Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, was said to be working on Yoshi’s Island, his massive ode to 2D action.īut an important initial question was “which system?” As far as we knew, no one had even begun work on bringing the best-selling-but-notoriously-difficult CAG to 3D. We all agreed that the “Sonic’s Ass,” game was an awesome idea. In California, in 1994, this foursome of me, Jason, Dave, and Mark were the main creative contributors to the game that would become Crash Bandicoot. We were also excited to work closely with Universal VP Mark Cerny, who had made the original Marble Madness and Sonic 2. Jason, Andy & Morgan on arriving at Universalīefore leaving Boston we’d hired our first employee (who didn’t start full time until January 1995), a brilliant programmer and M.I.T.

But we worried about the camera, dizziness, and the player’s ability to judge depth – more on that later. And it was born from the question: what would a 3D CAG be like? Well, we thought, you’d spend a lot of time looking at “Sonic’s Ass.” Aside from the difficulties of identifying with a character only viewed in posterior, it seemed cool. So on the second day of the drive, passing Chicago and traveling through America’s long flat heartland, fed on McDonalds, and accompanied by a gassy Labrador/Ridgeback mix (also fed on McDonalds), the idea came to us. Top examples were Mario, Sonic, and our personal recent favorite, Donkey Kong Country. In the 80s and early 90s the best sellers on home systems were dominated by CAGs and their cousins (like “walk to the right and punch” or “walk to the right and shoot”). Sensing opportunity, we turned to our own favorite genre, the character platform action game (CAG for short). Racing was clearly 100% the better in 3D, and while Virtua Fighter wasn’t as playable as Street Fighter, the writing was on the wall. Racing had, with Ridge Racerand Virtua Racing. Having studied arcade games intensely (yeah, in 1994 they were still relevant) we couldn’t help but notice that 2 or 3 of the leading genres had really begun making the transition into full 3D rendering. Jason and I had been debating our next game for months, but the three-day drive from Boston to LA provided ample opportunity. It certainly didn’t turn out to be a bad decision. At the same time we agreed to a “housekeeping” deal with Universal, which meant moving to LA, and for me bailing out on my M.I.T. In the summer of 1994 we finished it and sold the rights to Universal Studios.

In 19 we invested our own money to develop the 3D0 fighting game, Way of the Warrior. Over the preceding eight years, we had published six games as a lean and mean duo, but the time had come to expand. was still a two-man company, myself and my longtime partner Jason Rubin.

Crash bandicoot 1996