PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale trivia.
- Acting for Two:
- Armin Shimerman voices Dr. Nefarious, Andrew Ryan, and a Vox Populi mook.
- David W. Collins voices the Announcer and the Negativitron.
- Marc Graue voices Mr. Zurkon and a Vox Populi mook.
- Tom Kane voices the Fat Princess narrator and a Vox Populi mook.
- Marc Silk voices Spike, Specter, Nick (from Hot Shots Golf), and the Gargoyle.
- Unshō Ishizuka voices Heihachi and Andrew Ryan in the Japanese dub.
- Grey DeLisle voices Carmelita Fox and Hannah (from Hot Shots Golf)
- All-Star Cast: Pardoning the pun, the game has Tara Strong, Jennifer Hale, Nolan North, David Kaye, Stephen Fry, and these are only the people connected to the roster, and in the English version. The Japanese version is no slouch either.
- Ascended Fanon: A number of sources say that Stephane Cornicard played Sir Dan in the Medievil franchise, when it was designer Jason Wilson. Stephane plays the character in this game.
- Content Leak:
- Some images
of the game were leaked prior to the game’s announcement. - A poll on Sony’s Facebook was put out prior to E3 2012 that confirmed Big Daddy and Nathan Drake.
- Subsequently, the entire roster was leaked after a datamine that took place during one of the betas.
- Some images
- Creator Backlash: Director Omar Kendall admitted the "only supers can kill" mechanic was a bad idea, and that he would most certainly not include it in any theoretical sequel or reboot.
- Cross-Dressing Voices:
- Ratchet and Daxter in the Japanese dub.
- Spike AKA Kakeru in Japanese and other languages only save for English. This also applies to Specter in the Japanese dub as well.
- Disowned Adaptation: A very mild form, but this interview with Rodney Greenblat (PaRappa the Rapper's character designer) has him share that he was not exactly thrilled with PaRappa's first appearance in over ten years being in a fighting game where he can potentially use rocket launchers and guns, but he's still glad the guy got a chance to come back.
- Early Draft Tie-In: The BioShock Infinite content in All-Stars is primarily based off pre-release footage. Specifically, the Stowaways stage features a Vox Populi blimp with the words "OUR VOICE WILL BE HEARD" painted on the side; said blimp appeared in E3 trailers for Infinite but is nowhere to be seen in the final game.
- Executive Meddling: Sony demanded that character selection choices be based primarily on franchises that have had or will have major releases around the time of the game's development, which resulted in fighters such as the Dm C Devil May Cry version of Dante and Killzone 2's Colonel Mael Radec.
- Fake Brit: Tom Kane as the Fat Princess Narrator, being pretty much the only example in the game. Every other character has a voice coming from that character's homeland (aside of alien or otherworldly characters, anyway).
- Follow the Leader: Though it has other inspirations, the primary one is Super Smash Bros., thanks to it being the only major example of a Platform Fighter at the time. SuperBot took feedback from Brawl players invited into the office, as well as beta testers via a thread on Smashboards, a hardcore and competitive Smash community website.
- Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
- This version of Spike has a design and weapons based on his appearance in Ape Escape: Million Monkeys, which never got an English release.
- Since Toro's games rarely see release outside of Japan, his presence in these sorts of fighting games has become an example.
- Dante too, unless you count the demo for DmC: Devil May Cry.
- Isaac Clarke is an odd version. The Dead Space franchise was never released in Japan, and despite this, he is still available as DLC over there.
- The Other Darrin:
- Sir Dan is voiced by Stephane Cornicard rather then Medievil designer Jason Wilson.
- Zigzagged with Jak, going from his iconic voicing by Mike Erwin (who reprised the role in PlayStation Move Heroes in 2011) back to Lost Frontier voice actor Josh Keaton (a 2009 title).
- An interesting case with the Ape Escape characters. Most of them have their voice actors from the UK dubs of the series (making it the first time the voices are used outside of Europe), with the exception being the Professor, with Dan Green reprising his role from Ape Escape 2.
- Jennifer Hale replaces Anna Torv as the voice of Nariko.
- Outside the roster is Hades, now voiced by Matt Prescott Morton instead of Clancy Brown. What's odd about this is Clancy being credited as reprising his role as Baron Praxis for the Black Rock Stadium stage (although it appears to be archived audio from his propaganda in his home game).
- Katy Kat is voiced by Charlean Carmon, instead of Michele Burks (her VA in PaRappa 1 and Um Jammer Lammy) or Lea Alomar (her VA in PaRappa 2).
- In the Japanese dubs, we have a majority of the Sly Cooper characters being voiced by their permanent voice actor from the 3rd game and the remastered Japanese versions onwards.
- Also in the Japanese dub, due to the death of Praxis' voice actor, it is currently unknown if his old voice clips from Jak 2's Japanese dub was recycled or Praxis' Japanese voice was rerecorded with a new actor altogether.
- Also in Japanese, the Professor no longer has veteran seiyuu Jouji Yanami voicing him, and instead has Hideyuki Umezu doing the job.
- Real Song Theme Tune:
- Role Reprise: Superbot went through a lot of effort to get as many of the original voice actors back and it shows. In addition to Dred Foxx reprising PaRappa, most of the cast from the series (except Katy Kat) returned as well, namely Armstead Christian as PJ, Ryu Watabe as Chop Chop Master Onion, and noticeably Kenya Hathaway as Sunny Funny, who hadn't voiced the character since Um Jammer Lammy. Most if not all of the Japanese voice actors from the crossed series' respectively scarce Japanese dubs also reprise in this game.
