Crash Bandicoot

Trivia

- Crash was originally a wombat. His name was Willy the Wombat and he went through various designs before his final one.

- The game was jokingly codenamed "Sonic's Ass Game" during its development. It was called that due to the fact that the player would often be forced to see the backside of a character in a third-person platformer, which was a new concept at the time.

- Charles Zembillas, one of the main artists (along with Joe Pearson), would later create the designs for the characters in Spyro The Dragon, Crash's buddy franchise.

- Crash was named after his tendency to break Crates.

- Crates were implemented very late into the game. Their purpose was to fill some of the empty spaces around the levels, and to give the players something fun to do while making their way through the islands.

- Tawna was removed from the series by Naughty Dog because Sony of Japan wasn't comfortable with Crash having a sexy girlfriend. Ironically, she made a comeback ten years later in the Japanese game Crash Boom Bang , now wearing revealing clothes.

- There was only a single voice actor for all the characters in the game - Brendan 'O Brien. His presence in the series lasted through the entire Naughty Dog era.

- Asides from Crash, Aku Aku is the only character to have been in every game so far (if you include the fake masks in CrashTTR's Tiki Turbo).

- The Wumpa Fruits seen in this game and its next two sequels are not actually 3D objects. These are animated sprites that always face the camera, giving themselves a 3D feel. The same Wumpa sprites were re-used for Crash 2, Crash 3, Bash, XS, N-Tranced and Fusion.

- The music producers for this game, Mutato Muzika, stuck with the series until CTR.

- This is the only game in the series where the 100% ending doesn't link to a subsequent game (Crash doesn't battle Cortex in this ending, and Crash 2 wouldn't begin the same way).

- This game was made in memory of Tae Min Kim, who was part of Naughty Dog when they developed "Way of the Warrior" for the 3DO console.

- Tiny Tiger and The Komodo Brothers were originally created for this game by Joe Pearson, but their introduction was pushed over to the sequel.

- Crash Bandicoot was one of the first platformers in full 3D, alongside Jumping Flash! and Super Mario 64.

- It's one of the best-selling western video-game series in Japan, selling 4.5 million copies in Japan alone.

- The Crash Bandicoot series as a whole has sold 39.2 million units as of 2009.

- This game was featured as the 49th top console game in the Guiness World Records 2009 Gamer's Edition book.

- The first 3 levels to have been finished were moved onto the Third Island for being too hard. These are Cortex Power, Generator Room and Heavy Machinery, as found out by forum member Hacc.

Puns

- Dr. Neo Cortex's name derives from the part of the brain called neocortex.

- Dr. N. Brio's name might be a pun on the word 'embryo', which is the name for the developing young of an animal or plant. This could be related to his knowledge about gene science and his successful attempts at evolving otherwise common animals.

- "N. Sanity" is an obvious pun on the word 'insanity'.

- The name of the level "Boulder Dash" is a play on the word 'balderdash', which generally means 'nonsense'.

References

- The level "Rolling Stones" is named after the music band.

- "Up The Creek" is named after the 1984 movie with the same name.

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