Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, legacy PlayStation games, might become Xbox games. That is, if Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Activision goes through.
Naughty Dog and Insomniac created both franchises. They’ve become PlayStation’s golden eggs and two of the most important developers in the gaming industry. That left me with one question: how did Sony let these legacy mascots get away?
I did some research and I think it’s a super interesting story that I’ve never heard all in one place. If you’ll join me, let’s dive in!
The New Dogs on the Yard
Fourteen-year-olds, Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, founded Naughty Dog, then JAM Software, in 1984. Two years prior, they were working on an unofficial PC port of Punch-Out!. But Gavin failed to properly back up the only copy of the game they had. So they started working on their first original game. An educational game for the Apple II called Math Jam. They self-published the game and sold it to schools in 1985 until they were told “to get three or four psychiatrists and sixteen teachers to sign off on” the game.
Working With Baudville
Instead, they began working on a skiing game called Ski Crazed. A Michigan-based publisher called Baudville published the game 1986. The game sold roughly 1,500 units and allowed them to buy a second hard drive for the first time in their fledgling careers. They continued working with Baudville on their next game, Dream Zone. A text-based adventure game for the Apple II and the Commodore Amiga. Their sophomore effort was released in 1987 and sold roughly 10,000 units, reportedly earning the duo about $15,000. Not bad for a couple of seventeen-year-olds.
Rubin and Gavin had higher hopes, so they parted ways with Baudville. Gavin is quoted as saying, “Baudville wasn’t much of a marketer and they didn’t have very good distribution.” Rubin added, “We felt it was our destiny to be the biggest and best. Therefore, any time we felt that there was something standing in our way, such as our publisher [not being] good enough, we simply called [another] publisher, through their front line, and said, ‘We’re Naughty Dog. We should be working for you.’”
Naughty Dog x Electronic Arts
It was at this point that they called Electronic Arts, asking for a deal. Gavin and Rubin impressed EA with a copy of Dream Zone that they shipped to the publisher. The Naughty Dog founders sent EA a contract, requesting $15,000 to make their next game. EA gave them an additional ten percent of each unit sold. They began working on an RPG called Keef the Thief, which ended up actually costing closer to $48,000.
Gavin is quoted as saying, “Occasionally, [EA] had games that got canceled or failed or whatever, but the thing is, you didn’t have to sell very much to make money. They had a lot of money in those days“. Keef the Thief launched in 1989 on Apple II, Amiga, and MS-DOS. With Keef the Thief, the duo ditched the JAM Software moniker. Naughty Dog had officially arrived and their new game would sell roughly 50,000 units.
Betrayed By EA
Unfortunately, working with EA wasn’t going so well. The naughty dogs wanted to make a serious RPG. But EA wanted funny one. They even went as far as hiring a writer to punch up the script with jokes. Rubin is quoted as saying, “The problem was, the marketplace wasn’t fully prepared for a comedy RPG at the time… It was funny. But it was an odd kind of funny.”
Rubin then went on to say, “It was a good game. But it kinda capped out at a certain amount of sales. I remember EA saying to us that we probably shouldn’t have gone with comedy, after the fact. That kind of stung me… It was one of those things where we didn’t have an opportunity to decide what was going on. We had already signed up, and they had the right to do this.”
Moving Forward
Despite the forfeiture of creative control, Rubin and Gavin continued to work with EA on another RPG, codenamed Buccaneer. They asked for $90,000 and EA obliged. But cost expanded to roughly $150,000. The duo would pioneer telecommuting by working on Buccaneer remotely while they attended college in different states. During breaks from school, the two would meet up in Gavin’s parent’s basement in Virginia. There, they made up for the lost time.
The two were developing Buccaneer for PC. But upon a visit to EA, they learned about SEGA’s new console: the Genesis. Working with the consoles required EA to pretty button-lipped. Some developers turning their monitors off whenever someone stepped into their cubicle. But Trip Hawkins brought Gavin up to speed on EA’s work with Genesis. After signing some non-disclosure agreements, of course.
The Genesis of Console Development
At the time, EA was working with reverse-engineered, make-shift Genesis dev kits. The consoles would alter the signal of other electronics around them and Gavin noted that “People would complain in my dorm about their [TV’s] reception.” Working with these stopgap consoles slowed down development for EA’s Genesis games. But the clever dogs, Rubin and Gavin, found the an advantageous development tool in the interference. “When it crashed, the noise pattern would change. I could see how busy the graphics hardware was from the interference patterns. I would leave a TV [on] across the room because it was a useful debugging aid,” Gavin noted.
This new RPG was a turning point in Naughty Dog’s career. Rings of Power symbolized the transition to being a developer of console games. Although the duo wasn’t pleased with how the game turned out, Rubin noted, “it should have been a PC game.” However, it sold 100,000 copies in three months.
