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Remakes and remasters keep coming and they don't stop coming. While it's great they make older games more accessible for modern audiences who may have missed them at release, it's hard to recapture the exact same feel and essence. However, Naughty Dog co-founder Andrew Gavin thinks the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy got almost everything right. Everything "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," Gavin writes on LinkedIn (spotted by a ResetEra user). He then details just how the jumping was made on the PS1 original game.
"On the original PlayStation, we only had digital buttons – pressed or not pressed. No analog sticks," he writes. "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."
It may be hard to believe now, but that's how it was back in the day. "We built something borderline insane," Gavin continues. "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."
It's a creative solution for a common problem of the time, and not the only way Crash Bandicoot, or Naughty Dog in general, pushed forward the medium of video games. Jak & Daxter was the first game to have a seamless open world.
"Let go early = smaller hop. Hold it down = maximum height," Gavin explains. "But it wasn't binary – I interpreted your intent across those 30-60 milliseconds and translated it into analog control using digital inputs."
If you've ever played the original Crash Bandicoot, you'll have noticed just how much control you have over the orange critter. Sure, the game is tough as nails, but you really do have a lot of control over how he moves. It means it still feels great to play today, even if it looks old.
"The remake developers either didn't notice this system or thought it wasn't important," Gavin claims. "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."
Naughty Dog was my favorite studio growing up – I even have a Krimzon Guard tattoo now – so I knew something felt off when I played the remakes, I just couldn't figure out exactly what it was about the jumping that was wrong. So, it's nice to have Gavin's full explanation of how it used to work.
"The minutiae of timing and feel matter a lot more than people realize," he concludes, and I couldn't agree more. Our Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy review even notes that "it's frustrating to come to terms with the fact that you know how to make that jump perfectly, it's just not nearly as easy to do it here [in the remake]."
If you want more jumping fun, check out our list of the best platforming games.
