Crash Bandicoot co-creator praises remake, except for one specific thing

Andy Gavin, the co-creator of Crash Bandicoot, recently shared his opinion on the remake – which is largely positive, but believes jumping is “botched”.

Crash Bandicoot was remade several years ago as part of the N. Sane Trilogy. Gavin seems to be in the camp that largely praised the release, though he has now spoken at length about why he feels the jumping mechanic is off.

In a recent post, Gavin noted that for the original PlayStation version, the game detected “when you pressed jump, start the animation, then continuously measure how long you held the button.” Subtle adjustments are then made for gravity, duration, and force depending on input. In Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, there’s are instead standard single jumps.

As noted by Gavin:

“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.

The minutiae of timing and feel matter a lot more than people realize.”

Gavin when on to talk about how Crash Bandicoot managed to succeed in Japan. Changes were made to “just about everything” with Sony focusing on the audio in particular. The game was made easier as well.

Gavin wrote in his post:

“When we launched Crash in Japan, Sony took a massive risk. Western games were literally sold in the ‘foreign’ section of Japanese stores – like import movies nobody watched.

They had a special word for them: ‘youge’ (Western games). Kiss of death.

But Sony Japan thought Crash could break through. One catch: we had to re- tweak and re-tune just about everything.

The gameplay stayed mostly the same (although we made it easier — they were right that it was too hard – and explained some of the obscure stuff). But the audio? Complete overhaul.

Our Looney Tunes-style cartoon sounds were too weird for Japan. So they added their own sounds that, frankly, sounded equally weird to us. High-pitched squeaks and boings that felt super Japanese.

Then came the voice casting. They hired this famous TV comedian who specialized in playing grumpy old men. Suddenly Crash – our young, energetic mascot – was making these bizare old man grunts and sounds.

Jason and I were confused. ‘You want our hyperactive bandicoot to sound like a grandpa?’

But it worked. Japanese players loved it. Crash became one of the first Western games to actually succeed in Japan. Not in the foreign section – in the main PlayStation area, right next to Japanese titles.

It was a big lesson for us – sometimes your baby needs a complete makeover to succeed somewhere else.”

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is currently out on Nintendo Switch along with Crash Bandicoot 4. Details about a cancelled Crash Bandicoot 5 with Spyro can be found here.