Team Asobi president Nicolas Doucet shared insight on the many IPs that will make appearances on Astro Bot.
Doucet was interviewed by Video Games Chronicle about the title. Doucet confirmed, as initially revealed in the store listing, that there are 150 cameos of different PlayStation titles that will be appearing in the game. He elaborated further:
“You collect them, and there’s a place, the crash site, where they will assemble. I can say that as you complete your set, they will have some funny reactions that are related to some of the game.”
So, maybe some of you had thought about this already, but it certainly sounds like there is a Pokemon, or perhaps, a Banjo Kazooie like quality to having to collect all these character cameos. Maybe Team Asobi hopes some fans will get addicted to just the collectible quality of finding these cameos, but they have also added a little extra to make sure everyone feels rewarded for trying, in one way or another.
Doucet was then asked if other companies asked them to add their characters into their game, and he answered:
“Yes they do! But largely, it’s us approaching them. So far we’ve been able to put everything we wanted to into the game.”
So, Doucet didn’t confirm it outright here, but it sounds like the 150 cameos we’re getting in the game will include a bunch of IPs that aren’t owned by PlayStation. That certainly casts a wider net to what fans could hope to see appear in Astro Bot, and now raises questions on who got added in.
As you may know, the PlayStation’s legacy is about more than the games PlayStation published or own on their platforms. Even if games like Spider-Man, Mega Man Legends, Final Fantasy VII, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, etc, were certainly multiplatform, even in the generation that these games came out, the association with these games to the PlayStation was very strong, that to many fans, these games are PlayStation’s games.
Some of those games are more loved by fans than others, and some are more loved by more fans compared to their peers. For example, if Tekken was one of those cameos, that would certainly appeal to a specific generation of PlayStation gamers. With all respect to Project Tekken and Katsuhiro Harada, however, not every potential Astro Bot player is going to recognize a bot with Heihachi’s or Kazuya’s iconic hairstyles.
So it will definitely be interesting to see which games Team Asobi managed to sneak into Astro Bot. Hopefully, it’ll be a more satisfying selection than what Sony was able to pull off in their Smash Bros-like fighting game, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, or their mini console, the PlayStation Classic.
