There would appear at first glance to be two kinds of people in this world. Those who regard Playstation All Stars Battle Royale as a wonderful homage to some of Sony’s most beloved franchises both past and present, regardless of the needlessly long title. Then there are others who look upon the upcoming brawler royale as a cheap bastardisation of Nintendo’s greatest franchise. Of course it’s not that simple. I can’t wait for All Star Battle Royale (which from here on out will be referred to as BR because it’s a stupid name) because of what Nintendo has done with it’s own property. Battle Royale for many, much like myself has been a game that’s been 13 or more years in the making.
If you’ll indulge me, I want to take you back in time. To a simpler time. 1999 to be exact. A ten year old Corey has had his Sony Playstation for 3 years and has fallen in love with an entertainment medium that will stay with him for the rest of his life. Power Ranger figures and LEGO castles lie discarded as this young boy goes on an island hopping adventure with a bandicoot, crashes expensive cars in Gran Turismo and makes a bear fight a boxing dinosaur.
The Playstation was my first console and brand loyalty or not I’ll always have an affinity towards Sony’s products. They got me suckered in young. That’s not to say I was ignorant of other platforms. I’d spend hours round at friend’s houses playing the Nintendo 64. Then in 1999 there was this one game that preoccupied our time more than any other. You can probably guess that it was none other than Super Smash Brothers.
We had had a gameboy in the house for some time before the arrival of Sony’s grey box of delights, so I was at least familiar with Mario, Link, Kirby and Donkey Kong. While I didn’t share the same connection to these characters as much as my friends did, it didn’t stop me from enjoying a well crafted game and the idea of assembling a consoles mascots under one roof was the greatest thing I’d seen since Jurassic Park.
The Only Game To Ever Impress Shania Twain
Of course the young me thought about how great it would be if the Playstation had something similar, ignorant of the fact that Nintendo had years of experience ahead of Sony in the games department. Nevertheless group discussions among friends over who would star in a Sony Smash Brothers game were frequent. We had all of the big names. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Lara Croft, Duke Nukem, Solid Snake, the entire cast of Final Fantasy VII, hell even Croc could come along.
The gaming landscape was to say the least, very different to what it is today. Even so over the next 13 years, while we never got a Smash Brothers on the Playstation, the idea eventually faded from our minds in favour of other, more pressing issues like girls, high school, the feasibility of cloning dinosaurs and girls. That’s not to say the idea ever left our minds though. Laying dormant it would spring up again with every new Smash Brothers game, or new console release. Again I’d think “what if?” for a while before getting on with whatever I was contending with at the time. Probably girls, trying to get into university, the feasibility of cloning dinosaurs and um, girls. BR was simply a pipe dream.
And now I’m sitting here writing this small piece because the unthinkable is happening. We’re getting our Smash Brothers. I won’t lie, with the announcement of BR the ten year old inside me was doing cartwheels of excitement. I couldn’t help but be excited. The game I had been waiting 13 years for was happening and that warranted a multitude of fist pumps. Will this game resemble the gaming opus that the ten year old me dreamed up years ago? Certainly not. Franchises have come and gone. We’ve replaced our purple dragons for angry Greek gods (does that sound oddly sexual to anyone else?). The core concept remains the same though. Get a bunch of well known faces together to kick the crap out of each other.
Cheers Ninty! You Done Good!
So yes, you can go and moan about how Sony is being oh so unoriginal and are just producing a cheap imitation to feed the stupid squirming masses. Or you can join me in thanking Nintendo for popularising this particular genre (Nintendo, contrary to popular belief were not the first one’s to come up with a franchise mixing brawler), so that perpetual ten year olds like myself are getting a game that pays homage to the franchises that we hold dear.
Oh and if anyone from Sony are reading this, I’ll forgive you for taking this long, if you’ll include Crash Bandicoot as a playable character.
You Might Also Like...
