Whatever Happened to Crash Bandicoot?

Originally written for Curious Culture, 4th April 2015

Hands up, who knows Mario? If your hand is up, right now, and everyone around you is staring at a person at a computer with their hand up, then congratulations – you win a loss of respect! But seriously, Mario, Sonic, Pikachu, Ratchet, Cloud, Link, Megaman… these are just some of the most iconic gaming characters of our time. But there’s one missing. It hasn’t gone unnoticed, even today, after such an icon faded into obscurity in 2010. IGN created a poll, back in 2012, listing game characters who’s 15th anniversary went by entirely forgotten about by the games industry, but not by the gamers. And who would make near the top of that list? Who had such a legacy that he made over 40 million in game sales, alone? Who was the number 1 most requested character in PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale – a celebration of PlayStation history? I’m talking, of course, about Crash Bandicoot.

Mario, Sonic and Crash - all highly recognised mascots!

So what happened to Crash Bandicoot? There’s no tomb stone to mark the year he died, no epitaph lamenting "I was once an angel, now I’ve fallen" to signify a decrease in game sales, and even no sprog-spawn to continue his legacy on a handheld console. The answer lies way back at the start of Crash’s tenure, when Crash was bit a wee apple in developer Naughty Dog’s eye.

Fresh from their rejoice at having developed Mortal Kombat clone Way of the Warrior, fully published by their new contract with Universal Interactive Studios, Naughty Dog head developers, Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, sped down a California highway to contemplate their next move. Weaving between slow vehicles like Bubsy 3D and oncoming traffic, like Super Mario 64, Rubin had a brainwave;

"[W]e realised that Sony[sic] had Sonic and Nintendo had Mario.  We set out to make a mascot for the only hardware company that didn’t have a character action mascot."

So, Rubin and Gavin had a crash… A Crash Bandicoot, which they then took to their publisher, Universal Interactive Studios. And here begins the start of Crash’s current affair with lounging around on beach, somewhere in California – Universal Interactive Studios brought developer Naughty Dog on board for a three game contract deal. That meant Naughty Dog’s next three games were owned by Universal, including the rights to them. Naughty Dog’s next three games were, of course, Crash Bandicoot titles.

Whilst Universal had a large slice of the share, which we will imagine in the form of a giant Crash pie and eaten by Universal’s contractor; Mark Cerny, Sony also had a slice in the original PlayStation games (hence why you still find them on the PlayStation store). However, once the three game contract was up, with Universal, Naughty Dog decided on one additional Crash Bandicoot title to be published by Sony, only. This game would be the only Crash title which had nothing to do with Universal; Crash Team Racing. Rubin notes:

"The chain of events that led to three parties [Universal, Sony and Naughty Dog] being involved in the Crash Universe both helped launch the franchise and also eventually impeded it.  By the time Naughty Dog finished working on the three titles it had contracted to do with Universal (Crash 1-3) we were determined to get fair compensation for the work we were putting in to the titles. Sony was doing a great job marketing and distributing the games, and Naughty Dog was working 7 day weeks and 16 hour days finishing the titles. However, Universal Interactive wasn’t doing much at all (Mark Cerny still had a big role. He had left Universal by this time and was working with Naughty Dog as a contractor)."

Shortly after, Naughty Dog decided to move onto their next big thing – Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for the PlayStation 2, published entirely by Sony due to the reasons Rubin stated above. And so, Universal retained the franchise rights all on their lonesome, once Crash finally hit the PlayStation 2.

Crash Bandicoot looks like he's having way too much fun on Polar the polar bear cub.

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex was developed by Traveller’s Tales, an entirely different developer, but owned and published by (you guessed it) Universal Interactive Studios. Universal had decided that, in order to maximise their sales and since Sony had no cut in further Crash games, they’d release Crash on multiple consoles. Rejoice! Now everyone could play the… muddy watered down version of Crash, known as The Wrath of Cortex. Woo hoo. And so, with Universal constantly switching around developers of their franchise, Crash came out with some particularly varied and inconsistent titles which often fell flat thanks to Universal’s pressure to have short development cycles and control on the titles.

The Wrath of Cortex saw Crash take on Cortex's 'secret weapon' - Crunch.

And then Activision happened, which came in like a wrecking ball. It never hit so hard with 'love'. It just wanted to own them all. But all it ever did was wreck things. Okay, I’ll stop. Back in 2007, money hungry publisher, Activision, acquired the publisher Universal Interactive Studios, (who had also recently changed their name to Vivendi). With this, of course, came the acquisition of the Crash Bandicoot series, who was then being developed by Radical Entertainment. What emerged was a somewhat tepid affair where Activision and Radical attempted to try and make Crash more “relevant” to the current gaming market. You see, games were starting to head down the military First Person Shooter alley, at that point, where platformers such as Crash struggled to survive down said shady alley and on anything but a Nintendo console. The X-Box 360, Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 generation started and, with them, came the beginning of the end for Crash.

In fact, it wasn’t just Crash that sailed into stormy seas like a drunken sailor on too much Wumpa Fruit, but platformers as a genre. Without drinking too much of this can of worms (yummy), in a generation which focused on realism, with human characters and realistic weapons such as guns or bloodied swords, the platforming genre struggled to survive in the war. Platformers become 2D variations of their former selves or indie titles to be played as a mini-game, in between shooting chumps in Battlefield or Call of Duty… and it’s for that reason, Crash became much less relevant to the game market when the new generation of consoles hit. Call of Duty shot Crash. And here’s how.

