Crash Bandicoot‘s original lead programmer Andrew Gavin has taken to Linkedin to write about his opinion of the mostly excellent Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. He said that Vicarious Visions remake nailed the original trilogy’s ambience and coupled that with luscious visuals. However, Gavin says that the team completely botched one thing and that was the jumping aspect. He said that Naughty Dog specifically used a special system for Crash’s jumps which Vicarious Visions ignored, making the game harder than the PlayStation One original. You can read Andrew Gavins full post down below.
“In my opinion (key word, opinion!), the Crash Bandicoot remake got almost everything right. Except the most important 30 milliseconds. When they remade Crash, they nailed the visuals. Looked great, faithful to the original, kept the spirit. Then they completely botched how jumping works. On the original PlayStation, we only had digital buttons – pressed or not pressed. No analog sticks. Players needed different height jumps, but we only had binary input. Most games used the amateur solution: detect button press, trigger fixed-height jump. Terrible for platforming. So we built something borderline insane. The game would detect when you pressed jump, start the animation, then continuously measure how long you held the button. As Crash rose through the air, we’d subtly adjust gravity, duration, and force based on your input. Let go early = smaller hop. Hold it down = maximum height. But it wasn’t binary – I interpreted your intent across those 30-60 milliseconds and translated it into analog control using digital inputs. The remake developers either didn’t notice this system or thought it wasn’t important. They reverted to simple fixed jumps. Then realized Crash couldn’t make half the jumps in the game. Their solution was to make all jumps maximum height. Now every jump on the remake is huge and floaty. Those precise little hops between platforms are awkward. The game’s fundamental jumping mechanic feels worse than the 1996 original despite running on hardware that’s 1000x more powerful.”
I actually agree with this. I remember feeling that the jumping was off when it came to precision while I was playing this. It just felt the slightest bit off and in a game like this where the slightest difference, can mean the difference between success and failure, you could really tell if you played The originals. The controls for the original games is fantastic and smooth, and he’s correct when he says they got everything else right with the new versions, but the jumping is noticeably off just enough that it makes a difference when playing.
Yes, I remember thinking the exact same thing. I was like “there’s no way I suck this bad at Crash”. Turns out the jumping was off, which is exactly what I struggled with.
I’ve only ever played the original, so I can’t compare.
Same, unless Crash 1 wasn’t supposed to be as hard as it was (The High Road says all).
Not only the jump was botched. Crash’s hitbox was badly done, too. You can easily notice in the bridge stages when you could jump off the turtle shell.
The remake trilogy made me want to pull my hair out. I ended up just beating the first one, and leaving the rest.
“Great, but it was bad, actually”
Make up your damn mind.
The gameplay is one of the worst 3d platforms in terms of jumping and feedback (when you hit an enemy or the enemy hits you). Also, the music isnt good at all. But maybe we were spoiled with mario64
What’s going on again?
Those people invented how
jumping worde in the
very first Super Mario Bros. game.
Brilliant! 👏👏👏