Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy – the marsupial with the mostest is back

GameCentral gets a go on Activision’s remake collection of the first three PS1 Crash Bandicoot games, and talks to its producer.

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The power of nostalgia is a curious thing; make a one man weep, make another man sing. Well, not weep maybe, but certainly look around in surprise and confusion. Just a few minutes into having the new Crash Bandicoot remaster collection demonstrated to us, a fellow journo just couldn’t contain himself any longer – and proclaimed out loud that the sound effects from Crash Bandicoot were the soundtrack to his childhood, while appearing to undergo a moment of deep spiritual importance.



We can’t pretend the game had anything like that effect on us, because we have no real nostalgic feeling for the originals. But they were important games, and we do always like to see a developer put their full effort into a remaster. And that definitely seems to be the case with Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

The collection includes the first three PlayStation 1 games in the series, which were made by Uncharted developer Naughty Dog between 1996 and 1998. Along with Mario Kart clone Crash Team Racing, these were the only games Naughty Dog worked on. The series continued on for several years, but there hasn’t been a new console entry since 2008. Although Crash was a prominent part of last year’s Skylanders: Imaginators, and had an extended cameo in Uncharted 4.


Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped had a time travel theme

Whether there ever will be another standalone sequel depends on how well this collection sells. And that in turn is dependent on not only existing fans but how well newcomers take to the series. And that’s hard to guess at. The Crash Bandicoot games are, after all, extremely old-fashioned, being very linear 3D platformers where you have little freedom of movement. But then, as now, the game was able to compensate for this with fun characters and very focused gameplay.

We were able to play three levels, all taken from the third game Warped. We have to say that the motorcycle racing level really felt just a bit too old school, almost like a SNES era bonus games. But the other levels are so different to anything else today, or even at the time, that we found ourselves happily engrossed by the very precise movements needed to combat the largely static enemies.

Speaking to producer Kara Massie later we were told that the game does not use any of the original programming code and had to be reverse engineered almost from scratch. That seems like an awful lot of work, but the end result is very impressive. The very simplistic polygonal graphics of the original have been updated very well, to something that looks much more modern and yet still has a retro charm.

If Crash is ever to make a mainstream comeback then now is surely the time, but even if there isn’t a new game after this at least Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy seems a suitable love letter to fans.

Formats: PlayStation 4

Price: £34.99

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Vicarious Visions

Release Date: 30th June 2017

Age Rating: 3

KM: So, did you play Crash back in the day?

GC: Well, a bit. I have to admit I don’t think I’ve ever played the third one before though. I can appreciate the games’ place in history, but I wouldn’t say I was as much of a superfan as that other guy.



KM: [laughs]

GC: Which brings me to my first question: who is this collection primarily aimed at? Because there seems to be a clear sense that Activision wants to bring Crash Bandicoot back, what with Skylanders and Uncharted 4 and now this. Or is this all just a one-off anniversary thing?

KM: If it is a one-off or not is a little bit TBD. And I have to speculate a little bit because these decisions get made at head office with people way above my pay grade, but when Shawn Layden [the boss of PlayStation America – GC] wore that Crash Bandicoot T-shirt a few years back people went crazy. For years people had been asking to bring these games back and I think you nailed it when you mentioned the anniversary, because I think people saw it was the 20th anniversary last year and it just seemed really timely.

And I think what we’re seeing is a lot of love and interest, and you ask who the primary audience is. I think it’s definitely the nostalgic player. The ones sending us letters that say, ‘Oh, I remember playing with my dad’ – that’s our primary audience for sure.

GC: So is this collection a permeant PlayStation exclusive or just a timed one?

KM: Right now I’m saying it’s released on June 30th on PS4 and PS4 Pro. [laughs]

GC: Now I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. But there is a popular fan argument that Crash – and other PS1 games like WipEout and Spyro – weren’t actually that good. They were just the only games in those genres available on the PS1 and so they became elevated above their station, since PlayStation owners didn’t have access to other similar games on the N64. How would you defend Crash in the face of that?


KM: It’s really interesting. From a producer’s point of view, when you’re always concerned about scope and budget, there is an insane amount of content in these games. We were showing some of those death animations – there’s over a hundred different ways to die throughout the three games. And a death animation is expensive. There’s modelling and animation and sound effects and it takes a lot more effort than you might think.

We started this project and we were looking at the amount of content in the three games, and it was like: ‘Woah! These are big games, in terms of all the little details’. It shows how much love and care and passion there was from the original team. It’s like they thought, ‘We’re gonna make a challenging game, you’re gonna die a lot, so what we’re gonna do for you is give you a different way to day almost every time.

