Sly 2: Band of Thieves

Prototype Info Notes Bugs

Rocket: Robot on Wheels Easter Egg#

The two pedestals near the back of the Evil Wolf Priestess crypt are covered by triggers. If they're touched for 10 seconds, a 3D model of either Rocket or Jojo from Rocket: Robot on Wheels appears and spins above the tomb depending on which side of the room you are standing on. Note that they need to be touched twice upon loading into the level, which is likely a bug.

Rocket	Jojo

Unused Entities#

To do: Add a photo/gif of the bomb in action

In Episode 3, there is an unused bomb called bomb_throw_ammo. It is a small bomb that bounces when you throw it.

Unused Audio#

Whistle#

An unused clip of someone saying the word "whistle", likely used as a placeholder.

Hidden Triggers#

There is a hidden trigger in episode 6 located in the 0, 0, 0 coordinates. It warps you to the cabin level. It can either be accessed with hacks or with a glitch called Fake Floor.

Similar trigger is in the Cabin level's 0 coordinates and it warps you back to the hub level.

Unused Text#

Voicelines#

Every voiceline in the game is transcribed in memory, even ones that are never shown in subtitles. Below is one example of all General Clawfoot's ramblings from the job "Kidnap the General".

Geearsh!

Zoww!

Yee-uhh!

Ba-ba-baba!

Jeum-jeum. Sat ik roof gavik. Peytoosh em doylic poskard boole. Drey pordic ik ufta blein ufta sortic crake Oooo crake drone terish dock. Wok stum-trad prader. Non prader ik touche procker. Pef-pef ik
pordic umcha aie dreyvix tolchoe!

Boecheim dortick!

Teshidait tomdirch prakloop…

Otume ik cherk dolchoo.

Perdrick plop.

Cherim solto plagdrantic!

Bullshunoe swee plagic dunstack!

Dunstack pleep beocheim!

Localization Message#

This message can be found in memory as the very first string in the game's string table.

DO NOT LOCALIZE! This text is over 255 characters to force word to treat this column as a memo field during merges. Sorry. This text is over 255 characters to force word to treat this column as a memo field during merges. Sorry. This text is over 255 characters to force word to treat this column as a memo field during merges. Sorry. This text is over 255 characters to force word to treat this column as a memo field during merges. Sorry. This text is over 255 characters to force word to treat this column as a memo field during merges. Sorry. This text is over 255 characters to force word to treat this column as a memo field during merges. Sorry.

Unused Prompts#

Found in memory next to the "Press START" string.

Press L3 button for Menu

Found in memory next to pause menu strings.

View Map

Found in memory next to the "Exit to Episode Menu" string.

Exit Level

Unused Languages#

The following languages can be found in memory next to other real European languages. This list exists in the North American version despite the European version releasing a month later. There also isn't a Chinese release of any Sly game.

 Japanese 

 Korean 

 Chinese 

Unused Powerups#

Sly#

 Tornado Strike 

 Unleash a spinning tornado attack that knocks out enemies 

Murray#

 Uppercut 

 Surprise enemies with a quick punch and grab 

Demo Strings#

These strings are leftover from the Sly 2 demo in Ratchet and Clank 3.

Coming Autumn 2004

Sly catches up with the crime lord Dimitri in Paris...

Bentley puts his brain to work inside Dimitri's disco ...

...later outside of Dimitri's nightclub, Murray gets his chance to act...

...inside the theatre, Sly needs to do a little pickpocketing...

Later... At the Safehouse.

Placeholder Text#

It is unclear what these placeholder messages would be used for.

ENGLISH _bug_workaround

ENGLISH _button_test

Build Strings#

The following strings can be found in the game. They are the build user, build date long, and build date short, respectively.

Europe 1.00#

america

09/14/04 18:46

0914.1846

Europe 2.01#

america

10/06/04 21:23

1006.2123

North America#

america

08/13/04 00:32

0813.0032

South Korea#

build

12/21/04 17:45

1221.1745

Japan#

build

01/21/05 11:44

0121.1144

Regional Differences#

The European version removed almost all of the secret movies from the episode select screen that one can access by pressing square when a police badge appears. Only the heist cartoon of episode 1 and the credits of episode 8 is retained. The European version also added several languages.

The Japanese version of the game included some notable updates and changes. This version of the game would go on to be the basis for the PS3 Remaster, so the following changes are present in only the Japanese version of the PS2/PS4/PS5 release, but all versions of the PS3 release.

• A change to the physics engine introduced a glitch known as Paraglider Clip, where gliding into a tight corner may cause Sly to be launched very far, or crash the game.
• The Laser Redirection and Spice Grinder Destruction glitches were patched, fixing the issue where progress could be reset to those jobs after completing them.

These changes are present only in the Japanese versions of all releases.

• Health pickups were changed to be blue rather than red.
• The fonts for numbers and English characters are different.

Revisional Differences#

European 2.01 Update#

The European release has two versions, 1.00 and 2.01. The 2.01 update fixed an animation bug where the moose guard's mouth wouldn't move when he talks in the RC combat club. It also makes a minor change to the text rendering code, converting non-breaking spaces to regular spaces before rendering in certain UI elements.

Additionally, there are some text differences between the two versions. For example, in Finnish, the description for the Combat Dodge had a typo fixed:

PS3 Remaster#

For Japanese version of the PS3 remaster, The Sly Collection, the following changes were made.

• The Time Rush and TOM gadgets are removed from the Japanese version of the game. Interestingly, the cheats for those gadgets can still be inputted and accepted in this version, but the gadgets never appear in inventory.
• The Japanese voice acting has been re-recorded with a different cast.

PS4/PS5 Release#

The game was re-released on PS4 and PS5 in 2024 as part of the the PS2 Classics Catalog. This version is the original PS2 version running in an emulator. It has the following changes:

• All cutscenes can be skipped, including FMV cutscenes and in-game cutscenes. Some in-game cutscenes can't be skipped until reaching a certain point to prevent softlocks. A few cutscenes are missing this check, so it is possible to get softlocked by skipping certain cutscenes too early.
• The framerate is apparently uncapped during loading screens, which makes loading much quicker.
• The cheat codes for the Time Rush and TOM gadgets must be entered twice consecutively to unlock them.
• With "Enhancements" enabled, you can rewind gameplay back to a previous point in time.
• The Ratchet & Clank 3 demo was removed or disabled in the PAL version.

Ratchet & Clank 3 Demo#

Watch on YouTube

The European version exclusively contains a playable demo of Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal. It can be accessed by pressing all four shoulder buttons from the main menu.

The files related to the demo are in a folder on the disc named RATCHET3. There are four executable files: RATCHET1.ELF, RATCHET2.ELF, RATCHET3.ELF, and RATCHETS.ELF. The game initially loads RATCHET3 elf, which eventually switches to either RATCHET2 or RATCHET4, both of which eventually switch to RATCHETS.

References#