Crash Bandicoot - Did You Know Gaming? Feat. Eruption of Arcadea

Did you know?
In Crash Bandicoot 2, the Lab Assistant enemies are referred to as "ass" in the game's data.
Although this was clearly an abbreviation of 'assistant', the humorous side effects
of the shortening weren't lost on developers.
The file for one lab assistant was even named "ass banger".
In its sequel, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, developers went one step farther, naming the enemies
things like "ass hole" and "mother f**ker".
And these aren't the only lewd tidbits from the game's development.
When the developers at Naughty Dog started working on a 3D platformer, they jokingly
referred to it as the "Sonic's ass" game.
This was due to how the camera would always follow the main character's backside.
The team worked around this problem in several ways: by having the character start out facing
the screen, by including 2D-style side-scrolling segments, and by adding levels where the character
runs toward the screen.
The game's villain, Neo Cortex, was inspired by the character Brain from the cartoon series
Pinky and the Brain.
For the game's hero, Naughty Dog wanted to take a cute but lesser known species of animal
and turn it into an iconic character, like Sega had done with Sonic the Hedgehog.
They narrowed their choices down to a wombat, a potoroo, or a bandicoot.
The game's working title was "Willie the Wombat," although they considered this too dorky.
They eventually came up with the name Crash Bandicoot based on the way the character crashed
through boxes.
A marketing agent from the game's publisher, Universal, wanted to change the name to Wuzzle
the Wombat or Ozzie the Otzel.
In order to keep the name they came up with, the entire Naughty Dog team went to the offices
of Universal Interactive and threatened to abandon development of the game unless they
agreed to call it Crash Bandicoot.
Crash's design was largely determined by the technical limitations of the PlayStation.
He was colored orange because it contrasted with the greens and browns of the environment,
which is also why there's no lava-themed levels in the game.
He was given a light-colored chest and spots so that players could easily tell which way
he was facing, black gloves so that his hands would show up against his body when seen from
the side, and a large face so his expressions were easily read even at a low resolution.
In order to capture a cartoony vibe, the programmers used a technique called vertex animation,
which could be used to create animations much more fluid than the rigid "skeleton" animations
used by other games at the time.
While this allowed for characters to be easily squashed or stretched, the technique itself
seemed impossible to achieve on the original PlayStation until Naughty Dog invented a method
of compressing the animations.
The game also used so many polygons that designers had to think of ways to hide them so the PlayStation
didn't have to render them all at the same time.
This eventually led to the game's levels being designed as narrow, enclosed corridors.
When Crash Bandicoot was unveiled to the public, its visuals and gameplay were deemed so impressive
by industry members that false rumours spread that the demo was faked.
Some developers even implied that Sony concealed larger, more powerful computers behind their
booths to run the demo.
Others believed that Naughty Dog received secret documents from Sony that contained
hidden technical information about the PlayStation.
While Crash Bandicoot took up all available space on the CD, approximately two-thirds
of the game's total size is taken up by a file filled with random numbers that serve
no purpose.
By putting this file at the center of the disk, the actual game data was pushed to the
outside of the disk.
Because the outer area of the disc spins faster than the inner area, load times are reduced.
Making the game's file size larger also helped deter people from pirating the game.
While working on the game's music, the team's producer suggested forgoing a musical score
in favor of what he called "the urban chaotic symphony."
This would have consisted of sounds like grunts, honks, bird calls, and fart noises being played
at random.
The idea was rejected, and the game received a traditional soundtrack.
During the process of localizing Crash Bandicoot for Japan, Sony requested that several of
the songs be changed.
According to the game's composer, Josh Mancell, "They felt that the boss rounds needed to
sound more 'video game-like'.
The only reference they gave was music from the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland.
My favorite comment was about the original Tawna bonus round music.
It roughly translated into 'the sound of the guitar mixed with the tree imagery is too
nostalgic-sounding'.
I'm still scratching my head on that one."
This isn't the only odd change that's been made to the series in Japan.
When the first game was being demonstrated to Sony Japan, their executives reacted negatively
to Crash's design.
In response, the presenters from Naughty Dog quickly redrew their artwork of Crash.
They gave him black "Pac-Man shape" eyes, made his spiky hair smaller, and closed his
mouth to make him look less aggressive.
Altering content to suite a Japanese audience was a regular occurrence throughout the series.
In Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Crash has a death animation when he gets crushed
is flattened into his shoes.
Naughty Dog was asked to alter this animation for the Japanese release, as it was too reminiscent
of an at-large Japanese serial killer known for beheading his victims.
The Japanese version of Crash Bandicoot: Warped also included several full-motion video clips
that were not present in other versions of the game.
And several games in the series include a Japan-exclusive change where Aku Aku would
provide the player with gameplay hints when they picked up a mask.
Throughout the history of Crash Bandicoot, there have been many games that never saw
the light of day.
In 2004, Magenta Software pitched a title called Crush Bandicoot.
This game would've introduced the titular character Crush, an evil twin of Crash, as
the main character while Cortex would serve as the villain.
It would have featured an array of vehicles for Crush to use in open-world sci-fi themed
environments, but the publisher ultimately passed on the idea.
Following the release of Crash Twinsanity, Traveller's Tales put together a series of
proposals for a game starring Neo Cortex under the tentative titles of "Cortex Chaos" and
"The All-New Cortex Show".
The first iteration of the project revolved around the concept of having Cortex command
a group of miniature clones to perform tasks such as collecting items or forming a bridge,
similar to Nintendo's Pikmin games.
The second version of the pitch featured a story where Cortex was kicked out of the "Evil
Scientists League" due to working with Crash in Crash Twinsanity, and Cortex would then
have to defeat the League's other members.
The game's levels were based around evil scientists from past games in the series, as well as
introducing new characters such as a mummy named N. Tombed, a clown named N. Tertain,
and a scientist with plants for hair named N. Tangled.
Radical Entertainment began work on a new game called Crash Landed on the heels of Crash:
Mind Over Mutant.
Intended for release on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and DS, Crash Landed would have been a retelling
of Crash's origin story, as he went on an adventure to rescue his fellow bandicoots.
It would have also introduced a new mechanic whereby the player could combine items they
found to create new weapons and upgrades.
Levels would have been semi-linear with optional areas to explore, and would've featured a
day/night cycle and weather effects.
The game spent around two years in development and included plans for a cross-promotion with
McDonald's and a kart-racing spin-off game.
However, in 2010, Radical Entertainment suffered a series of layoffs, and Crash Landed was
cancelled without ever being formally announced.
Did you also know that symbols on the PlayStation controller actually have a meaning behind
them?
Or that the white towers in the PlayStation 2's startup animation represent save data
from the user's memory card?
For more PlayStation facts, click the annotation on screen.
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Crash Bandicoot - Did You Know Gaming? Feat. Eruption of Arcadea

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