- Screwed by the Network: Due to the studio being new and unproven, many publishers refused to license their characters to Sony, most notably Square Enix and Activision who were asked for any characters from Final Fantasy, Lara Croft, Spyro the Dragon or even Crash Bandicoot (all of them very iconic of the original PlayStation era), with both companies asking for high prices or pushing characters Superbot wasn't interested in. This was the reason why the final roster ended up including characters that didn't have any particular relationship with the PlayStation brand such as the reboot Dante (Classic Dante has three PS2 exclusive titles, whereas DmC was a multiplatform reboot), Big Daddy (arguably more associated with the Xbox 360, given the first game's status as a Killer App for it), Isaac Clarke (fully multiplatform) and Raiden from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (MGS2 was a PS2 exclusive, but Raiden's portrayal was heavily despised in that game compared to Rising), as they were the only characters they could get with no support.
- Shrug of God: Prior to the game's release, Omar Kendall was asked in an interview if Crash Bandicoot would be in the game. His response: No comment. Looking back, he probably said that because he knew Crash wouldn't make it due to Activision's excessive price tag for the license, and he didn't want to disappoint the fans. Presumably Spyro had the same issues.
- Streisand Effect: Shortly after the infamous leaked Concept Art of Dart became widely-known, the artist Mike Edwards had his entire online portfolio where it was found taken down. Later on, the same thing happened the PSASBR section of Ky Bui, whose portfolio leaked the Gravity Rush/Journey (2012) stage. This all lead to the PSASBR community hunting down every last artist in the game's credits, finding nearly all the game's hidden concept art in the process (but nothing else of note).
- Urban Legend of Zelda: The Paul Gale network’s initial leak of the game claimed that a planned stage was based on Bridge of Asylia from Lair that was later dropped. No evidence or assets were ever proven to confirm this, and in Beta64’s video on the game, he mentioned talking to developers about it, who told him that no such stage was ever planned.
- What Could Have Been:
- A stage featured back when the game was still being referred to as Title Fight mashed up the train segment from Uncharted with Warhawk.
- Before SuperBot was formed, Sony originally wanted Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studios to develop the game, but they were busy with their own projects (The Last of Us, God of War: Ascension). Sony then decided to build SuperBot from the ground up with a focus on employees with experience in fighting games.
- According to Kojima Productions, Raiden was scheduled to have a big reveal at Penny Arcade Expo 2012, but his leak led to a more basic reveal as a preview for PAX.
- The game was originally going to be a capture-the-flag game with each character being a archetype. Read here
- One of the biggest removals, were the Game Changers. It took the form of an item from another series like a Buzz controller or a Hot Shots Golf flag. Picking up a game changer would have initiated the mash-up, but was removed for a more natural occurrence.
- Possible final bosses could've been from specific games: the entire Helghan army, Dr. Nefarious, but Superbot wanted to find a way for you to fight PlayStation itself; thus, Polygon Man was selected.
- For specific character inclusions:
- According to Seth Killian, a Katamari Damacy representative character was considered, but SuperBot was ultimately unable to decide how such a character would work.
- Abe from Oddworld was a planned DLC character, but then canned during the merge to SSM. (Stewart Gilray later deleted the tweet and claimed he never posted it, but an Oddworld developer also confirmed it.) Who was going to be his rival? Possibly Dart. Months later, artwork by Mike Edwards (the game's character artist) revealed Dart was also planned but scrapped. Apparently, they would have been accompanied by a new stage based on Gravity Rush and Journey (2012). Despite a fan campaign to get them back in, Sony has remained staunch in their decision to not create any more downloadable content. And according to a YouTube retrospective on the game, a former Superbot employee stated on condition of anonymity that Ryu Hayabusa and Tomba! were also in development and planned to be DLC, until the game's DLC was cancelled.
- Lara Croft was also planned for inclusion. Crystal Dynamics were approached, but ultimately turned it down because they wanted their rebooted version of Lara to appear in her own title first (strangely, they were never asked for Kain or Raziel, despite Legacy of Kain's association with PlayStation). Just imagine how awesome a fight between Lara Croft and Nathan Drake would have been. Similarly, Activision was approached for Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, as well as Square Enix for a Final Fantasy representative, but the high prices demanded resulted in none of them appearing in the finished product.
- Chun-Li and Sub-Zero were considered, but only made it as far as the concept stage, not even reaching the negotiations aspect with Capcom and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Had this pushed through, this would've marked the game where Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat cross over for the first time.
- Even with Sony's first-party franchises, Superbot didn't have much luck. Two notable omissions were Wander from Shadow of the Colossus and Ico from ICO, but Team ICO denied their inclusions.
- Concept art found in Gravity Rush Remastered confirms that Kat's Schoolgirl and Maid outfits may have been planned as alternate costumes, as the art in question shows color variations for both.
- A leaked build of the game shows that the game was going to have motion controls. note
- If this◊ prototype render is anything to go by, Ratchet was originally going to use a Combuster in his and Clank's moveset. Presumably, it was going to fill a similar role to the one his Constructo-Pistol plays, and likely would've been mapped to Side Triangle.
- Working Title: Title Fight.