They didn’t have to do that, but it’s just one of example of how Naughty Dog always went the extra mile with these games, to make them fun and joyful. And there’s so many different enemies too, the original team never, ever cut corners.

So that’s one reason why I think they hold up. But they’re just good games. There’s tight gameplay, it’s got great flow in terms of platforming, and I think it also has the right level of challenge. I think there are lots of unapologetically challenging levels, and there’s a real sense of joy and accomplishment when you get through those challenging levels.


And I think that really makes the game very compelling. So were they popular originally simply because there wasn’t any alternative? I don’t think so, I think they’re great games.

GC: People are quick to denigrate something as appealing only to nostalgia, and yet they’re always convinced they have more objective reasons for enjoying the things they like.

KM: When we started we knew that these were iconic games, we loved them as well – we had strong memories of playing them – but through the course of development we realised just how much work went into them. The original dev team really brought everything to these games; it’s no wonder they’re so great.

GC: Did you talk to Naughty Dog?

KM: Personally, our dev team didn’t check in with them or anything. But through Sony, Naughty Dog has seen and played the games at a few different stages. And we’ve had feedback from them, and overwhelming it’s been positive. They’re very, very impressed, and quite touched, that we’re doing right by their original games.

GC: Do you have access to the original code? It sounded more like you were reverse engineering it?

KM: It is mostly that. There was a lot of propriety code in a file format that we just couldn’t use. But we did start with geo data that – the analogy I use is it’s like a blueprint to a house – where you can at least see the scale and placement of objects in a level. And that was a really, really good place to start. And that really helped us with the metrics for Crash himself, so we could very careful tune his spins and attacks. But other than that there was nothing else we could use, so we’ve been creating it from scratch.

GC: In terms of the controls, the original at least only used the D-pad so what difficulty did that present? Using the analogue stick would actually make it harder in most cases.

KM: Yes, and we iterated on that quite a bit. We wanted to make the analogue stick controls feel as precise and responsive as the D-pad. We’ve done a lot of dead zone tuning, so depending on the kind of level you’re on, or the came angle being used, it can change to be looser or tighter as needed.

GC: Coming out when he did Crash is obviously very ‘90s. Did you do anything to try and tone that down, or maybe even tone it up – as it were?

KM: That’s a really good question. I think we just tried to embrace the tone, that sort of punk-like, but also innocent and joyful, tone to the character and the game.

The driving sections are not a highlight

GC: Was there any thought to giving him speaking lines?

KM: No, but we threw our whole cinematics team at this project. So all the characters got cinematic quality models, cinematic quality rigs – including full facial rigs. And what that means is we can actually have his face animate in the cut scenes, so you can really bring his personality out.

GC: So What questions do the fans keep asking you? If this was my favourite thing coming back I’d have a hundred questions to keep throwing at you.

KM: Fans are always asking about some of the hidden levels that never made it into the first game…

GC: Oh, I didn’t realise that was a thing. Have you been able to put that into the game?

KM: [smiles] You’ll just have to wait and see! But there’s also lots of little moment-to-moment content that fans will discover. Like a month or two ago we held a contest online to design a new idle animation, and we picked a winner and if you stare at the screen long enough it’ll appear – it’s a little volleyball game with Crash.

Exclusivity we obviously get asked about a lot, then about what’s next and are we going to see a new game or Crash Team Racing?

GC: Crash Team Racing is the one I was going to guess at.

KM: [laughs] Yeah, that’s a popular one.

GC: And I assume you’re not going to answer any of those questions?

KM: [laughs] I can’t, but also these decisions aren’t made by me. So we’ll have to see how this game does first. But I’d love to work on another Crash game, this has been marvellous.

GC: Vicarious Visions would be the obvious ones to make it too. But would you have the spare capacity now that you’re also helping out with Destiny 2? Or are you a separate team?

KM: [hesitates] Right now we’re a separate team, dedicated to Crash.

GC: Well I hope you get to do a new game, because I think you did good work with Skylanders. The lack of good quality, family-friendly console games is always a bugbear of mine.

KM: I think that’s one of the things that’s really neat about Crash as well, that you can sit on the sofa with your family, or your roommates if you’re at college, or whoever happens to be around. And you can pass the controller over for them to try, and end up playing together like that. Or even just watching, sitting next to them watching them play through a level is a lot of fun. It’s more social than I think people realise.

GC: Well, as Uncharted 4 demonstrated.

KM: [laughs]

GC: Okay, that’s great. Thank you.

KM: Thank you, thanks for the interesting questions.

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