So you can well imagine the raging jealousy I experienced after discovering these kick-ass Ratchet & Clank vinyl toys exist, but are not yet (and possibly won’t ever be) available to the public.

These vinyl renditions of Captain Quark, Ratchet, and Clank were made by Insomniac Games character artists Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin, who also run a little website called “Creature Box” where they post various character and comic art they create – presumably off company time.

Recently, in the spirit of looming holidays and employee gift giving, they decided to take their artwork three-dimensional and collaborated with Gentle Giant to make a series of a number of these Ratchet & Clank vinyl sculptures for the good folks at Insomniac Games. Color me jealous!

Unfortunately, according to their blog post Dave and Greg are “Not sure if these will ever be released to the public, for now they are just for employees.”

Insert frowny face.

[via Kotaku]

Regardless of any controversy surrounding the PS3′s ability to crank out fast frame rates, Insomniac seems to be on top of it, saying that all their upcoming PS3 titles will run at a full 60 fps. Clearly, the fact that they got to cut their teeth on the platform’s outstanding first-gen Resistance: Fall of Man gave them a leg up over other developers.

One other interesting tidbit about Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is just how enormous the game is. Apparently, the game will use up a 22GB of the total 25GB capacity of its Blu-ray disc. I’m sure that part of that space is taken up with high-def FMV cutscenes, but from what I’ve seen, the massive environments and detailed textures will chew up a substantial portion. For those of you keeping score, you’d need three nearly full dual-layer DVD discs to fit this entire game on any other console. Maybe Blu-ray wasn’t a bad move after all?

You won’t have to wait long to check it out for yourself. A demo of the game should hit the online PlayStation Store on October 4th, with the full game in stores just about a month from now, on October 23rd.

[PSU via Loot-Ninja]

On October 4, 2007, expect a demo to hit the PlayStation Network for download. Word has it that the demo will give players a sneak-peak of the game’s opening level, starting with the obliteration of Metropolis, a location very familiar to PS2 players.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for this title, given how many hours of fun I had with the PlayStation 2 titles.

[IGN via Kotaku]

The great folks over at Destructoid have posted a gallery of beautiful high-definition screens and video from the upcoming PS3 game, and it really is looking purty. It’s nice to see a PS3 title that’s not trying to be either photorealistic or grey and gloomy. The new game maintains the great cartoony, colorful feel of the classic PS2 Ratchet games, while amping things up to take advantage of the PS3′s superior graphical horsepower.

There’s also a (really funny) video trailer that shows a few moments of the game in action…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

A high-definition version of the video can be downloaded here.

If Insomniac manages to deliver the quality of game that we’re used to from the Ratchet series, this PS3 exclusive could definitely be one of those must-have titles when it hits this Fall.