Andrew Gavin, the original lead programmer of Crash Bandicoot, recently took to LinkedIn to share his thoughts on the widely praised Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. While he commended Vicarious Visions for capturing the original trilogy’s essence and delivering stunning visuals, he expressed serious concerns about one critical aspect: the jumping mechanics. According to Gavin, Naughty Dog had implemented a unique system for Crash’s jumps that was overlooked in the remake, resulting in a more challenging experience than the original PlayStation iteration. Check out Gavin's detailed perspective below.
“In my opinion (key word, opinion!), the Crash Bandicoot remake got almost everything right. Except the most important 30 milliseconds. When they remade Crash, they nailed the visuals. Looked great, faithful to the original, kept the spirit. Then they completely botched how jumping works. On the original PlayStation, we only had digital buttons – pressed or not pressed. No analog sticks. Players needed different height jumps, but we only had binary input. Most games used the amateur solution: detect button press, trigger fixed-height jump. Terrible for platforming. So we built something borderline insane. The game would detect when you pressed jump, start the animation, then continuously measure how long you held the button. As Crash rose through the air, we’d subtly adjust gravity, duration, and force based on your input. Let go early = smaller hop. Hold it down = maximum height. But it wasn’t binary – I interpreted your intent across those 30-60 milliseconds and translated it into analog control using digital inputs. The remake developers either didn’t notice this system or thought it wasn’t important. They reverted to simple fixed jumps. Then realized Crash couldn’t make half the jumps in the game. Their solution was to make all jumps maximum height. Now every jump on the remake is huge and floaty. Those precise little hops between platforms are awkward. The game’s fundamental jumping mechanic feels worse than the 1996 original despite running on hardware that’s 1000x more powerful.”