The game that singlehandedly taught me the meaning of failure is back; and worse than ever.

If you grew up in the PS1/Gameboy Advance era, you might remember the Crash Bandicoot games. Of course you do.

The original games, developed by Naughty Dog, were quite challenging, causing many gamers to spontaneously develop a muscle memory mutation. Fortunately, development studio Vicarious Visions have seen fit to give the original trilogy the good old remaster treatment.

Happy days! Or so we thought…

Those who have played the remastered version of the first Crash soon realised that they turned out to be more difficult than they remember.

The guys over at Vicarious Visions have addressed this in a post on publisher Activision Games’ blog. According to the post, the development team used the physics engine and handling from Crash Bandicoot: Warped as their starting point.

It goes on to say that they were “tuning jump differently for each game, so that the jump metrics are the same as the originals.”

They also mentioned that the addition of physics and a different collision system means that jumping in the new game requires more precision from players than the original.

For players who found the first game in the set too challenging, developers advise playing the less difficult second and third games to get a better feel of the new physics engine and reawaken the old muscle memory.

They are not without mercy, however, and have introduced the miracle of autosave to all 3 games and added Crash Bandicoot 2’s dynamic difficulty system to the first game, which gives you a few in-game assists should you turn into a gaming Sean Bean.

I don’t think a weird dancing Crash is one of them…

TLDR: Physics and jumping are different to the original. If you’re too much of a wimp to persevere, play the other two games and then come back. Like the weak person you are.

-Tyler Roodt

Categories: Education