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Dan Arey, a former Crystal Dynamics and Naughty Dog developer who worked on the second and third games in the series, praised the first game in a 1996 Retro Gamer magazine interview. Prior to joining Naughty Dog, he talked about how the game maintained its unique identity in the world of 3D platformers, even when faced with the groundbreaking influence of Super Mario 64. Arey emphasized that while Super Mario 64 embraced open-ended levels, programmer Andy Gavin and director Jason Rubin designed Crash Bandicoot to adhere to a more old-school, level-based structure while adding 3D depth to its platforming challenges by "going down 3D roads with occasional 2D side-wave elements, but everything was very focussed in terms of mechanics". Arey also expressed admiration for the game's technical achievements even before he joined Naughty Dog, which likely soon motivated him to do so:

"We saw some early demos when I was at Crystal Dynamics, and we were asking ourselves how they were getting so many polygons on the PlayStation. What they had done was pre-calculate the polygons you couldn't see from a fixed-camera viewpoint, so it looked like there were many more polygons being pushed on the system than ever before."
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Attachment An early concept for Crash Bandicoot, back when he was originally known as Willy the Wombat, was to have the Cortex Vortex be a surplus of television sets used to brainwash the evolved animals into doing the bidding of Dr. Cortex. After being subjected to the Vortex's media barrage for 7 days and nights, Willy would've been given a tendency to speak and act in a series of bizarre nonsequiters that referenced classic literature, pop culture, or from radio, TV or movies. Some examples would've included "Loose lips, sink ships!", "But brushing with Best Toothpaste gives white, white, white teeth!", and "Don't fire boys, until you see the whites of their eyes!" His demeanor was similar to other hyperactive pop-culture referencing comedy characters from the late 80s and 90s, where he could be quoting from Rambo one moment before switching to Fred Astaire, to John Wayne, and then to Fred Flintstone.
subdirectory_arrow_right Crash Bandicoot (Franchise)
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One early concept for Dr. Neo Cortex was to have him sporadically break the fourth wall and tell the player how unfair he is cast as the villain, the clichés that it presents, and his hopes to break the status quo of the "defeated supervillain" ending.
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The removed level "Stormy Ascent" was, according to Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin, made as an homage to the Castle Wall level in Wizards & Warriors.
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Attachment Back when the game was still known as "Willie the Wombat", Mark Cerny had commissioned Hanna-Barbera to help give out some ideas and suggestions on what Willie would look like. The aforementioned task was given to an employee of the studio at the time named Butch Hartman, who went on to create a slew of animated series for the children's television network Nickelodeon.
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According to director Jason Rubin, Crash Bandicoot utilized a system of dynamic difficulty, making various tweaks based on how well or how poorly the player was doing. Many of these tweaks were made to facilitate more inexperienced players, such as providing more lives and Wumpa Fruit to players running low on lives, giving Aku-Aku Masks after losing 5 lives, and slowing down boulders with each lost life.
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In the levels "Cortex Power" and "Toxic Waste", there are two enemies that appear to be genetically-altered gangster potoroos, similar to the boss character, Pinstripe Potoroo. This is unusual as no other genetically-altered animals appear as common enemies in the game.
This also implies that Dr. Cortex created a larger gang of potoroo enforcers, but because Pinstripe has rarely appeared in later installments, this has never been elaborated.
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According to developer Andy Gavin, Naughty Dog wanted Crash to animate similarly to the old Looney Tunes cartoons with squash-and-stretch physics. This was achieved with "vertex animation" which allowed 3-4 points of articulation as opposed the more common and stiffer "skeletal animation" which only used single points.
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Attachment Crash Bandicoot was originally going to have traditionally-animated cutscenes, but these cutscenes were never implemented into the game. The reason for the cutscenes being dropped was that Sony wanted to emphasize the 3D graphics in the game.
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During the level "Generator Room", there are multiple monitors that show Dr. Cortex's face. Upon closer inspection, however, the capital "N" on Cortex's forehead is missing.
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When coming up with the idea of how the game should play, the developers decided to turn the screen so you would play running in and out rather than left and right. They jokingly call this the "Sonic's Ass" game since you are always looking at Crash's back.
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Attachment 13 years after the release of the game, it was discovered that there is an unused, fully complete level in the code of the game. The level is named 'Stormy Ascent', and was removed because of its difficulty.
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Ripper Roo's laugh is the same laugh as the Hyena from Lady and the Tramp, just shortened.
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