It was at this time that the naughty duo received a call from the now publicly traded EA. Rubin stated they said, “We have good news and bad news. [The] good news is, you’re sold out. [The] bad news is, we’re not going to reprint it.” EA had decided to use cartridges with smaller memory sizes that would be unable to fit Rings of Power. They instead decided to print another game that would fit on the cartridge, and that game was Madden.
Naughty Dog’s Hibernation
Naughty Dog decided to go on hiatus. EA’s marketing team were sports guys that misunderstood what Naughty Dog was making. EA opted to sell sports games that were cheaper and easier to sell. This left Gavin and Rubin feeling burned by their publisher. During this hiatus, Rubin moved to California and Gavin pursued a Ph.D. at MIT.
Rubin started a special effects company and began working with 3D graphics. He received a contract from Columbia Pictures to work on the transformation scene in the film Wolf. But then 3DO called. Electronic Arts’ Trip Hawkins, the man who brought the duo up to speed on SEGA Genesis, created 3DO. This call ended their hiatus and brought the duo back together.
Their games being printed on less expensive CD was exciting. Cartridges were expensive and took forever to print. They began developing a game for 3DO without a publisher, using the money they made from Rings of Power. Despite spending the entire $80,000, the duo enjoyed their newfound freedom. They could design and create as they saw fit.
Instead of developing the games Gavin wanted to play, they looked to the gaming scene for inspiration. Fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were all the rage and the two saw an opportunity. “So we looked at this and were like, “that’s a good bang for the buck’… You make one background and one character, against yourself, and you’ve got a playable game. You could start working out balance issues and play issues and stuff,” Gavin stated.
Way Of The Warrior
Rubin moved to Boston to work on the game with Gavin as he attended MIT. They got an apartment and toiled away on their Kung-Fu-inspired fighting game. The two bit off more than they could chew with their new project, Way of the Warrior. The duo had no choice but to hire contractors for the first time in Naughty Dog’s history.
The duo then purchased a spot at the 3DO booth during 1994’s Consumer Electronics Show. They still didn’t have a publisher. But they wanted to try to find the right fit for Way of the Warrior. They ended up finding themselves in a three-way bidding war between 3DO, Crystal Dynamics, and Universal Studios.
A Bidding War Ensues
Crystal Dynamics wanted to buy the game and use the engine for their newly acquired IP, Samurai Shodown. This didn’t interest Gavin or Rubin in the slightest. Despite 3DO’s Trip Hawkins charming approach, they also turned down their offer. Instead, the two favored the deal Universal Studios had offered. “… Universal offered us to come on the lot to make additional games, to fund additional games, to give us creative freedom, and it just sounded a lot cooler,” Rubin explained. “It was, in the end, a better deal. For us, this was one of the big decision points. Had we gone with 3DO as an exclusive, it could have been the end of Naughty Dog.”
The two packed their belongings and headed off for Los Angeles to make games for Universal Interactive. During the drive, they would begin brainstorming their next game. That game was Crash Bandicoot. Meanwhile, an inspired Princeton graduate wanted to try his hand at game development.
The Sleepless Dreamers
Ted Price was busying founding Insomniac games in 1994, while Naughty Dog was working on Way of the Warrior. Price had graduated from Princeton and was working at a medical company. He reached out to his fellow alumni and coding expert, Al Hastings, to join the studio. Hastings called upon his brother, Brian Hastings, to enter the fold. A few others joined on and began working on a PlayStation game. But first, they had to settle on a name for the studio.
However, the studio kicked around several names before landing on Insomniac. In favor of Xtreme Software, the studio tossed out Outzone and Planet X. But the studio only used Xtreme for roughly a year before discovering a database company was already using the name. On the precipice of releasing their first game, the sleepless dreamers had to come up with a new name. The studio explored names like Ragnarok, Ice Nine, Moon Turtle, and The Resistance Incorporated. But a litany of legal reasons resulted in the studio using the only name they liked that nobody else had; Insomniac Games.
A Doom-Clone Named Disruptor
A Doom-inspired first-person shooter called Disruptor was Insomiac’s first game. “I was a big Doom fan,” Price states, “the roots [of the game] were really in the excitement that all of us had experienced the first time we played Doom. For a lot of us, it’s hard to remember back that far. But when Doom came out, it was a mind-blowing game.”
The developers at Insomniac had an uphill battle ahead of them. Hastings has stated, “We didn’t know what we were doing… None of us had any experience. We happened to come in at a good time in the industry. When a lot of people didn’t know what they were doing. Going to 3D. It was the end of the 8-bit platforms and the start of something new… But… doing a sort of Doom clone, it felt doable.”