Radical Entertainment smartly chose to focus their Crash development on the Nintendo Wii (as the primary console) for their first new title to re-invigorate the franchise – Crash of the Titans. All other console versions were scaled up or down from the Nintendo Wii version. The game aspired to be 'relevant' by changing the traditional platforming gameplay to beating up enemies with punches, combos and monsters called “Titans” which could be hi-jacked and taken over. It changed an awful lot of the lore in what made Crash… well, Crash. I’m sure you’ll agree with me, here, in that traditional and fun Crash gameplay involved spinning through a level, collecting the Crystal and smashing all the crates for a special Gem, right? Every few levels would involve a boss fight, right? 100 Wumpa Fruit sprung a life, right?! Well, to be 'relevant' it meant making Crash have a health bar to keep with other games at the time, removing Crystals and Gems and giving Crash a repertoire of moves which could be levelled up. Aku Aku, that sexy talking mask, no longer made Crash invulnerable when three were attained, but could be used as a blocking move, instead. Things were different. Things weren’t the same. Things just weren’t as good.

Crash of the Titans saw Crash take on 'titans', changing up the gameplay dramatically.

Despite this, a killer marketing campaign did bring Crash into the forefront of many casual player’s minds, wherein a new series of adverts showed a guy in a Crash suit leap on ostriches and pretend to hijack them like the 'Titans' within the game, as well as Crash becoming an icon of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and being painted in all sorts of bizarre places, such as on a hummer for the Annual Balloon Fiesta in Bristol, England, at the same time. And then the lay-offs happened.

In 2008, Activision, in a decision to cut costs and keep with what sold and was 'relevant', laid off a large number of their developer staff. The Guitar Hero franchise was one that was hit particularly hard, following on from millions of yearly sales, purely because their sales were slowly on the decline on a yearly basis. Radical Entertainment was also hit, but not nearly as bad… but it did effectively put Crash in a box, so to speak. At the end of 2008, Radical Entertainment released Crash: Mind Over Mutant, a direct sequel to Crash of the Titans and published by Activision. With no promotional lead up, no money put into the company and no money put into advertising it, the game was released unbeknownst to virtually everyone but the hardcore fans who looked under every rock to find out details on the next game. Fans like me.

Mind Over Mutant may have introduced Crash's sister, Coco, as a playable character on the XBox 360 and Wii, but it was poorly advertised and much the same as Crash of the Titans.

And so, with all the changes to become 'relevant', the cut of any money put into promoting and funding the game beyond less than a year’s worth of development, as well as the waning interest in platformers compared to Call of Duty, Crash: Mind Over Mutant didn’t sell nearly as well as previous Crash games. Whilst it did break a million copies in a relatively short time, Activision decided it was time to lay off many more of their staff members… and in February 2010, the half of Radical Entertainment that developed Crash, was made defunct so that more money could be put intothe next Call of Duty. Crash was shot by Call of Duty and effectively put into a coma.

So what then? In a move more mysterious than the Bermuda Triangle, Activision renewed the rights to the franchise. Did they plan to release a new game? No. It was renewed and kept a hold of, very tightly. When Playstation All Stars Battle Royale was being developed, for release in 2012, Crash wasn’t even allowed to join the roster due to Activision’s tight grip. This included Spyro the Dragon (in which perhaps you can now understand why what happened to Spyro also happened, regarding Skylanders). What’s even more bizarre is that two newer Crash games were being developed before being cancelled in 2010; Crash Landed, an open-world platformer, and Crash Team Racing 2010, where go karts took to the track to throw all manner of marsupial weapons at one another.

Everyone you could ever want! Except... Crash, Spyro, Cloud, Snake, Lara Croft, Dart...

But I think the future is bright. In the UK, we all remember Doctor Who as the show which was cancelled for the same reasons, back in 1989, only to come back, full force, in 2005 and made entirely by fans of the old show. The new show was great and, of course, “relevant” to the current market of the time. For Crash, I feel the same will happen given time. Activision CEO, Eric Hirshberg, expressed an interest in bringing him back in the future, stating:

"I love Crash Bandicoot. Those were some of my favorite games growing up and I would love to find a way to bring him back, if we could."

It’s just a question of when this could be, as well as how will Crash be made 'relevant' in the future market.

"Activision owns Crash Bandicoot and we continue to explore ways in which we could bring the beloved series back to life..."

Stated a spokesperson for Activision. It’s not impossible. With Mark Cerny’s (who worked on the original Crash PlayStation titles as Universal Interactive Studios’ representative) PlayStation 4 and his platformer Knack having opened the doors for a more versatile games system, one can only look to the future as the misty thoughts disperse of "whatever happened to Crash Bandicoot?"

EDIT: Since this article's original publications, Crash Bandicoot has returned in full force. You can read about the run up to, and including, his grand return in one of my more recent articles.

Sources:

 http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/02/15/jak-daxter-retrospective/

 http://cbcrystalswrath.tumblr.com/