's about it.

[_FantasmA_]

I've been saying this for years! Finally some confirmation. Before the game out and fans were saying "No Spyro, No Crash, No buy" and I would tell them to put their fingers in a dike and pray. You're more likely to win the lotto than have Crash and Spryo who are no longer owned by Sony appear in the game, but some became stage 5 clingers to these 2 characters. Honestly, even if they would have came back, Activision would have charged alot and would only have done if they would make a PS All Stars every singe year, otherwise where's the money in just one game?? If SSM would milk PlayStations All Stars Modern Battle Royalefare, then Activison would bring their cows. Gabe Logan please.

[JohnCartenper]

Not a smash ripoff in the slightest.

Bubble me up if you agree!

[TripC50]

Tell us what to do if we disagree!

I need to know what you want.

[TripC50]

k

[ritsuka666]

And this is what happens when you can't properly copy the Smash Bros formula...

[HugoDrax]

Not sure if any of you are familiar with who Ben Baller is, but his brother is director of SuperBot entertainment and they take a small tour of the studio, while they're prepping PLAYSTATION All Stars.

Link Below: Fast Forward 2:40 mark

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[SynestheticRoar]

Playing crash would have been sweet.

[tehpees3]

I disagree with the Activision haters. It isn't spite. Whatever reasons they couldn't make it in will never be known to us. Its more likely legal reasons.

[Apollosupreme]

"100% Not Possible"?

You'd think they have somebody Tweeting who knows English.

[chasegarcia]

It is possible, show up with lots of cash at Activisions door.

-Selling both IPs was a dumb idea. Crash and Spyro just needed a break. They were milking them.

[PurpHerbison]

Some of the most fun I had on PS1 was definitely with Crash&Spyro. Disappointing.

[Kevlar009]

They were the characters the game needed. Not only would they fit the theme of a fighting game (and be fun to play) but they are the original "All-Stars"

[jakmckratos]

This is absolutely ridiculous...there is support from 2K, EA, Capcom, Konami, Namco but Activision titles are 100% not possible??? I don't care how much it would have cost Sony...whether they see it that way or not Crash and Spyro represent the two most beloved franchises from PS's start and they should have never lost those titles to begin with...even if they did not do any further work it woulda been better than the basterdizations that have been released by Activision...

[nan0]

They need to make a playstation allstars 2.

Don't have two separate cole characters with basically the same moves, it's lame. New cole sucks, old cole all the way.

Lara Croft needs to be in it.
Gabe Logan as one gentlemen stated, needs to be in it.
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger should be in it (They even said they'd allow him to be used if Sony asked, but they didn't)

Big Daddy looks like a fool in the game, especially since he was an xbox exclusive for a time. I still like him however.

Some characters are just so horrible and hard to use. Raiden just paries and spams all day, while other characters have to be point blank range to even hit someone etc.

Life bar option needs to be availible. Watching people struggling to land sack boy's #1 and dante's #1 is miserable.

The story line is a joke, the two stages for every stage became annoying. THe flying killzone part was great, but the ape escape mode it turns into is beyond fking annoying and beyond fking horrible.

[Kratoscar2008]

So the guys that scream Playstation the most cant be in a game of PS stars? But Big Daddy can? This tittle failed to be like Smash even in concept. Thats really stupid.

[pr0t0typeknuckles]

shh,quiet you cant say that about all stars the fanboys will shoot you on sight

[Kratoscar2008]

This... this thing has fanboys? Nevermind it sucked but when it lacks even the most iconic PS characters how can a thing witouth any value whatsoever have fanboys?

[Novistador]

Lets make a Sony all-star game.. with no Sony all stars.

[Kratoscar2008]

Yeah someone didnt thought this quite right.

[Unlimax]

Its Universal Studio fault .. they give the games rights to the wrong and the worst company that doesn't know what's the best for gaming !

I totally lost faith in humanity when i saw people here defending Activi$ion by disagreeing on every comment that mention this disgusting greedy company .

[greedybear88]

nooooooooooo