Issues With 3DO
Similar to Naughty Dog’s Way of the Warrior, Disruptor began development as a game for the Panasonic 3DO. Price explained, “We began on 3DO because when I started Insomniac, 3DO was the first really viable CD-based system on the market… They had dev kits available for very low prices. And Sony, at the time, wasn’t making dev kits available to everybody“. So the fledgling studio purchased a 3DO dev kit for $8,000.
“At the time, I think a lot of people thought [the 3DO] would succeed. I don’t think we were alone in our naivete. But pretty soon, maybe halfway through [development], it became clear that 3DO was just never going to be viable. It was about that same time that Sony and SEGA were putting out alternatives,” Hastings elaborated. At this point, Insomniac would shift its focus from 3DO to PlayStation. Disruptor would end up releasing in North America on Sony’s PlayStation on November 30, 1996. But none of that would have been possible if not for Universal Interactive’s Mark Cerny.
Enter Mark Cerny
While attending the University of California Berkeley, Mark Cerny had two hobbies; programming and playing arcade games. He realized he could turn these passions into a career. So he began looking for a company that would hire a young programmer. At the age of seventeen, Cerny was hired by none other than Atari.
During his time with Atari, the expectation was that programmers should also be designers. In 1982, Atari didn’t have dedicated designers. Sequels had a bad reputation, so each game had to be original. However, this creative environment didn’t always give birth to success. Cerny says, “… from almost the moment I joined [Atari], it was losing money and in danger of going out of business.”
Cerny’s Time At Atari and SEGA
During this time, Cerny planted his flag in the industry. He made a name as designer and co-programmer of the 1984 arcade game Marble Madness. However, it wasn’t long before Cerny was ready to explore new horizons. He joined SEGA and spent roughly three years in Tokyo. There he worked on Master System games like Missile Defense 3-D and Shooting Gallery.
At this point in 1991, Cerny set to create his own team. SEGA wanted to expand its reach in the United States. So the two formed the SEGA Technical Institute in the US. During this time, Cerny and STI would develop Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Kid Chameleon.
In 1992, Cerny and SEGA parted ways. Cerny would begin working with industry young-blood Crystal Dynamics. Here he worked on the 3DO games Crash ‘n Burn and Total Eclipse. Around the release of Total Eclipse in 1994, Crystal Dynamics purchased a PlayStation dev kit. Cerny brokered this deal after traveling to Tokyo to meet with a fresh-faced executive, Shuhei Yoshida.
Recruited By Universal Interactive
Coincidentally, Cerny never got to go hands-on with that particular dev kit. Instead, he was recruited to lead Universal Studios’ new arm in multimedia, Universal Interactive Studios. Cerny fulfilled the duties of Vice President of Product Development. Then President of the same division, over a four-year period. Cerny is quoted as saying, “The best part about this was that Universal didn’t really know the business… As a result, I had a great big bag of money to spend and no supervision.”. This is where the paths of fate intersect for Cerny, Naughty Dog, and Insomniac Games.
When Forces Collide
Mark Cerny’s brought Naughty Dog into the fold with Universal’s “great big bag of money”. They were brought in to continue working on Way of the Warrior and to develop three more games. Additionally, Cerny met with Insomniac Games after being impressed with Disruptor’s critical reception. Cerny would serve as Executive Producer for both of the studios’ next games.
Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin were moving to Los Angeles and began workshopping their next game. They wanted to create a 3D action platformer, similar to that of “Donkey Kong Country, Mario, and Sonic.” The two gave their new project the code-name “Sonic’s Ass Game,” due to the player having to stare at the character’s back while playing. After arriving in LA, they met with Cerny, and Sonic’s Ass Game was green-lit.
Creating Crash Bandicoot
Cerny’s relationship with Sony led to the establishment of Universal’s relationship with PlayStation. Gavin and Rubin agreed to develop their next title for the PlayStation, but first, they needed a lead character. They hired Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson, both artists from American Exitus, to design characters and environments. This resulted in the creation of Willy the Wombat. However, Universal Interactive’s Marketing Director suggested the names Wez, Wuzzles, or Wizzy the Wombat be used. However, the destruction of crates led them to rename Willy the Wombat. Thus, Crash Bandicoot was born.
With a lead character, Naughty Dog began a three-month development process before pitching. By April 1995, the game functioned, and by June 1995, it became playable. With three levels completed by August 1995, they continued plugging away on additional levels. In September 1995, Naughty Dog presented the game to Sony Computer Entertainment in a behind-closed-doors meeting. Development continued and in March 1996, Sony agreed to publish Crash Bandicoot for their PlayStation console.
