‘PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale’ Release Date For Vita Could Come Soon As Sony Creates New Domains
It looks like the rumors are shaping up to be true -- fighting game fanatics are likely to see "PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale" on the PS Vita. Sony has just registered a domain for the upcoming brawl-out game for the PS Vita. Screenshot from destructoid.co

Fighting-game guru Seth Killian, known throughout the industry for his former role as a special game adviser at Capcom, has been recruited for Sony Santa Monica's external division to work as a lead game designer, reports CVG.

Killian will take part in putting together PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, the fighting game mashup that will bring classic characters from the PlayStation universe into one arena to face off. The game is said to be Sony's answer to Nintendo's widely popular Super Smash Bros., which pits iconic figures from the gaming platform's long history of titles against one another.

Namco Bandai, known in the fighting game world for developing the Tekken series, recently announced that it will be partnering with Nintendo for its next Super Smash Bros. game on the Wii U. This was a bit of a surprise, since the company is renowned for creating a crucial part of the PlayStation staple fighting game, which originated in arcades before become a PlayStation exclusive in the 1990s.

Namco Bandai has just teased an All Star Battle game on its website, as a NeoGaf forum user has noted. It doesn't specify whether this is for the Nintendo brawler, but the teaser simply says 3 Days ALL STAR BATTLE over five rows and eight columns of tiles.

For Killian, the opportunity to work on the new PlayStation fighter has allowed him to reflect on the mechanics behind the genre.

Fighting games are very close to my heart, he wrote in his first PlayStation Blog post. As someone that's spent much of my life with traditional fighters, All-Stars has been a great opportunity to take a step back and rethink fighting fundamentals from the ground up.

A renowned professional Street Fighter player, Killian founded the EVO fighting game tournament and has acted as a link between Capcom and the gamer community. But he is not the only prominent member of the fighting game community to be brought on to work on the project.

The entire team was put together from scratch to create this game, said Killian in the blog post. And they are loaded with fighting game superstars (including some impressive tournament credentials-I'm not even the first EVO finalist to join the team!) who love great combat just as much as I do.

The most important factor that will make or break this game's success is, of course, the characters that will be included. So far, a slew of characters have been revealed who include the following:

- Nathan Drake from Uncharted

- Big Daddy from BioShock

- Fat Princess

- PaRappa The Rapper

- Kratos from God of War

- Sly Cooper

- Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal

- Radec from Killzone

Nathan Drake and Big Daddy were both announced as part of Sony's keynote at E3 2012, and now fans will get two more confirmed fighters at this year's Comic Con in San Diego. Developer Superbolt Entertainment will be announcing the characters, bringing the total roster up to 10.

Many possibilities remain open as to who will be next on the list, and fans and critics alike have voiced their opinion on the matter. There are still classic figures from PlayStation's earlier years that have not been mentioned, such as Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Lara Croft and Jak and Daxter. Recent additions to the PlayStation family, such as Sack Boy from Little Big Planet are also likely to make an appearance.

Who do you want to see in All-Stars Battle Royale? Sound off in the comments below.