Crash Bandicoot
1996 · Platform · PlayStation
Overview
Crash Bandicoot was the PlayStation's answer to Mario — a platform game with a marsupial protagonist rendered in full 3D with a camera behind the character. The behind-character perspective solved the 3D platformer camera problem by restricting movement to a near-linear axis, concentrating polygon budget on the path ahead. The game sold 6.8 million copies.
Deep Dive
Crash Bandicoot was developed by Naughty Dog — Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin's team — with Mark Cerny as producer. The camera decision — behind the character, limiting lateral movement — was a technical and design solution simultaneously: by facing the player forward along the level axis, Naughty Dog could render the environment ahead with more detail than a free camera would allow. The game's engine pushed the PlayStation's memory management to its limits.
Developer Story
Crash Bandicoot was developed by Naughty Dog, then a small studio (Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin) who had hired additional engineers. Mark Cerny was brought in as producer to provide mentorship and PlayStation hardware expertise. The game shipped in September 1996 as Sony's platform game answer to Nintendo's Mario.
Did You Know?
- Crash Bandicoot was internally nicknamed 'Sonic's Ass Game' at Sony during development because the camera spent so much time behind the character's rear.
- The game's designer Andy Gavin wrote a custom memory allocator that reduced memory fragmentation, allowing Naughty Dog to fit significantly more data into the PlayStation's limited RAM.
- Crash's design was created after character proposals featuring a wombat, a Tasmanian devil, and a dog were rejected — a marsupial was eventually chosen for personality reasons.
- The game's character and world design was approved by Sony after Naughty Dog showed the prototype to Sony executives, who reportedly laughed at Crash's comedic personality.
