Jason and I had been debating our next game for months, but the three-day drive from Boston to LA provided ample opportunity. Having studied arcade games intensely (yeah, in 1994 they were still relevant) we couldn’t help but notice that 2 or 3 of the leading genres had really begun making the transition into full 3D rendering.
Racing had, with Ridge Racer and Virtua Racing. Fighting, with Virtua Fighter. And gun games, with Virtua Cop. Racing was clearly 100% the better in 3D, and while Virtua Fighter wasn’t as playable as Street Fighter, the writing was on the wall.
Sensing opportunity, we turned to our own favorite genre, the character platform action game (CAG for short). In the 80s and early 90s the best sellers on home systems were dominated by CAGs and their cousins (like “walk to the right and punch” or “walk to the right and shoot”). Top examples were Mario, Sonic, and our personal recent favorite, Donkey Kong Country.
So on the second day of the drive, passing Chicago and traveling through America’s long flat heartland, fed on McDonalds, and accompanied by a gassy Labrador/Ridgeback mix (also fed on McDonalds), the idea came to us.
We called it the “Sonic’s Ass” game. And it was born from the question: what would a 3D CAG be like? Well, we thought, you’d spend a lot of time looking at “Sonic’s Ass.” Aside from the difficulties of identifying with a character only viewed in posterior, it seemed cool. But we worried about the camera, dizziness, and the player’s ability to judge depth – more on that later.
That was a read, wow. At the time I remember not thinking much of how good Crash looked, so I never even really considered--despite reading a lot of coverage and interviews--or maybe I just couldn't really appreciate how much work they had to do to squeeze all that out. It just looked like it was supposed to be that way all along, and it wasn't until they started doing things like the load-hiding open world in Jak & Daxter that I realized they were really working so hard on such a technical level. I guess that's why they're reaching for the hardest possible material, like I don't think anyone would think it would be weird for the third Uncharted to be in a desert, even if it didn't have the most realistic sand movement program ever, but there you go. Is it possible that they are only doing it because they are masochists? I mean really, sand? It's kind of absurd!
It's also easy to forget that Naughty Dog was really small once, or that they started out with Way of the Warrior on 3D0--ugh!
I always thought Crash had an excellent art-style - environment-wise, at least (Tawna creeps me out more now than ever). Crash 2 & 3 in particular were (and still are) like Saturday morning cartoons. The "plot" to 2 was spoiled the moment you laid eyes on the manual, yet Cortex was still playing "reformed villain" for the benefit of no-one (not that anyone would fall for it), but it made Crash's world feel more alive. And casting Clancy Brown as the diminutive Cortex was a stroke of genius.
But yeah, that article points out that they had art direction and technical mumbo-jumbo worked out well before the core elements. Which explains so much. I'll never know what gave me the fortitude to 100% Crash 1.
I wonder if all the "Sonic's Ass"-ery played some part in giving Crash shorts.
Jason Rubin wrote:I had spent the previous month spending all of my free time (4am-10am) studying Anime and Manga. I read all the books available at that time in English on the subject. All three!
