Sly Cooper Nightmare

Sly Cooper Nightmare

A Little Backstory
I've always been a fan of Sucker Punch's game's. From titles like InFamous, to my personal favorite being Sly Cooper. For those who don't kow what Sly Cooper is, I reccomend looking it up, as it is a very cleverly made game, with stealth and combat in a good balance. Oh yeah, and everyone is  humanoid animal in the game.

The Nightmare
In the year of 2005, Sucker Punch released the third installment to it's franchise, Sly Cooper. It left off the series with the main protaginist with amnesia, the gang assembled throughout the game to  go their seperate ways, and the mention of a time machine after the credits.

It was around the age of 9 I discovered the use of the internet to find cheat codes was possible for me, so immedeatly I began to search through. After re-beating the first 2 titles, my mind began to rush with excitment at the third title and the possiblecheats. After getting to a certain part in Demitri's level of retreaving his father's stolen gear, I remembered a cheat code to make the giant lizard-things non-hostile, which would make the treasure hunting phase a lot easier.

After searchng through some site's, one imparticular caught my eye, it was titled "The Nightmare". Nightmare mode said it would change the animation of certain characters and re-enable a secret area cut out from the game. I tried out the cheat to, but nothing happened. So I simply decided to continue on with my life.

About a year ago, I decided to replay Sly Cooper 3 because it was confirmed there would be a Sly Cooper 4. When I loaded up one of the saves, I recived a message pop up on the game saying "Cheat Enabled". I wondered what it meant untill I remembered the cheat I did 2 years previously on that save file. To my suprise, evreything seemed normal at first. But, when I went to play Bently though, he was missing his wheelchair, and was crawling across the floor to move. When I went to play as Murray, he seemed to be annorexic, missing his huge pink belly. Sly was missing his cane and looked as if he was franticlly searching for it.

I eventually scrolled up to the top of the world select menu, and I saw a new level entitled, "The Nightmare". I was so excited that I quickly selected it. I was spawned into a purpleish open plain with a wall on all four sides. Shortly after that a jump scare happened in which the final boss of the game appeared to be ppounding his chest while standing over the body of one of his experiments.

A cutscene began, like a cutscene during a mission, and there was no sound to the character's voices, just the text. Murray stomp kicked Bently into his arms, and threw him at the wall and ran. Then The Guru appeared on a wolf's back and began to attack Sly. Then Dimitri attacks The Guru with The Panda King, only to be launched from Penelope's RC chopper's hook. Then her RC chopper was shot down by The Panda King, only to be crushed by the falling RC. There was no blood or gore, only the smoke that appears when defeating an enemy. Then the screen went to Sly, Bently seemed to shout, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?!??!?!"

Then I was simply kicked out of the level to the world select screen. I checked if "The Nightmare" was still there, and it was. After watching it a few more times I still was clueless as to what was really happening in the cutscene. I would have checked the site where I found the cheatcode, but the site was deleted over the years. I don't know exactly why someone would program this cutscene and character models, and frankley I don't think I ever will know. I still love the Sly Cooper franchise, I even own the newest edition to the franchise, but every now and then I'll think about that day. What did Sly do to cause this chaos? The world of gaming may never know.