Universal Thievery
Prior to E3 1996, Universal Interactive told Naughty Dog that they weren’t allowed to attend the conference. This was done in an attempt to take credit for Crash Bandicoot. The publisher removed the Naughty Dog logo from the temporary box art and press materials for E3. These assets leaked and were in violation of the contract between the two. In retaliation, Rubin drafted and printed a flyer. It read, “Naughty Dog, creator, and developer of Crash Bandicoot,” which he submitted for review to Universal Interactive. This angered the publisher’s President.
Regardless of this drama, Crash Bandicoot was revealed in May 1996 at E3. It took the studio eighteen months to develop and released in North America on September 9th, 1996. It received a favorable reception. Its marketing, which showed a crazed fan in a mascot outfit harassing Mario from outside a Nintendo building, became iconic.
Crash Strikes Back… Twice
Following Crash Bandicoot, Naughty Dog would develop two direct sequels; Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Cortex Strikes Back was developed in thirteen months and cost $2,000,000 to produce. The sequel introduced a “dynamic difficulty adjustment” system where the game would respond to player activity to balance its difficulty. It received critical praise and its sales made it one of the best-selling PlayStation games (relative to its time on the market).
Naughty Dog followed Cortex Strikes Back with Warped. The studio produced the game in roughly ten and a half months, with an estimated budget of roughly over $2,000,000. Three new gameplay engines were developed for the game, all focused on vehicles. Warped received a glowing critical reception and sold incredibly well, despite falling short of its predecessor. This completed Naughty Dog’s original contract with Universal Interactive. But the studio had been working on the engine for a racing game while completing Warped.
But Wait… There’s More
The studio presented its racing game to Sony with a desire for it to be a Crash game. Sony liked the idea and struck up a deal with Universal. Naughty Dog developed Crash Team Racing in eight months with a budget of $2,400,000. It too received a great critical reception but did not sell as well as any of the main entries in the trilogy. However, Naughty Dog wouldn’t develop another Crash Bandicoot game.
Creating Spyro The Dragon
Meanwhile, Insomniac Games began working on their own trilogy of games. Artist, Craig Stitt, had the idea for a game about a dragon. Born from his own interest in the mythological creature. Initially, the project had a darker tone, but Cerny suggested the team strive for a more mass-market appeal. At the time, PlayStation’s selection of children’s titles paled in comparison to Nintendo 64’s offerings.
Insomniac Programmer, Peter Hastings, claims the lead character was originally named Pete. However, staying true to Insomniac tradition, a copyright concern regarding Disney’s Pete’s Dragon resulted in the studio considering other options. Pyro seemed too mature, but Spyro fit the tone they were looking for.
Insomniac’s office was located just across the hall from Naughty Dog, and the two developed a strong relationship. They play-tested each other’s games and shared game technology. Charles Zembillas, who worked on Crash Bandicoot, designed the Spyro character; which was originally green. In an effort to not blend in with the grass, Spyro was instead rendered purple.
It’s Not Rocket Science… But It Helps To Know It
Hastings is quoted as saying, “Just thinking about how to animate a dragon back in those days, how to simulate that. We gotta make this thing basically behave like a little circle. A little sphere, or it’s just going to be a disaster. That was part of the impetus for just sort of cute-ifying it and making it a little baby dragon.”
Spyro’s ability to glide made the game unique at the time. This ability to travel great distances meant the levels had to be wider and more open. Insomniac hired A NASA engineer, Matt Whiting, to program the camera, which made players nauseous in early play-testing. Alex Hastings developed a 3D panoramic engine that displayed far-away objects with simple textures and closer objects with a more detailed texture. This adhered to the PlayStation’s limited RAM. Additionally, it made Spyro one of the first games to feature a dynamic rendering system.
A Dragon’s Time In The Sun
Spyro the Dragon was first shown at E3 in 1998. It was released on September 9, 1998, and received a great critical reception. As of 2007, Spyro the Dragon sold nearly 5,000,000 units worldwide. It propelled PlayStation and its stable of platforming mascot characters to international notoriety.
Insomniac almost immediately got to work on the sequel, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. Insomniac developed and released the follow-up in just under a year. John Fiorito, Insomniac’s COO, explained, “The first one is always special because that’s where you ‘get it’. But that’s not the game where you master it. I think on Spyro, the second one was my favorite. I really felt like the first one, I sort of learned how to make a Spyro game there. On the second one, I was able to make it right.” Ripto’s Rage received a glowing critical reception but failed to sell as well as the original, as of 2007.
One More Time Around The Sun
Insomniac developed Spyro: Year of the Dragon, the third entry in the series, in roughly ten and a half months. Similar to Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Year of the Dragon featured “Auto Challenge Tuning”. According to Ted Price, this feature was, “designed to sense how well a player is doing and interactively ‘tune’ the game’s difficulty so that the hardcore players are constantly challenged…” Year of the Dragon received the best critical reception of the trilogy but again, failed to meet the sales of its predecessors.
