Making Crash Bandicoot – part 2

CONTINUED FROM PART 1 ABOVE.

So what was it that Sega and Nintendo had in 1994, but Sony didn’t?

An existing competing mascot character. Sega had Sonic and Nintendo had Mario (even if the N64 was just a rumor at that point). But Sony product slate was blank.

So we set about creating a mascot on the theory that maybe, just maybe, we might be able to slide into that opening. I’m still surprised it worked.

The first real Crash

Next we had to find a creature to hang our hopes on. We wanted to do what Sega had done with the hedgehog and Warner Bros had done with the Tasmanian Devil and find some kind of animal that was cute, real, and no one really knew about. We bought a copy of “Tasmanian Mammals – a field guide” and flipped through. The Wombat, Potoroo, and Bandicoot fit the bill. For the meantime we went with Willie the Wombat, as both Jason and I like alliteration. We never considered it a real name as it was too dorky. And just a month or so later someone told us about some other non-game property with the same name, so it remained a working title. By October 1994 the character was a Bandicoot as far as we were concerned.  We loved the word, but we kept calling him Willie, and the game Willie the Wombat until spring of 1996. It wasn’t really worth it to sort out a final name – some marketing department would probably change it anyway.

In September and October of 1994 we were busy trying to figure out who this Willie guy was. We felt he should be goofy and fun loving, and never talk — on the theory that voices for video game characters were always lame, negative, and distracted from identification with them.

But the villain gelled faster than the hero.

Dr. Neo Cortex -- pissed

I remember it clearly. The four of us were eating at this mediocre Italian near Universal and I had this idea of an evil genius villain with a big head. Obviously brainy cartoon villains have big heads. He was all about his attitude and his minions. Video games need lots of minions. Jason had become very fond of Pinky and the Brain and we imagined a more malevolent Brain with minions like the weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. A villain, all full of himself, unable to conceive of ever doing anything the simple way, but constantly (in his eyes) betrayed by the incompetence of his henchmen.

I put on my silly villain voice and intoned, “If you had three neurons between you, you couldn’t make a triangle!” With this attitude, his name, Doctor Neo Cortex, popped instantly into our heads.

For “Willie” was to be – in our minds – a game that tried to combine the game play of Mario or Donkey Kong Country with the animation and cartoon sensibility of a Looney Tunes or Tex Avery cartoon.

To that effect, we took the very unusual step of hiring real “Hollywood” cartoon designers to help with the visual part of the production. This was Mark’s idea at first, although Jason and I saw the brilliance of it immediately. In those days we were enamored with the idea blending the best of Hollywood into game making – creative synergy if you will. In the long run, we would be disabused of much of the synergy notion. However, production design, sound design, voice acting, and later motion capture, were to be the areas in which Hollywood resources proved valuable to video game teams.

A Crash that wasn't

The guys we brought on were Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson. Charles was principally character, and Joe background. These two were instrumental in developing the look of Crash Bandicoot, particularly prior to us hiring Bob Rafei in January 1995. Bob was an extremely talented young artist who would eventually come to head the art design at Naughty Dog. But in 1994, what Charles and Joe did was provide the fleshing out, or visualization, of ideas pitched mostly by Jason, myself, or Mark. In essence, they translated into cartoon sensibility.

Charles in particular was a very fast sketch artist, with a real knack for capturing cartoon emotion. So we would just say things like, “Cortex has a huge head but a tiny body, he’s a mad scientist, and he dresses a bit like a Nazi from the Jetsons” and in 2 minutes he’d have a gray and blue pencil sketch. We might then say, “less hair, goofier, crazier” and he’d do another sketch. Repeat.

The jungle, concept

Joe did the same for the backgrounds, but as landscapes have more lines, on a slightly longer time scale. Given that “Willie” was Tasmanian we set him on a mysterious island where every possible kind of environment lurked. Evil geniuses like Dr. Cortex require island strongholds. So we had lots of environments to design. Jungles, power stations, creepy castles, evil natives, sunset temples, spooky caves, etc. At some point early on we hit on the “tiki” idea and thus: goofy Easter Island tikis everywhere.

