Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Hands-On Preview

We got a hands-on preview of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

Earlier this week, ComingSoon.net got a hands-on preview of the upcoming Activision and Vicarious Visions game Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, out June 30, which combines remastered versions of Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. The games have brand-new lighting, animations, and recreated cinematics in “N. Hanced Fur-K” and PS4 Pro HD. We got to play the games and chat with Dan Tanguay, Game Director, Vicarious Visions about what players are going to get with Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Tanguay is the Game Director for Crash Bandicoot, and was the Lead Designer on Crash Nitro Kart back in 2003. You can check out some footage of the game in the player below and see some screenshots in the gallery.

Here are some new features of the game:

The new collection features a fully-remastered game soundtrack, packed with all the didgeridoos, xylophones and thumpin’ bass lines fans can handle!

Full analog stick support, a unified save system and unified checkpoint system make it easier than ever to enjoy the classic adventure. Plus, improved bonus levels and time trials everywhere will make this an epic trilogy for the hardest of the ‘Coot core!

All the beloved cinematics in this trilogy are being lovingly re-crafted. In the intro cinematic, Crash Bandicoot’s origin story shows our villains, Dr. Neo Cortex and Dr. Nitrus Brio, try to evolve Crash into an evil mutant general, but it doesn’t go quite as planned!

We checked out three levels from the remastered Crash Bandicoot: Warped, the first one being “Double Header,” which is one of the Medieval levels. As you recall, the game is full of boxes of destruction (nitro crates) and goodies like fruit for the fruit bazooka. We blasted our way past frogs, two-headed monsters and wizards as we ran through the level. Tanguay told us, “One of the big goals that we had with this was to really kind of capture the feeling and the nostalgia that you had for Crash back in the day. In order to do that, we had to put ourselves back in the shoes of the folks who developed it back in the day. The first thing that we noticed… on the PlayStation 1, the Crash Bandicoot games were some of the most beautiful games out there. They were doing visual tricks and streaming and things that were, at the time, unheard of. But in terms of the project, it meant that we had to say, okay, what are we going to do… the technology has increased, so we had to say, okay, what are we going to do to make it feel like the original?

“So we put a lot of work into rain effects,” which you could see streaming down the camera. “We put a lot of work into creating a beautiful and lush environment. The game geometry is very simple. We’ve tried to pack the frame with grass and foliage and things off to the side, so it really feels like a detailed and full environment.” When we stopped, you could see Crash shivering in the cold. The character animations were really important, including all the death animations for Crash. Tanguay told us that some of his favorites included the one where he’s stung by bees and blows up and where he’s attacked by puffer fish and the same thing happens in the water.

“One of the things that’s really important to Crash Bandicoot is personality,” Tanguay said. “He’s got a personality and a charm to him. He’s got a lot of death animations and a lot of ways of celebrating. He really comes alive as a character even though he doesn’t speak.” You’re still going to get to use all the power-ups that you remember from the game.

Tanguay told us that the sound was a really important thing to upgrade. He said, “In addition to remastering all the visuals, we went back and remastered in house all of the music as well. We were able to get a hold of the original tracks and strip out the rhythm and use that as a base and build on top of them.” The games also have a checkpoint system.

Tanguay said they spent a lot of time revisiting the gameplay. “Overall, he said, we didn’t want to change any of the original challenge, per say. What we started with was the original grey mesh geometry, which was provided to us by Sony and Naughty Dog. That provided a foundation to rebuild the gameplay. If we knew it worked within that level, great. If not, we’d have to go back and work on it some more.” They didn’t change gameplay elements, but made sure it all worked well in terms of a modern game.

Next we checked out the “Orange Asphalt” level, which is one of the vehicle levels in Crash Bandicoot. Tanguay told us we’re getting motorcycles, biplanes, jet skiis, underwater scuba gear and everything the original game did. The controls were very comfortable and we got to see how the time trials worked, which was something that the third game in the series introduced. Tanguay said, “As you race, you try to pick up these time crates that would slow down the timer. It would give you an extra advantage. Time trials, we thought was a great innovation. It was novel at the time for platformers. We thought that if we were implementing it for one of the games, why not put it in all of the games?” He told us that instead of 25 time trial levels, we’ll have over 80.

He also said that the levels we got to see were some of the more difficult levels of the game. Though it was easy to get a hang of the controls, they were each a challenge.

Finally, we checked out “Gone Tomorrow,” the space level in the game. Tanguay told us that this is one of the final levels in the game. “We thought that it was just really pretty to look at and also, it’s one of the future levels, so it really contrasts with the natural environments like ice and snow and jungle and ancient ruins that you see in the game.

In this one, we got to check out a few more death animations, as it was a lot harder than the earlier levels. In this one, we saw Crash battle bots and moving platforms, and even got a chance to see where the green gem took us. Tanguay spoke about the animation. “Obviously you see that the level has a lot of neon, but that was already existing in our engine. One of the things we added — as we were developing the Crash character over and over again was that it just wasn’t coming together. In the PlayStation 1 days, the simple character model was great. He was incredibly expressive. We spent a lot of time building an animation rig that would allow him to be just as expressive as the original, but we still felt something was missing.” He said the finally realized that they needed to add fur to Crash at this resolution. “Crash has a fur shader on, which is the first time that anyone has seen him in all that furry glory there. Once we kind of opened that Pandora’s box in a way, then the artists said, well, we don’t just have to use it for Crash. They used it for all the bosses, the enemies. They started adding fur, and they were like, well, we’ve got some birds, maybe we can use fur to make feathers. All the birds have feathers. It just added another layer of detail that I think makes Crash stand out.”

He continued, “The other level of detail we added, as you can see, we really wanted to make sure that, just like the original, the game had reflections. We didn’t have reflection technology in our engine at the time, so we added it specifically for Crash.” You can see it all in the videos below.

Are you guys excited to check out Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy? The game launches for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro on June 30, 2017 for $39.99 and is available for pre-order now. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or tweet us @ComingSoonnet.