Year of the Dragon would be the end of the studios’ partnership with Universal Interactive Studios. Mark Cerny would also leave the publisher, but the future for Crash and Spyro would not stop there.
A Universal Departure
During the rise of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, Mark Cerny left Universal Interactive Studios. He then started his own consultancy agency, Cerny Games. Cerny is quoted as saying, “I really had a choice I had to make. Which was either stay with Universal and try to make everything work as an executive there. Or go independent and work as a consultant to Naughty Dog, Insomniac, and Sony. To be working for teams that I loved… and of course, I chose the latter.”
This would allow Cerny to continue working with Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, and PlayStation without Universal being the middleman. According to Sam Thompson, a long-time Sony producer, “[Universal] liked having someone who was as capable and as accomplished as Mark [Cerny] running this. Allowing them to just kind of unplug… None of them knew game design or game development… They just knew that this was generating income. They knew they had a stake in it… What they did to [Crash Bandicoot] when Naughty Dog left… They truly didn’t understand what they had… how they should mature that franchise and take it to the next generation. Universal was, for the most part, just a stepping stone.”
Naughty Dog and Insomniac Follow Cerny’s Lead
By the time Naughty Dog and Insomniac both completed their contracts with Universal, they too decided to follow suit. Naughty Dog became a first-party studio for PlayStation and Insomniac went independent. Insomniac’s Fiorito stated, “Our goal is to own our own IP and to sell a lot of games… So there’s two problems. As great as our relationship with Sony is, they own the IP. They can’t put it on the Xbox or Nintendo or whatever. When it was going well, we could just look ahead to the next game because [of] how many PS2s were out there. And if the PS3 picked up where the PS2 left off, we’d probably still be working with them.”
Both teams had a desire to own their intellectual properties. But due to their contracts with Universal Interactive, neither studio owned Crash nor Spyro, respectively. However, Universal did. This left the publisher to find studios to develop games for the characters Naughty Dog and Insomniac had made popular.
A Spiraling Crash Into A Dark Age
In the years following, Universal Interactive struggled to find a home for these fan-favorite franchises. Traveller’s Tales originally began development on the next Crash Bandicoot game, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. A disagreement on the game’s design format led to a pivot from an open-world to a more traditional-style Crash game. According to Traveller’s Tales’ Jon Burton, this left the studio starting from scratch with only twelve months to produce results. The Wrath of Cortex received mixed reviews but sold well, due to the Crash Bandicoot name.
The Introduction of Handheld Titles
Meanwhile, Universal tasked Digital Eclipse with developing Spyro: Season of Ice for the Game Boy Advance. Season of Ice asks the player to release fairies from ice prisons, progressing from realm to realm. All in an effort to defeat Grendor, the game’s antagonist. It was released on November 7, 2001, in North America and received a middling critical reception. VGChartz estimates that Season of Ice sold roughly 2.23 million units on the Nintendo handheld.
Digital Eclipse and Universal Interactive released the sequel to Season of Ice, Spyro 2: Season of Flame, in 2002. Similar to Season of Ice, Season of Flame asks the player to reclaim stolen fireflies. The game also features the return of Ripto, the antagonist from Ripto’s Rage. Its reviews were more favorable than its predecessor’s but it failed to commercially exceed Season of Ice. VGChartz estimates the sequel sold 1.58 million units on GBA.
Spyro Returns to the Home Console
Then it was time for a Spyro to grace the home console once again. Check Six Studios and Equinox Digital Entertainment co-developed Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. Enter the Dragonfly functioned similarly to the original trilogy, from a gameplay perspective. The story followed the events of Year of the Dragon but also featured Ripto as the antagonist. Universal Interactive published and released Enter the Dragonfly in 2002 for the PS2 and GameCube. Unfortunately, it reviewed terribly across both platforms. However, VGChartz estimates that it sold 2.68 million units worldwide.
Universal then turned to Vicarious Visions. Universal wanted them to develop a Crash game for the Game Boy Advance called Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure. For the most part, The Huge Adventure functions like a traditional Crash game, but from a side-scrolling perspective. Even featuring Cortex as the main antagonist. It received positive reviews for being similar to Naughty Dog’s games and also sold well. This led to a sequel titled, Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced. N-Tranced received a similar critical reception and it’s estimated by VGChartz to have sold similarly as well.
In 2003, Digital Eclipse tried their hand at another Spyro game for the GBA, called Spyro: Attack of the Rhynocs. Digital Eclipse evolved the RPG elements, but it played similar to their previous work. Attack of the Rhynocs received middling reviews and is estimated to have sold roughly 300,000 units worldwide. Universal wouldn’t publish another Spyro game. Universal then switched to Vivendi Universal Games.