 

Jason’s comments:

When we started designing Crash, or Willie as he was first known internally, we decided that there need be no connection between the real animal and the final design — hey, all mammals, uh marsupials.  A Wombat looks nothing like Crash.  He is closer to a Bandicoot, maybe, but that was pure luck.  Instead the design of the character was determined 51% by technical and visual necessity and 49% by inspiration.

A (very) partial list of the Necessities:

Why is Crash Orange?  Not because we liked it, but because it made the most sense.  First I created a list of popular characters and their colors.  Next I made a list of earthly background possibilities (forest, desert, beach, etc.) and then we strictly outlawed colors that didn’t look good on the screen.  Red, for example, tends to bleed horribly on old televisions.  At the time, everyone had old televisions, even if they were new!  Crash was orange because that was available.  There are no lava levels, a staple in character action games, because Crash is orange.  We made one in Demo, and that ended the lava debate.  It was not terribly dissimilar to trying to watch a black dog run in the yard on a moonless night.

Why is Crash’s face so large?  Because the resolution of the screen was so low.  Some people think we were inspired by the Tasmanian devilPerhaps, but it was the necessity of having features large enough to be discernable that caused us to push for the neckless look.  The move made it a little harder to turn his head, and created a very unique way of moving, but it let you see Crash’s facial expressions.  And that was to be very important.

Why does Crash have gloves, spots on his back, and a light colored chest?  Resolution, bad lighting models, and low polygon counts.  Those small additions let you quickly determine what part and rotation of Crash you were looking at based on color.  If you saw spots, it was his back.  Yellowish orange was the front.  As the hands and arms crossed the body during a run the orange tended to blend into muck.  But your eyes tracked the black gloves as they crossed Crash’s body and your mind filled in the rest.

We were wrestling with these design constraints the entire process.  Joe and Charles, with all their talent, were free to do anything that they could imagine on paper.  But Bob and I were the artists that eventually had to ground that back in the reality of calculator strapped to a TV that was the PlayStation 1.

Charles would hand us a sketch and we would start the math:  240 pixel high screen, character 1/6 to 1/4 of the screen height, character 40 to 60 pixels high, proposed hat 1/8 of height of Character, hat 5 to 6 pixels high, hat has stripes.  Striped hat won’t work because the stripes will be less than 1 pixel high.

Take the image Andy posted titled “A Crash that Wasn’t.”  I can tell you immediately that the tail and any kind of flappy strap was immediately shot down because it would have flickered on and off as the PlayStation failed to have pixels to show it.  And that little bit of ankle showing beneath the long pants would have been an annoying orange flicker every few frames around the bottom of his pants and shoes.  Shorter pants would have to prevail.  Crash did end up with a belly button, but it would be about 2x as big.

The first sketches of Crash as we know him

Charles would look at us like we were speaking SwahiliBut then he’d go off and draw something totally cool and all would be well.

Cortex had few of these issues.  We could make him totally improbable, un-animatable, and just keep him bigger on the screen.   He didn’t show up too often anyway.  He could never really walk with those short legs.  He had to do a weird thrusting tra-la-la dance.  But he looked cool so we just kept him stationary most of the time.

Cortex was my favorite.  I think Andy preferred Crash.  They fit our differing personalities!  Andy has the original ink Crash sketches and I have the original Cortexes.  Both are a true testament to Charles Zembillas’ skill as a character designer. [ NOTE from Andy: I love both, but I too have a secret fondness for my brainchild — he’s just funnier, and he takes himself way too seriously to ever dress in drag. ]


CONTINUED HERE WITH PART 3 HERE or

if you liked this, vote it up at Reddit or  HERE at Hacker News, and peek at my novel in progress: The Darkening Dream

or more on GAMESBOOKS/MOVIES/TVWRITING or FOOD

Caves, concept

Castle Cortex

78 comments on “Making Crash Bandicoot – part 2

  1. Randeep Dhaliwal says:

    These posts are an amazing insight to one of my favourite developers of all time. Keep up the good work, I look forward to the next installment! (Please tell me that they’ll be daily things, I don’t want to have to wait any longer than that!)

