Video Gaming News - November 2002

Foster City, CA (November 6, 2002) - Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. announced today the release of Ratchet & Clank, an action-platform game created exclusively for the PlayStation 2. Developed by Insomniac Games, the creators of the Spyro the Dragon series, Ratchet & Clank blends exploration, adventure, role-playing, puzzle-solving, strategy and racing genres into a single game.

"We are thrilled to have partnered once again with Insomniac Games to bring consumers such an engaging title this holiday season. By introducing role-playing elements such as an inventory management system and a detailed economic structure featuring high tech weapons and gadgets, all combined into an action-adventure game, Ratchet & Clank is truly revolutionizing the action-platform genre today," said Ami Blaire, director, product marketing, Sony Computer Entertainment America. "Insomniac Games has really raised the content standard on the PlayStation 2 with the introduction of Ratchet & Clank."

From Sony:

Ratchet & Clank delivers exhilarating gameplay mechanics, unique character designs, enormous interactive environments, brilliant graphics, an engaging storyline and an arsenal of the coolest weapons and high-tech gadgets ever seen in an action-platform game. Players will be highly entertained and immersed with an experience that demonstrates superb technological advancements and truly showcases the untapped power of PlayStation 2.

Insomniac Games advanced to the forefront of the videogame industry in 1998 with the successful introduction of Spyro the Dragon on the original PlayStation. The developer extended the franchise with Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!(TM) in 1999 and the critically acclaimed Spyro: Year of the Dragon(TM) the following year. The highly rated titles have sold nearly six million units collectively in North America, and have broken sales records across the globe. Since the release of Spyro: Year of the Dragon, the entire Insomniac team has been hard at work developing new content for PlayStation 2. The team's first new venture on the system, Ratchet & Clank, is an intergalactic, weapons-based action-adventure game, featuring the dynamic pair, Ratchet, a young, self-taught mechanic who has a knack for building and repairing things and Clank, a diminutive but brainy robot. Insomniac's talented team of more than 40 designers, programmers, artists, animators, including Mark Cerny of Cerny Games, have created a truly unique, genre-breaking title that incorporates brilliantly designed characters with unique gameplay elements
-- including an economic system that enables the player to purchase more than 35 different gadgets and weapons. The game is set within a world of enormous, breathtaking vistas filled with life, movement, energy and full interaction, showcasing the extraordinary potential of the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system's third-generation software.

Set in a futuristic world filled with spaceships, robots and high-tech gadgets, Ratchet & Clank takes gamers from planet to planet across a vast solar system. Ratchet lives on an abandoned backwater planet and dreams of someday striking out on a magnificent space adventure. Closer to the center of the galaxy, Chairman Drek rules a polluted planet, Orxon, inhabited by an ugly race called the Blarg. He too has dreams, but his concern is conquest and domination.

Tired of his polluted world, Chairman Drek comes up with the ultimate solution -- to build a new planet using the best parts from many of the other worlds in the galaxy. If he can't convince the inhabitants to part with a few thousand hectares of their worlds, the army of robots and Blarg warriors can eliminate any resistance.

In one of the factories creating Chairman Drek's evil armies, a computer glitch creates a small but smart robot -- Clank. Learning about the Chairman Drek's plans, Clank flees the factory seeking help, but his ship is shot down over Ratchet's homeworld. Forced together by circumstance, Ratchet and Clank blast off from planet to planet through an extraordinary sci-fi universe. The unlikely pals encounter imaginative characters, acquire a plethora of weapons and gadgets, and blow up everything in their path, as they uncover more of the Chairman Drek's plan.

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