A New Crash Kart Racer and a Cancelled RPG Reborn
Traveller’s Tales Oxford Studio began working on a console kart racer called Crash Nitro Kart. Universal, for an unknown reason, moved development to Vicarious Visions. Crash Nitro Kart ushered the Crash kart racer into the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube generation. Additionally, Universal published the game on GBA, N-Gage, and mobile devices. Crash Nitro Kart received middling reviews and is estimated to have sold well over a number of platforms.
Traveller’s Tales Oxford Studio would instead begin working on a new project, Crash Bandicoot Evolution. Crash Bandicoot Evolution was originally a platforming RPG. However, it became known as Crash Twinsanity. Crash Twinsanity received mixed reviews and is estimated to have sold well on PS2 and Xbox. Traveller’s Tales wanted to create a Crash Bandicoot game called Cortex Chaos in addition to a Crash Twinsanity sequel. But Universal didn’t give the studio the green light and the projects were canceled.
Universal Interactive Becomes Vivendi Universal
Instead, Vicarious Visions developed Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto’s Rampage. Ripto’s Rampage was a crossover Game Boy Advance title with Spyro the Dragon. Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy was the companion game. The thinking behind these games was to emulate the dual versions Pokemon games had found success with. Crash Purple received middling reviews and is estimated to have sold roughly 640,000 units worldwide. Spyro Orange received similar reviews but is only estimated to have sold 570,000 units worldwide.
In 2004, Eurocom Entertainment Software developed Spyro: A Hero’s Tail for the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox. A Hero’s Tail was more in-line with traditional Spyro games, from a gameplay standpoint and featured additional playable characters. It received middling reviews on PS2, GameCube, and Xbox and is estimated to have sold 1.07 million units across all platforms.
Traveller’s Tales began developing a new kart racer, while Vicarious Visions worked on Crash Purple and Spyro Orange. However, Vivendi removed Vicarious Visions from the project and Radical Entertainment completed it. The end result was Crash Tag Team Racing. The first game published under the Universal Sierra Entertainment banner. Crash Tag Team Racing sold well across all platforms and received average review scores across PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and PSP.
Crash and Spyro’s Lowest Point
Meanwhile, Amaze Entertainment developed a follow-up to Spyro: A Hero’s Tail for the Nintendo DS. Spyro: Shadow Legacy was an RPG that brought an end to the original series’ continuity. It currently sits at a 50 on Metacritic and is estimated to have only sold 160,000 units worldwide.
In 2006, a Japanese studio called Dimps developed and released Crash Boom Bang! for the Nintendo DS. It released featuring a Japanese voice cast in all regions. It was received terribly by critics and is estimated to have sold terribly as well.
Around that same time, Krome Studios developed The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning for console and GBA. In an attempt to reboot the series, A New Beginning downplayed platforming in exchange for more emphasis on combat. It also featured celebrity voice acting. Elijah Wood played Spyro and David Spade played Spyro’s dragonfly sidekick, Sparx. Plus, Gary Oldman… Yes, Gary Oldman played Ignitus.
Additionally, Amaze Entertainment developed a version of the game for DS and The Mighty Troglodytes developed a version for mobile. The game has Metacritic review scores spanning from 44 on GBA to 69 on Xbox. Get this, not even VGChartz has sales estimates for every platform. But from what it did show, the numbers were bad. Let’s just leave it at that.
Vivendi Drops Universal
Radical Entertainment developed Crash of the Titans, a platforming beat-em-up for PS2, Wii, and Xbox 360 on October 4, 2007. SuperVillan Studios ported a PSP version and Amaze Entertainment developed the GBA and DS versions. The game received mixed reviews and is estimated to have sold fairly well across all platforms.
Krome Studios developed a sequel to The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning called, The Eternal Night in 2007. Vivendi published Krome’s versions of the game on PS2 and Wii. While Amaze and The Mighty Troglodytes developed GBA/DS and mobile versions, respectively. Elijah Wood and Gary Oldman reprised their roles as Spyro and Ignitus. However, David Spade wised up and let Billy West take his place as Sparx.
The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night reviewed terribly on PS2 and DS. But received middling reviews on Wii and had a solid reception on GBA. It’s estimated to have sold roughly 1 million units across all platforms.
The Legend of Spyro Changes Hands
Following a change of development studios, Étranges Libellules developed the final installment in the Legend of Spyro trilogy. Tantalus Media worked on the DS version and The Mighty Troglodytes returned for the mobile version. To my surprise, Elijah Wood and Gary Oldman both reprised their roles once again. The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon received middling reviews on PS2, PS3, Wii, 360, and DS. It’s estimated to have sold 2.18 million units across all platforms.