    • agavin says:

      I have them all written, so they’ll be daily with possibly another post or two mixed in during the series, but I’ll have them all posted during the next week tops (it’s 6 parts).

  2. fen says:

    andy, you are just dragging it on and on…

  3. Matt says:

    The concept art looks amazing.
    But I think the “Crash that wasn’t” wants to steal my wallet.

  4. This is the original Willie game I found while searching the net in 1995 although it didn’t get released until 1997. From what I remember no one was really sad to see the name go;)

    http://www.segagagadomain.com/saturn6/willywombat.htm

  5. Kyle Connor says:

    Andy,
    Do you think there will ever be another Crash Bandicoot game? You should definitely try to yourself!

  6. Jay says:

    Now I am sad that it is not tomorrow 😦

  7. […] CONTINUED HERE or CLICK for all posts on Games. […]

  8. scedevnet says:

    Andy, is wonderful to see this Review in 2011 by you, and a return to the past.

    I also want to say that “Crash Bandicoot” is the real mascot of the PlayStation, then the gaming platform has been choose the Best.

    Today when we speak of PS-X means the lot of games such as CB series, FF, Oddworld, MediEvil, Gran Turismo, Kurushi (I.Q.) and many Others, and (Believe) All the Titles for this console are the Best ever created because the New-Generation Gameplay is Completely changed.

    I think those, invest the $35,000 for the SDK was the most fantastic thing you’ve ever Done, but a question… was the 1° SDK (DTL-H500) or a Desktop updated with Artist & Dev. Board, plus all DTL-S (Software)? Small Curious to know what Machine you have Used.

    However, I want to Congrats you for this Wonderful Project, which is Certainly the Best ever Created.

    but Reading this Blog, I Noticed that David S. not been Appointed in respect of the Art, by I know he worked with the first projects of CB, or Not? I had on my Desktop various doc. like “Willy W. & COnfidential Crash Brats” Project that are not released, but I lost the Folders, fortunately I have been the first files of CB including these notes by David S. (obviously these are like Conceptual/Revision)

    Jason Patterned “Willy”..er, I mean “Crash” after the Tazmanian Devil from Warner Bros.

    Where Dr.Cortex finally got his head tatoo!

    Revision Doc. 28 March 1996… Early version of the 3 Island… “South Padre Island” gave way to “South Sanity Island” later…

    and, this MEMO from you (Jason / http://www.facebook.com/thejasonrubin) 😉

    Sincerely Jason & Andy, and all the ND Man.
    Robert SEBO

    • agavin says:

      We had the big honking expensive dev kit. The light colored box the size of a 1980 VCR. This was replaced at some point with the pair (or triplex) of ISA boards made by those English guys. Plus that insanely unreliable pairing of CD emulator and black CD drive. The CD drive was hilariously finicky, in that perhaps 1 in 5 ever worked, and the working ones required a reboot of your PC on an hourly basis.

      Dave S only worked on Crash 1.

      There was certainly some significant influence from Taz on Crash, but he quickly took on a life of his own.

      I can’t remember who gave Cortex the N, but it was early. Notice he has it in that very early sketch. It may have been Charles, or Jason, or even Mark or I. Loosely in that order of probability.

  9. SCE DevNet says:

    Hehe, from what Appears, the Machine and the rest were not very Reliable, then, with the Arrival of the Net Yaroze think to things are a little changed 😉

    I Remeber the CD-ROM drive, and aslo the big CDW-900E, few years ago have got one of those for my Dev Collection.

    I not have idea who Gave the 1° “N” to Cortex, i just (think) to are Siller, because all my Files comes from they (now it’s also a bad period because of his wife is dead of cancer) so.

