Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex - Jon Burton's Beta 2
A prototype uncovered by Traveller's Tales' founder Jon Burton has a number of differences on display compared to the release version of the game. According to Jon, this seems to be at its most prominent in the boss Crashes to Ashes, as shown in the video below:
Title Screen
The title screen doesn't feature any of the company logos or information and jumps straight into the logo, which itself has the same lettering animation, but remains static afterwards and with no green smoke coming out of the exaust pipes. A major difference is that the background shows the VR Hub instead of being set in space. You'll also notice that all the sound effects while navigating the menus are wrong.
VR Hub
- The Load/Save screen is static with no moving particles. You'll notice there aren't any extras around the screen, with the cables, Coco's computer, and the moving apparatus on the right side missing from the scene.
- Coco is facing the center of the hub, since the computer isn't there for her to look at it.
- The center of the hub has a hole on the floor instead of a slot for the platform that eventually takes you to the secret levels.
- Instead of having fog that prevents you from using them, the boss buttons are covered by a rather neat water-like dome.
- The fourth Warp Room's electric barrier is missing the second bolt counting from top to bottom.
Debug Menu
A standard tool for developers, the debug menu can be accessed by pausing the game, featuring a lot of neat options used for (you guessed it) debugging purposes. Why the fourth hub is named Weather instead of Air is beyond me, though.
Relic Times
Only Arctic Antic's Sapphire time has been shown, but it's 1'00''00 as opposed to 1'15''00. It's a reasonable assumption that there are other times different from the final version.
Crashes to Ashes
- As the video demonstrates, the third boss was originally a bit different, as Crash would be couped up in the Jeep the entire time, instead of running away from Crunch and using the water mech to counter. The Jeep in this level is capable of firing green, gelatinous blobs, and you need to hit Crunch with 6 of these to defeat him.
- Since the fight isn't quite complete, there are a few oddities like jerky animations, the lack of an actual ending, camera quirks, and the presence of the crate counter in the HUD. It's unknown whether the other bosses have the crate counter in this build too.
