Back before Sony gots its grubby little mitts on Crash Bandicoot, Universal Interactive Studio toyed with the idea of opening and closing the game with hand-drawn animation. This hand-drawn animation, to be precise.
Uploaded by original game producer David Siller (via NeoGAF), this pair of scenes from Universal Animation would have served as the opening and closing to the original Crash Bandicoot game. The footage has surfaced previously, with speculation painting it as a test for an animated series or a commercial for the game. Given the final nature of the second have, Siller’s explanation makes so much more sense.
So why weren’t these scenes used in the final game? Back in the mid to late ’90s Sony Computer Entertainment America was heavily pushing 3D polygon graphics, to the point where many outstanding 2D titles from Japan never made it to the States. Once Sony licensed Crash from Universal the hand-drawn stuff was dropped.
And thus the never-ending saga of Crash Bandicoot was born. Ayup.
Comments
15 responses to “Crash Bandicoot Could Have Had These Sweet Animated Cutscenes”
Crash bandicoot trilogy remake for PS4
No thanks, we already have billions of remakes and remasters on PS4, let alone PS3. Far too many, imo.
I want devs to spend time and money on making new exclusive IPs
Too many remakes that aren’t Crash Bandicoot
I’m down with that. I tried to go back to the original on Vita and whilst the game was fantastic, those controls… ugh. Pre-dating DualShock you can only use the d-pad.
I’d happily play through the series again if I could use a stick.
On the Vita you can change the controls to how you want, due to there being only 2 shoulder buttons, which includes the sticks. It’s only on the PS3 that you have to use the d-pad.
I tried that and couldn’t manage to map the d-pad to sticks (as the original game never had support for sticks), but most likely didn’t try hard enough.
Thanks for the heads up, will give it another shot.
I just did some research, and the two games I have on my Vita were made after the Dualshock was implemented, and Crash wasn’t, so I’m betting that has something to do with it.
This. Imagine if Naughty Dog got him back and made a new one…
Glad it didn’t make the final cut in any of the CB games, as these look cheap
I don’t kow about cheap, I think they perfectly capture the era of 60’s animation, I think Milton the Monster was an influence here.
Tropes man! If these were included we’d all be transformed into misogynists…. Wait… What?
Man. Crash really did look like a lunatic.
His girlfriend was hot though.
What?
Crash 1 never did explain its story very well, unless you sat on the title screen. What kid does that, my sister apparently.
But seeing Tiny in there is interesting. Cause unless I remember wrong he’s not in the games till 2 (which I didnt even know existed till 3) Is there any info as to where he was ment to be in the first game?
Kind of related, Andy Gavin (one of the founders of Naughty Dog) has a pretty great blog with an interesting series on the making of Crash Bandicoot:
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/
Reminds me of the Sonic CD cutscenes.