    However in Crash 2 and 3 you left a lot of Mistakes in the Game (but is Nice whit that) 😉

    I thought to put the Links for the Photos, but probably No! then I’ll send this link to the album of the Art…

    http://img826.imageshack.us/g/001yg.png/

    and other detail, Taz and Crash are totally Different! 😉 probably only on the (Start) of Idea, no More.

    • agavin says:

      Haha. Old notes from Dave. The amusing thing about those notes is that they were usually made AFTER we had designed the elements, and often even installed them in the game. Only very rarely were they the source of an design elements.

    • agavin says:

      You don’t happen to have any copies of the notes labeled “urban chaotic symphony” do you? (this is discussed in part 4 or 5)

  10. Nitro says:

    Man, this is awesome, Andy. Not seeing Crash for three years but you posting this makes it better. and I sure do hope you’re right about This not beeing the last we see of Crash. I started playing your games when I was 2! He’s still my favorite. Huge fan, really. Thanks for all the awesome and fun memories. 🙂

  11. […] Crash Bandicoot – part 3 PREVIOUS installment, or the FIRST POST. Crash in the […]

  12. Super Mario says:

    “An existing competing mascot character. Sega had Sonic and Nintendo had Mario (even if the N64 was just a rumor at that point). But Sony product slate was blank.”

    Andy, wasn´t the N64 announced already in 1993 (with the project name Project Reality) ? “At this point” = 1994.

    Did you ever consider waiting for Nintendos next console? Did you consider a PC/PS1 release at any point? And did Sony pay anything for you to not release an N64 or PC version of Crash Bandicoot?

    What did you think about the very forst Crash game not developed by Naugty Dog, Eurocom´s party gam Crash Bash?

    And did you ever consider making a sequel to Way of the Warrior on PlayStation?

    • agavin says:

      The rumors of “Project Reality” happened in 1995, and we were well on the way. Now granted, it was obvious Ninetendo would do something, but they were far behind — and they had Mario already. They also were very difficult to work with at that time as an outside and American party. In the cartridge era, most 3rd party Nintendo games were Japanese.

      Eventually, when we did our deal with Sony, exclusivity was part of the deal.

      Crash Bash was the only non NDI Crash that had any involvement from the originals, as Mark Cerny was the Producer/Designer on it. That’s why it’s pretty good 🙂 and the characters don’t go all weird.

      We actually started a conversion of Way of the Warrior to the PSX, but a few months in we changed our minds as almost everything on the Playstation was 3D.

  13. Andrew says:

    This is slightly more in response to Jason’s thoughts afterwards, and maybe this is to be assumed, but how how much did you guys personally test the game for its basic ingredients (Crash’s model having visibility issues, for ex.) before or ever having someone else confirm your suspicions? It sounds like all that initial-design iteration was pretty air-tight within the studio.

    It’s really interesting to realize how a game can drive its character in a practical direction and vice versa.

    • agavin says:

      We did most of the checking of stuff ourselves, and we have a few internal QA (testers). Closer to launch we would do public focus testing where we would get strangers in and video tape their play. This is formally called a focus group.

  14. Anonymous says:

    “the reality of calculator [sic] strapped to a TV that was the PlayStation 1.”

    Hahahaha! I wonder if today’s Naughty Dogs feel the same about the PlayStation 3. I mean it’s powerful but you guys are always 10 steps ahead of us in technology. (you had 4gb of ram back in 1997!)

    • agavin says:

      The feeling about the PS2 and PS3 is a bit different. They aren’t underpowered (although they have annoying limits at times), but they can be obscenely complicated at times (which was not true of the PS1). On the PS1 various options as to how to do things were always fairly straightforward to me. With the later systems it was so complicated you had to choose a route and really see how it went — re-engineering could take a lot more time.

  15. bluepasj says:

    I think that the 3D in the PSX era was too much primitive. So using the unrealistic style made of Crash very beautiful. I think that even not being technically the best, is esthetically the best game full 3D of that age. The best.

  16. Rey says:

    I’m the biggest Crash fan. i first played crash team racing when i was 3 and been a fan ever since. I wish you could buy the rights again and make proper next gen crash game.

