Before diving into the game itself, let’s decode the alphanumeric string in the title:
Sly crouched on the edge of the museum roof, the moon carving silver along the domes below. The Cooper Clan’s blue mask was folded in his pocket — a reminder of a legacy he didn’t yet fully understand. Clockwork gears and ghostly echoes of the past whispered to him through the time-bent cane he’d inherited. Tonight’s job was supposed to be simple: steal a prototype time-anchor artifact from a private collector’s vault and be gone before anyone missed them.
Murray’s rumbling voice crackled in his earpiece. “You seeing this, Sly? Vault’s crawling with those time anomaly drones again. Carmelita’s patrol just passed by the south gate.”
“Relax,” Sly murmured. “I’ve got eyes.” He launched himself across the gargoyle statues, landing soundlessly. The collector’s estate looked ordinary enough — lavish, secure, exhausted by wealth — but the air around the vault hummed with distorted history. Shadows flickered strangely, as if two different nights tried to occupy the same place.
Inside the main display hall, Bentley’s holographic projection appeared, a dozen schematics spiraling around him. “Sly — we’ve detected anachronistic signatures centered on the vault. Whoever’s messing with the timeline is using the anchor to pull artifacts out of their eras. If the anchor destabilizes, it could tear open localized time-windows.”
Sly’s grin went thin. “So, same-old, same-old. Get the anchor and don’t let history fall apart.”
Bentley’s fingers tapped faster. “One complication: there’s evidence that a Rogue Cooper ancestor, long erased from records, may have been involved. If we can’t identify them in the Anchor’s memory, they could stay hidden — and continue to manipulate history.”
Sly slid past motion sensors by moving with practiced grace; his cane sang softly as it found a groove in the stone. The vault’s inner chamber pulsed — a marble sarcophagus crossed by glowing brass lines — and above it hovered the time-anchor: a small device wrapped in etchings that felt older than civilization. When Sly reached out, the device burned like cold iron.
A voice, thin and unfamiliar, braided itself into Sly’s head. “You are late, Cooper,” it said. Time buckled and a figure stepped through: a masked thief in a worn coat, a Cooper-style mask under a hood — a face Sly had never seen in any family portrait. The stranger moved like a shadow familiar with Sly’s every twitch; his cane was not a cane at all but a hooked tool lined with teeth that glinted like a trap.
“You know the Cooper name?” Sly asked, instincts ready.
“I know what your name can buy,” the stranger answered. “Names are good for buying freedom… or rewriting it.”
Before Sly could react, time hiccuped. The vault’s walls dissolved into a battlefield frozen between epochs — Roman banners tangled with samurai flags, steam engines chugging beside horse-drawn carriages. The stranger seized the anchor and vanished into a ripple. Sly Cooper - Thieves in Time -PCSA00068- -NTSC-
“No!” Sly lunged, but the anchor swallowed the air and spat him into the past.
—
Sly landed in a narrow alley behind an 18th-century clockmaker’s shop. The city smelled of coal and ink. He pushed to his feet; the cane — always half-familiar now — hummed a new tune. A cobbled notice board carried a wanted poster painted with his own silhouette. Someone in this timeline knew Sly Cooper’s name, and they were using it to frame him.
Bentley’s voice echoed in memory: identify the ancestor; stop them from rewriting history. Sly scanned the street. Figures moved with eras layered over one another — a cowboy’s hat shadowed samurai armor; a Roman soldier’s sandals left prints beside a Victorian boot. The rogue ancestor wasn’t bound by a single past.
Sly followed clues stitched into the city: coins stamped with impossible dates, a pocket watch that ticked backward, a scrap of blue fabric snagged on a railing. Each clue led deeper into the ancestor’s pattern: a trail of small thefts that rewrote minor events to weaken the Coopers’ legacy, removing allies and erasing mentors from existence.
He gathered a rag-tag band of allies across time. From feudal Japan — a nimble kunoichi who trusted words more than blades; from the Wild West — a quick-fingered pickpocket with a soft spot for the underdog; and a brilliant apprentice clockmaker who’d sworn an oath to preserve time’s natural rhythm. Murray smashed through a temporal barrier with one of Bentley’s prototypes, landing full-bore into the middle of a saloon brawl, and the team coalesced amid spilled whiskey and flying cards.
The deeper they poked at the anchor’s damage, the more Sly glimpsed the rogue’s motive. The ancestor, known in whispers as “Vesper Cooper,” had been erased from Cooper lore long ago after a bitter schism. Believing the family’s chosen path of honor to be a lie, Vesper sought to remake the Cooper name into a symbol of unbridled freedom — no rules, no lineage constraints. To achieve that, they started by removing Cooper allies whose guidance kept later generations restrained. Break the moral chain, and the Coopers could be remade.
Sly understood then that this was not merely theft — it was an ideological war fought across centuries.
