Crash co-creator says Activision’s remake has missed the most important aspect

Andy Gavin is a veteran of the game industry, co -founder of Naughty Dog and one of the creators of the Crash Bandicoot franchise. Although he did not participate directly in Activision’s remake, the developer publicly commented on his opinion about Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

On social networks, Gavin praised the look of the remake, highlighting fidelity to the spirit of the original. However, it pointed out a crucial error: the way the character’s leap was implemented.

“In my opinion (keyword: opinion!), Crash Bandicoot’s remake hit almost everything. Except the 30 most important milliseconds. When they remained Crash, they got it right in the look. It was great, faithful to the original, kept the spirit. But completely spoiled the way the leap works.”

According to Gavin, at the time of the first game, PlayStation controls were digital – that is, the buttons had only two states: pressed or not. Still, the Naughty Dog team found an ingenious solution to allow leaps with different heights: the game average the time the button was kept pressed, even during the first milliseconds of the heel animation.

This non -binary response system allowed to adjust the height and duration of the jump in real time, within a window of 30 to 60 milliseconds – a fundamental technical detail for the accuracy of the gameplay.

The problem, according to the creator, is that this system was ignored in the remake. The result: the jumps had a fixed height at most, which compromises the accuracy of the controls and makes the movement more “floating”.

“Remake developers or did not notice this system, or thought it was not important. They reversed simple and fixed jumps. Then they realized that Crash could not reach half the game platforms. The solution? Make all jumps with maximum height.

Now, every leap in the remake is huge and floating. Those accurate jumps between platforms were clumsy. The leap mechanics, which is fundamental, is worse than in the original 1996, even though it runs in a thousand times more powerful hardware.

The smallest details of time and sensation matter much more than people imagine. ”

Gavin also commented on the release of Crash Bandicoot in Japan, where the character had to be adapted to please local audiences. Sony has changed sounds and even the voice acting – giving Crash a “old grumpy” voice, less inspired by Looney Tunes’ drawings, which ended up working better in the Japanese market.

Source: reset