  17. Andreas says:

    I’ve read everything up till this point and am of course planning to continue on after this post.

    I have a question though. I heard some rumors that you and Jason Rubin would return to Naughty Dog (unless I’ve missed some details and you’re still there). Is this a true fact?

    if so, what are you planning to do with the company from that point. I know A LOT of people all over the globe wants to see more of Crash Bandicoot from Jason, yourself and the other workers of the old Naughty Dog. You would definetly earn your first billion very quick I’m sure. Crash Bandicoot videos of the games made by you guys are all over Youtube (and other sites I don’t know of) even today. Crash Bandicoot was the game franchise that made me love the PS1 over the N64 I at first wanted after playing Super Mario 64 at my uncle’s house.

    I would appreciate if you could take your time responding to this. The new Crash games are being hated all over by fans whining about how Naughty Dog isn’t making them anymore. As of what I’ve read of this blog I know you like to take a risk that is worthwhile. I also read that you like to fill in holes in the gaming industry.

    RIGHT NOW CRASH BANDICOOT NEEDS SOMEBODY TO FILL HIS HOLE IN THIS WORLD TO DATE, AND YOU, THE FOUNDERS OF NAUGHTY DOG SEEMS TO BE THE ONLY ONES THAT WILL BE ABLE TO DO THIS. Sorry for the caps lock back there. I wanted to put a real emphasis on that part.

    • agavin says:

      We (Jason and I) have no current plans to return to Naughty Dog at the moment. Naughty Dog already has two very good leaders (Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra).

      Activision owns the Crash rights. Neither we nor Naughty Dog do.

      Now, nothing is ever impossible, and some of those things might change, but that is where it stands at the moment. But, sentimentally, we hope Crash gets some more totally great games as soon as possible, and Jason and I still both love the character and his world.

  18. Blake says:

    I cannot even begin to say how pleased I am to read this. To express my undying fondness towards the Crash series would be an overall understatement. Crash Bandicoot 1 was the first game I ever played when I was four. I was with my dad as he set up our play station that Christmas day with the play station disc demo. We played the Crash demo repeated times loop after loop. When I was little I was so scared running away from the boulders I would pause the game if the boulder got too close to relax. The music at that sequence is simply amazing I must add, the constant beats and thumps is just urging yourself to run faster. This is where I start sounding weird in that I play through Crash 1 and 2 at least twice a year. I love warped and team racing but two and one really caught myself as being the richest in environment and overall amazing sound work. Snow Go in Crash 2 is just a trip down nostalgia lane I recall playing when I was younger. The penguins, seals, and music just really capture a truly great level. I have always felt that Naught Dog had simply forgotten about the series after selling the franchise but this blog post has simply done wonders for my overall feelings towards Naughty Dog. I sincerely hope that one day Naught Dog will have ownership over Crash once again to either remake older titles or new ones. I would line up to play that hands down.

  19. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    Hello from Greece,first i have to thank you for all those great times that you gave me throught your awasome game crash bandicoot.The sega saturn machine was more powerfull in 3D than the psx? it was 2x32bit,also the sound chip it was more powerfull why do not develop the game in this sega platform? thank you for everything again 🙂

    • agavin says:

      The Saturn had better 2D hardware, but was substantially worse at 3D. I don’t think it had proper triangle support even, just quads.

      • Giannakidis Dimitris says:

        I still have one copy from your game way of the warrior on 3DO was so amazing game,the realistic grafx,the cd quality stereo sound,all this was so awesome.It was much better than the Kasumi ninja(jag) ultra vortec(jag)and the grafx much MUCH better than the MK2(SAT VERSION)my fave player was Nabunaka 🙂 i hoppe to see in ne generations machines the sequel of this game.