They found Vesper in a cathedral out of time: stained glass depicting heroes who had never existed; clocks whose hands spun both forward and back. The ancestor wore the Cooper mask as if it were a crown and carried a blade of tarnished silver. Vesper’s eyes burned with a conviction that mirrored Sly’s own stubborn streak.
“You hide behind honor,” Vesper said, voice echoing like a bell. “I free us from that prison.”
“You took our history,” Sly answered. “You erased people who made us who we are.” Before diving into the game itself, let’s decode
Vesper smiled. “History is a story. Stories can be rewritten.”
The fight was more than skill; it was a clash of belief. Sly danced and dodged, using the environment to hook chandeliers and swing across time-slipped rafters. Murray’s brawn and the clockmaker’s contraptions held Vesper’s minions at bay while Bentley rerouted the anchor’s resonance into a harmonic lock.
At the last strike, Sly could have smashed Vesper’s anchor and cast them out of time forever. Instead he paused, remembering his grandfather’s teaching: a thief’s honor isn’t the absence of selfishness — it’s the promise to protect the living and the past that shaped them.
“Choose,” Sly said quietly. “Let go of this. Help us fix what you broke.”
For a breath the cathedral held its own. Vesper’s jaw clenched; their hand trembled on the anchor. Then Vesper did something unexpected — they tossed the anchor into Sly’s hands.
“Then don’t make the same mistakes,” Vesper whispered. “If you do, burn my memory.”
Time steadied. The cathedral no longer glitched. The stained glass showed real ancestors smiling in true light. The minor thefts were undone: the clockmaker grew old and taught Bentley; a teacher survived to inspire Sly’s nimble footwork. The Cooper legacy remained intact, but Sly now carried the knowledge of Vesper’s pain and choices. It complicated the clean lines of family legend.
Back in the present, the museum roof was the same chill it had always been. The anchor sat in Bentley’s lab, safely scrubbed and sealed. Carmelita returned to her beat, unaware of how close time had come to unraveling. Sly looked at his reflection in a dark window and saw not just his mask, but the passing of an entire family’s shades and choices.
Bentley’s voice chimed softly in his ear. “We’ve cataloged the anchor’s memory. Vesper’s name remains — recorded, but not erased.”
Sly tapped the cane against the rooftop. “Good. Let them know we remember.”
Murray laughed, booming up from the alley. “All right! Pizza?” The first thing purists noticed when Thieves in
“Pizza,” Sly agreed. The night closed around them like a page turned, and somewhere in the folds of history, a single erased name had been returned to the margin — a warning and a promise that even broken things could be remembered and mended.
Here’s a structured review for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (PS Vita, PCSA00068 – NTSC).
I’ve tailored it to the Vita version specifically, noting performance, controls, and how it compares to the PS3 original.
The first thing purists noticed when Thieves in Time launched was the absence of Sucker Punch (the original creators) in the developer chair. Handing the keys to Sanzaru Games was a risk, but PCSA00068 proves it was a calculated one.
Sanzaru didn't try to reinvent the wheel; they polished it. The game retains the cell-shaded aesthetic that makes Sly timeless, but with updated character models and smoother animations. Whether you are playing on the PS3 or taking the NTSC Vita version on the go, the game looks stunning. The comic-book cutscenes are vibrant, and the character designs for Sly’s ancestors are distinct and memorable.
In the pantheon of PlayStation mascots, few are as effortlessly cool as Sly Cooper. The suave, cane-wielding raccoon, descendant of a long line of legendary thieves, carved a niche for himself with cel-shaded visuals, jazz-infused soundtracks, and a tight blend of stealth and platforming. By 2013, the franchise had been dormant for nearly a decade since Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves on the PS2. The return came in an unexpected form: Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, developed by Sanzaru Games rather than original creator Sucker Punch Productions.
For collectors and digital archivists, the game exists in several forms, but one specific identifier holds a unique place in the library: Sly Cooper - Thieves in Time -PCSA00068- -NTSC-. This string of text is the digital fingerprint for the North American PlayStation Vita version of the game. This article dives deep into what that code means, the game’s performance on Sony’s handheld, and why this specific NTSC release matters today.
The gameplay loop remains classic Sly:
The Vita’s touchscreen integration is a double-edged sword. Some minigames (like Bentley’s hacking puzzles) utilize the rear touch pad for zooming—a feature many players found finicky. However, the motion controls for rolling and balancing on tightropes add a layer of immersion not present on the PS3.
The Vita3K emulator on PC has made significant strides. To run PCSA00068:
Button mapping is faithful to the PS2/PS3 layout. The analog sticks are fine for movement and camera, but the Vita’s smaller form factor can cramp hands during extended play. Camera control is looser than ideal, partly due to the framerate dips. Some players remap back touch to screen corners via system settings to avoid accidental triggers.
For trophy hunters, PCSA00068 offers a single stack (the trophies are separate from the PS3 version). The platinum trophy, "Master Thief," requires approximately 25-30 hours.
Warning Trophies: