Crash Bandicoot is being given the long-awaited and highly requested remake/reboot that fans have been clamouring for.
It’s been years since the character was even remotely relevant, having started his career as PlayStation’s equivalent to Mario and Sonic.
However, it’s a reemergence on PS4 that may just be what the chaotic critter needs to fight his way back into relevance.
He’s coming to the console by way of Vicarious Visions, who are rebuilding the original Crash Bandicoot games — Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped — exclusively for PS4 from the ground up.
It’s an exciting time for gamers of the ’90s, particularly PlayStation fans who grew up fighting their way through hazardous and infuriatingly-tough worlds.
To see that Crash‘s creator in Naughty Dog has gone on to such great things is testament to the influence and quality of the original Crash Bandicoot games.
For years, the franchise sat in limbo in the depths of the Activision IP portfolio. Naughty Dog, meanwhile, was busy being awesome making the likes of Uncharted and The Last Of Us.
While not anywhere near as iconic as Nintendo’s and Sega’s mascots, Crash still holds a very important place in gaming history, and in many ways helped define ’90s gaming.
It’s unsurprising, then, that Sony was so intent on giving the character a B-12 shot of energy.
But just how much has the character and Crash Bandicoot experience changed in 20 years?
By way of Digital Foundry we have a rough idea of just how far video games have come in that time, and how true to the original games Vicarious Visions is being with this remake.
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Sony has admitted that with the games being almost two decades old, it was extremely tough to remaster them. “The original code and assets are nearly unusable. Nearly,” the publisher said.
Instead of a full remake, they opted for a remaster, except Sony calls this a “remaster plus”.
“The first step in our remaster plus was to truly understand what made the Naughty Dog games special and why fans still love them to this day,” the publisher said. “The best way to understand a game is to play it, and boy, did we play the Crash games. We played them to the point that we broke controllers from mashing the jump button too much. We studied original concept art and commercials for inspiration. And we went even further back to understand the material that originally inspired Naughty Dog, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Looney Tunes.”
Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy is due for release in 2017, exclusively on PlayStation 4