      • agavin says:

        Awesome! Konotori wins! The characters are all Jason, me, or our friends. LOL

  20. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    Hahahahaha Konotori wins 🙂 Oh my god all the characters are you,Jason and your friends??? that is amazing 🙂
    I hope to see the next crash banticoot title by your hands and Jason’s ONLY 🙂

  21. Steven S. says:

    I want to thank you for all the awesome memories playing crash bandicoot. Also it gave me a strong desire to one day day make games of my own. Do you have any tips on how I can get my work to a developer. To give you an idea I’ve been writing tons of concepts and character designs for a strategy/RPG game, but I don’t have the resources to make a demo or anything like that, Thanks again.

  22. Anthony says:

    I love this game man! I remember first receiving this demo from PlayStation underground and playing the heck out of it (I was 11 or 12 at the time), and then when the final game was bought for me, I spent hours upon hours playing it. This is coming from someone who was born in 83, had the NES at 3 (and had played some Atari 2600 around that time… and had picked up a SNES and Genesis which all had a great number of games).. I remember reading all of the game magazines of yesteryear about this new beast (the PLAYSTATION) and I begged my parents to get it (of course a lot of grass cutting around the neighborhood helped, lol!) and I finally got the system, the demo, and finally the game a few months after it had come out.

    It was so refreshing to see a game that was a platformer but also in 3D and it had tight controls to boot(this was before we received a N64)!

    This is just a thank you post for following your dreams and not giving up and taking your second and third options *what was NOT your passion in life* (I still hope to one day get into the videogame industry *maybe in marketing*)

    You caused me a lot of frustrating days and nights (remember “Road to Nowhere”!!!!!) but mostly fun nights, and experiences like the Crash series/CTR, MGS, Syphon Filter, and 3D sports games, and the Final Fantasies and other RPGs is what defined the Playstation brand to me. I still to this day consider Crash the mascot of the Playstation since I always saw him as a direct competitor to Mario/Sonic.

    Have certainly enjoyed your other series (J&D, Uncharted) and I definitely want to see an Uncharted kart racing game after 3 (ya HAVE TO follow the same format as your other series, lol!).

    Thanks again for wonderful memories and here’s to hoping for a new Crash game or HD re-releases when you have time.

  23. Ryan says:

    wow that’s amazing thanks for posting these 😀 you guys are awesome!

  24. […] Crash Bandicoot – part 1Making Crash Bandicoot – part 2Making Crash Bandicoot – part 3Making Crash Bandicoot – part 4Making Crash Bandicoot […]

  25. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    agavin do you expect in 1995 all this success of psx? me no because philips,panasonic faild in in video games market,i was so sure in 1995 that sega with saturn and atari with jaguar cd qonquest the market 🙂

    • agavin says:

      We hoped. The PSX was a MUCH MUCH better machine than the 3D0 or Jaguar, and better than the Saturn. Sony was a much better run company than most. Sega had a head start with Japanese 3rd party developers, and some of their own games, but they ended up having their heads screwed on a bit backwards.

  26. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    you are right :(,i mean you are righr 🙂 im big sega fun(the crash bandicood was the reason that bought psx 🙂 ),i see and play games like burning rangers, panzer dragoon saga,nights into dreams,deap fear,sega rally, and i wonder WHY the sega saturn rip so soon it has so many good games that show the power of this machine 😦

  27. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    Agavin how many polygons and colors has the crach 1,and adout the sound, you used all the psx sound channels?

    The water effects was amazing at the time (if i remember good in 1-4 level 🙂 )

  28. […] Crash Bandicoot – part 1Making Crash Bandicoot – part 2Making Crash Bandicoot – part 3Making Crash Bandicoot – part 4Making Crash Bandicoot […]

  29. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    Agavin the sega saturn hardware its possible to run the crash 2? have this power or not?

    Thank you 🙂

    • agavin says:

      Who knows. But I doubt decently. The 3D on the saturn is considerably worse than the PSX, and all the 2D hardware wouldn’t help any.

  30. paul says:

    Hi!
    I´m a crash bandicoot fan, but the original crash bandicoot with gloves and with a nice personality,this history of crash bandicoot´s creation is awesome.I have questionS. Where I can find an original poster of the crash bandicoot launch?,
    and in crash bandicoot 1 in the first island in the third level who I can get the dimon or who I can make a perfect game?Thanks for created Crash Bandicoot(original)

    • agavin says:

      There were only 60 or so of those launch posters made. They were given to the team and to various members of the game press. It’s possible that the image was used again in a more commercial printing, but I haven’t seen it.

  31. cody says:

    i remember that nice little fuck you that castle machinary gave you at the begginig with the warp gate infront of you but you just barely miss it lol. whose idea was that anyway???

  32. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    We want a new crash title from you agavin on 3DS 🙂

  33. […] историю создания Крэша. В этой записи Энди Гавин поделился своими воспоминаниями о дизайне главного персонажа а […]

  34. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    Hihihihihi ,awesome Agavin :)( do you speak russian???).
    ok i have already translation this message,and he say <<Agavin please give us the remake of Crash in ps3 and 360 🙂 )

  35. Giannakidis Dimitris says:

    Ok one musakas please 🙂 and one sublaki with tzatziki and greek salad 🙂

  36. Dan says:

    Andy, What do you think about what Siera did to Crash Bandicoot. I think its a mockery of what You and Jason created. I hope you get the rights back.

  37. Dom says:

    I have always been intrested in the developement cycle of Crash, the entire PSone series has always been close to my heart, i remember playing it at the age of 4 or 5, and i still play it now 9 years later. I have always loved the secrets hidden in all the games, and they were a joy to find so thank you 😀 But could you quickly answer these 3 Questions?
    1. Why was stormy ascent left out of the final product in Crash 1?
    2. Why wasn’t Nitrous Oxide a playable character in CTR (my favourire racing game)?
    3. What was the purpose of the POW crate in Crash 1?
    Even if you dont reply to this i would still like to thank you for the memories.

    • agavin says:

      1. It was too hard and we didn’t have time to make it easier.
      2. We only had time to do so many and the Japanese liked the cuter characters.
      3. To add danger/challenge to crate stacks when you went in for a big pile of powerups.

      Glad you loved the games!

      • Dom says:

        Thank you so much for replying!! If you dont mind, i would like to ask a few more questions 😀 I would sorta like to do an interview.

        4.In Crash 2 and 3 you used warps instead of islands like in Crash 1, was this to ultimately save development time, or to move on to something new?

        5.What were you inital thoughts on the Crash Bandicoot song in Crash 2?

        6.Was ND ever involved with Fake Crash or was that just Sony’s idea?

        7.Do you think ND went on to make Uncharted instead of another cartoonish character because you and Jason left?

        8.Was it just coincidental that Jak would follow the same amount of games as Crash, and the fact that they both shared a racing game?

        9.What was the main inspiration for CTR?

        10.Some of the characters in the series relate to an Australian animal eg. Dingodile, Ripper Roo and of course Crash, was this just random or was it on purpose?

        11.Has there been any easter eggs that anyone has never found, if so please tell.

        12.Was there any pressure from Sony rushing you to make a game?

        13.What programming language did you use for Crash?

        14.What are your thoughts on Crash Returns, the mod for Crysis?

        15.If you were making the new Crash, would you use Cel-Shaded graphics, and what engine would you use?

        16.Is it possible to buy back the Crash franchise, and reboot the entire series?

        Thank you for answering these questions as i one day would like to become a developer.

  38. Alessandro says:

    Crash is still the best game of all time for me, but if the one who continued to do crash games was still Naughty Dog and the graphics were as in the games today it would be perfect.
    how i wish Crash returned to Naughty Dog’s style.Aku Aku, Uka Uka and Tiny Tiger aren’t the same anymore :/

  39. […] posts on Crash: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, […]

  40. […] Making Crash series: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, […]

  41. […] the multi-part version of the story, as posted by Andy Gavin: 1. The ideas 2. Characters 3. The technology 4. Crash gameplay 5. Crates and other items 6. Attending the E3, premiere of the […]

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