Without Naughty Dog and Insomniac, Crash and Spyro fell from grace. Both commercially and in the eyes of critics. This brought an end to Crash and Spyro’s time under the Universal, Vivendi, and Sierra publishing banners. But this wouldn’t be the last we’d see of the classic platforming mascots. A publisher we all know too well would step in and acquire the rights to the orange and purple heroes.
Enter Activision
Activision purchased both intellectual properties in 2008. Activision CEO, Bobby Kotick, had concerns about the company’s presence in the massively multiplayer online market. Discussions with Vivendi CEO, Jean-Bernard Lévy, began in 2006 because Vivendi owned Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard was responsible for the widely popular World of Warcraft MMO that made roughly $1.1 billion a year in subscriptions. However, Vivendi also owned Sierra Entertainment, which was publishing Crash and Spyro games under the Vivendi banner since 2004.
Activision signed to merge with Vivendi in December 2007, and in July 2008, the merger was completed. In the years following, Activision published a number of Crash games, including a number of mobile games. However, the publisher only released one Spyro game, an entire decade after Dawn of the Dragon. But the toys-to-life game, Skylanders, featured the purple dragon.
In 2008, Radical Entertainment developed Crash: Mind Over Mutant, a beat-em-up game for PS2, PSP, Wii, 360, and DS. However, a Japanese studio called Tose developed the DS version, and Chinese developer Virtuos handled the PSP version. Mind Over Mutant received a mixed critical reception across all platforms. The DS version currently sits at a 45 on Metacritic while the PS2 version averages out at 73. It’s estimated to have sold roughly 2.26 million units across all platforms.
Dominating Mobile Games
Later that year, Vivendi Games Mobile finished publishing a mobile kart racer, developed by Swedish studio, Polarbit. Activision released Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D on Symbian, iOS, N-Gage, and Zeebo. It featured tilt-screen controls that functioned like a steering wheel. As well as touch controls to enable drifting. IGN rated the game a 7.8 out of 10, claiming it was the best racer in the App Store relative to its release. According to gamesindustry.biz, Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D was the most downloaded paid app in April of 2009.
In 2010, Polarbit developed a sequel to Nitro Kart 3D for iOS called Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2. The follow-up combined the same gameplay with an adventure mode and multiplayer. IGN gave Nitro Kart 2 a 7.2 out of 10, claiming it “doesn’t offer much new to the crowded scene, but it delivers on the baseline expectations.”
Activision wouldn’t publish another Crash Bandicoot game for seven years. However, when they decided to make a comeback, they did so with conviction. At E3 2016, Activision showed what they had Vicarious Visions working on. A complete remake of the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy.
Activision Begins To Make Things Right
Activision released Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy as a PlayStation 4 timed exclusive in June 2017. The trilogy later came to PC, Switch, and Xbox One a year later. Vicarious Visions faithfully remade the original trilogy and even added to the game with downloadable content. The studio unearthed a cut level from the original game, called Stormy Ascent. Naughty Dog originally deemed it too difficult for release. Additionally, they crafted an original level called Future Tense and added it to Crash Bandicoot: Warped.
Critics loved N. Sane Trilogy and so did fans. The PS4 version of the game currently sits at an 80 on Metacritic. According to Forbes, N. Sane Trilogy sold over 2.5 million copies on PS4, three months after its release.
A Dragon’s Redemption and A Victory Lap
The following year, Activision published a remaster of the original Spyro Trilogy, developed by Toys for Bob. The publisher released Spyro Reignited Trilogy on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2018. It later arrived on Switch and PC in September 2019. The remaster was faithful to the original. However, Activision made changes to replace guns with paintball markers. Additionally, a they renamed a character to avoid referencing a stereotype.
Reignited Trilogy reviewed well. The PS4 version of the game currently has an 82 on Metacritic, but official sales figures have not been announced. However, VGChartz estimates the game sold a combined 2.82 million units on PS4 and Xbox One.
In 2019, Activision would tag Beenox to develop a remaster of Crash Team Racing for PS4, Switch, and Xbox One. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled featured all the original content, but Beenox added online multiplayer, kart selection, and kart customization. The game was met with great critical reception. However, it later fell victim to criticism after Activision snuck microtransaction into the game once the review cycle was complete. Oddly enough, not even VGChartz had sales estimates at the time of writing.
A Proper Sequel to Crash Bandicoot: Warped
The following year, Activision published the Toys for Bob developed, long-awaited sequel to Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Activision published Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October 2020. But later came to PS5, Series X/S, Switch, and PC in March 2021. It’s About Time features Crash Bandicoot‘s core-gameplay. And by all accounts it’s a faithful continuation of the original trilogy.
