Crash’s Traveller’s Tales

Crash’s Traveller’s Tales

Crash's Traveller's Tales

New development tidbits have been released for Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex and Crash Twinsanity!

Jon Burton, head of Traveller's Tales back in the day (or Traveler's Tales if you want to be pedantic) has unveiled new videos of prototype builds for both The Wrath of Cortex and Twinsanity. Through his YouTube channel, Gamehut, he's not only shown a video of perhaps the earliest build of The Wrath of Cortex's 'Crash 'n' Burn' level, originally shown on the Crash Mania forum's CMTV claymation programme, but also use of the jeep in the boss level 'Crashes to Ashes'. You can view both videos and more on Jon's YouTube channel, or right here:

Released in 2001, The Wrath of Cortex is infamous for its watered-down WARPED gameplay and rushed development cycle. However, it's still a game I play every now and again with fondness thanks to fun gameplay gimmicks and its catchy soundtrack. Minus the sub, that is.

Game-ten-hut

Of course, 2004's Twinsanity also gets a look in with an earlier beta build. This shows various changes of N.Sanity Island, including a new entrance/exit to 'Jungle Bungle' and Crash's house. The beach is also more expansive and contains a new wumpa acorn puzzle. Whilst the beach is cut off in the final version of the game, various visual pieces of the beach can still be seen at the higher points of 'Jungle Bungle'.

Most interestingly of all is a fork in the jungly road. The right route takes Crash to a worm, bounced on to reach the next part of the level like in the finale game... whilst the left takes Crash to an underground cavern. This would have led to 'Bug Run' - a level where Crash ran from many bugs (the creatures, not actual glitches... although that would have been strangely entertaining). Jon shows it in its entirety, bugless. It's a fascinating look into the earlier aspects of Twinsanity and, yet again, piques my curiosity as to what Twinsanity would have been like had all its cut content made it into the game...

Twinsane Developments

Speaking of which, Traveller's Tales Oxford alumni, Paul Gardner, has also unveiled some new Twinsanity bits. What marked as a nice surprise through his Twitter account, Paul delved into the level creation process. He stated:

"Initially we planned to construct large, open levels, using custom geometry for the base terrain. However we found it time-consuming to iterate/make changes to the levels, and a challenge to keep the art style/texture resolution consistent across such large environment... So our Lead Artist Dan Tonkin developed a clever modular system from which the levels were assembled, a 3D version of 2D tiles. This made it much easier to quickly snap together, test, and modify a layout, and meant we could effectively prototype using final geometry..."

Paul has also shown a HD version of a cut Twinsanity cutscene involving Cortex, Coco and a felt-tip marker. For more, see Paul's tweets here:

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Edgar's life has strangely interwoven with Crash Bandicoot. Whether that's having administrated the Crash Mania forum (as Smaz), or meeting lifelong friends, Crash has always been the glue in his life. When he's not writing about Crash, Edgar spends his time playing the trumpet, writing fiction or working on long-term game project, Hudokai.

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