Andrew Gavin, the Co-Founder of Naughty Dog and the original lead programmer on the first Crash Bandicoot game, has stated that developer Vicarious Visions nailed everything about Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy apart from one crucial spect: jumping.
Speaking on LinkedIn, Gavin said that the team “completely botched how jumping works” for the crate-smashing marsupial, but was full of praise for pretty much everything else.
When they remade Crash, they nailed the visuals. Looked great, faithful to the original, kept the spirit. Then they completely botched how jumping works.
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“On the original PlayStation, we only had digital buttons—pressed or not pressed,” he explained, stating that “players needed different height jumps, but we only had binary inputs. 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.”
Crash Bandicoot was originally released for the PlayStation back in 1996, with Naughty Dog going on to work two sequels and the kart-racing spinoff Crash Team Racing before passing the franchise reins to other studios. Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy launched in 2017 and revived the series after a long period of downtime, featuring fully ground-up remakes of the first three games.