The PS5 version of It’s About Time currently has an 86 on Metacritic. While the jury is still out on how many units it sold, the October 2020 NPD results showed It’s About Time holding down the number 10 spot.
In 2021, under an exclusive license from Activision, King developed and published a mobile runner Crash game. It included characters from the entire 25-year history, as opposed to the now four main games. Crash Bandicoot: On the Run received a middling critical reception but was downloaded roughly 8.1 million times, across iOS and Android, in one day.
However, On the Run was the last game Activision would publish for either Crash or Spyro. Amidst a storm of controversy, a company would propose a buy-out of Activision. A company we all know very well.
Microsoft Acquires Activision
In January 2022, Microsoft announced they would buy Activision-Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion. The planned acquisition includes all franchises owned by Activision, Blizzard, and King. This includes both Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon.
When the deal was announced, Microsoft Gaming CEO, Phil Spencer, had this to say:
“Players everywhere love Activision-Blizzard games, and we believe the creative teams have their best work in front of them. Together we will build a future where people can play the games they want, virtually anywhere they want.”
Exclusionary Controversy
This acquisition would strengthen Xbox’s popular subscription service, Game Pass, and make them the third-largest gaming company in the world. However, the acquisition was not without controversy.
Xbox General Manager of Games Marketing, Aaron Greenberg, updated his Twitter profile picture with an image featuring Crash Bandicoot. The image showed Greenberg and Crash making X’s with their arms. A gesture some gamers insinuated meant that Crash would become an Xbox-exclusive franchise.
Spencer’s Comforting Comments
The jury is still out on whether or not Crash and Spyro will become Xbox exclusives. B some look to Spencer’s comments during the Bethesda acquisition for comfort. Spencer stated:
“We have games that exist on other platforms, and we’re going to support those games on the platforms they’re on. There are communities of players. We love those communities and will continue to invest in them. And even in the future, there might be things that have either contractual things or legacy on different platforms, that we’ll go do.”
Spencer was later quoted, in regards to the Bethesda acquisition, as saying:
“This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games.”
Spencer’s Confusing Comments
Only a month later, Spencer had this to say regarding the Bethesda acquisition:
“This is the next step in building an industry-leading first-party studios team, a commitment we have to our Xbox community. With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC players.”
Needless to say, the future for the orange bandicoot and purple dragon remains a mystery. It’s entirely possible that Xbox leverages both franchises as an incentive for young players to want an Xbox. On the other hand, Xbox stands to generate more income by allowing other platforms to sell the games. Then make the games available to Game Pass subscribers. We’ll all just have to wait and see.
Final Thoughts
Early on, the deal with Universal sealed the fates of Crash and Spyro. In order to make a name for themselves, Naughty Dog and Insomniac both needed a publisher. That’s where Mark Cerny and Universal Interactive came into the picture. Unfortunately, that meant neither studio owned the respective franchises they created. Thus, when both studios sought independence or Sony’s first-party support, they surrendered their IP.
That was a bitter pill to swallow for Insomniac, I think. Insomniac held onto its independence for over a decade before becoming a Sony first-party studio. Personally, I think Naughty Dog publishers mistreating them pushed them to Sony. They just wanted the security to create without the fear of their publishers misunderstanding their art. Sony has shown a history of giving studios creative leeway. As long as the outcome meets a certain production quality and generates income. Luckily for both studios, they’ve gone on to create some of the highest quality experiences in gaming.
Mismanagement and Curious Strategy
I think it’s clear that both Naughty Dog and Insomniac have always been a cut above the average development studio. Universal Interactive struggled to publish decent games for either of the platforming mascots. What’s the most curious is Activision assigning Vicarious Visions the task of remaking the original Crash trilogy. Sure, they had experience with some console games. Most notably, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Doom 3, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and the Skylanders franchise. But I would think most people think of them as a developer of handheld games. Activision must have had hope that their legacy with Crash and Spyro made them the best fit. And I suppose they were right.
If Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision goes through, I think both franchises are in good hands. Some debate Phil Spencer’s management of development studios, but love for Crash and Spyro may triumph. I don’t think modern development studios, likely filled with developers who grew up with these characters, would miss the mark. I also believe Spencer knows that both Crash and Spyro are not franchises to wring money out of. Both have the potential to be system sellers if handled appropriately.
What Do You Think?
But will Microsoft allow the bottom dollar to make future Crash and Spyro games multiplatform? Or will they lean on their uniquely large wealth to support exclusivity? Dare they gamble on Crash and Spyro’s exclusive power? That’s the real question. Like I said before, we’ll just have to wait and see.
But what do you think? Let everyone know in the comments below!