- E3: Quick Sony Press Conference Wrap Up
- Meta Knight “Banned” From Super Smash Bros. Brawl
- 7 Things We Want to See in Red Dead Redemption 2
Want to write about the stuff you're passionate about and have your work read by an audience of over 10 million a month? Click here to become a contributor.
6 Comments
You know, I have 2 halves of my brain on this one. It is so similar to Nintendo’s execution of Super Smash Bros that you can call it a bastardized clone. However, had Nintendo not made SSB, there is no guarantee Sony would not have made BR at some stage.
I think it’s good anyway, as it gives the two franchises competition and a reason to better themselves. Also, BR can take some characters that I’d hate in SSB but could work in this; all the annoying Square Enix fanboys can beg for Cloud to be in BR rather than SSB now, it makes more sense.
Disagree if you want, but SSB seems to have a better roster, it seems more special, more relevant. Mario vs Link vs Kirby vs Pikachu draws my attention more than Sly vs Radec vs Heihachi vs Big Daddy. BR’s roster seems like it’s made on a North Korean production line, SSB’s roster seems hand-crafted in Germany, if you know what I mean. I played a ton of classic Playstation and PS2, but I’ve lost my interest on PS3, and this roster isn’t a celebration of Sony, like SSB is a celebration of Nintendo, in my opinion. Where’s Crash? Spyro? Jak and Daxter? Ratchet & Clank? Cole? Wander? This isn’t PlayStation, it’s just popular games.
I agree tbh. I think part of the reason I’m not overly interested in BR is because of the character roster. I couldn’t give two hoots about characters like Big Daddy or Heihachi duking it out. They’re decent enough in their respective games, but I’m not attached to them to the point where I want to see them in a fighting game. Most Sony characters don’t ave the nostalgic appeal of most of Nintendo’s icons.
Josh, more than half of the character lineup is yet to be revealed. I don’t see the point in asking “Where’s Crash? Spyro? Jak and Daxter? Ratchet & Clank? Cole? Wander?” when they’re all clearly going to be in the game and the reason they haven’t been revealed is purely marketing based.
Jak and Daxter & Cole were annouced as characters today at Comic Con. I reckon we’ve got maybe half the roster at this point. I’m going to reserve judgement until the whole roster is out there, but there is something to be said about Sony’s newer franchises feeling like they don’t have enough character. Nathan Drake is just a man with a gun after all. Then again on the flip side, its alays hard to stand up to the classics.
As far as Heihachi is concerned, I’m glad they’ve included a shout out to Tekken, it’s a series that’s always had its home on the Playstation, but they missed a trick not adding Paul Phoenix, the man’s hair alone deserves its own game.
I reckon its gonna end up as a mass out dlc affair which is a slight shame,i see the merit in bringing out all the bigger more recent names to get the younger generation of gamers involved but somewhere somebody got it wrong!
Who’s idea was it to include heihachi? He’s a bit of a douche to fight against but you know sa payable fighter yoshimitsu was the go to guy, be healing myself it even taking the suicide route to cheapen another players victory…what about that does not screen br!
As for the older character input us just a straight up no, whilst parrapa the rappa was good in the day there is no place in br for the guy I’m afraid, id of give another route and thrown in one of any of the babes toy guys have already mentioned, it even rayman…in the original games he could do things that’d make him boss in a br game!
Obviously everybody had their own ideal line up, I’ll probably get it but only after the re-release comes out witha stronger roster…like marvel vs capcom3 it was good, but damn i wanted to be Hawkeye straight away.
Okay so big daddy is not Sony’s okay spyro is not sony’s okeis crash is not Sony’sNote anymore. Hmmm don’t seem like they have enough exclusive characters in the first place. Seems like there borrowing so much third party Ip’s it just insane lol, whereas SSB is from Nintendo. And of course Nintendo has the biggest and most well known IP’s in gaming history. NIice try Sony, but you could have made anything with your Ip’s, anything. But you choose to take a hit at one of Nintendo’s biggest and best games, bad move sony