Naughty Dog

[Menegrothx]

Again, I just see the roots of what Naughty Dog did in Crash in bits and pieces of plenty of previous games - not all of which are in the platforming genre. Crash took a lot of elements and refined them to create something more functional, fluid, and fun. But ND weren't bringing entirely new design concepts to the table.

That's inevitable in any genre that already exists. What matter is that the style of Crash Bandicoot hasn't really ever been plagiarized. There were a lot of Doom clones in 1994-1997. There were a lot of Mario Kart clones in 1996-2000. There were many GTA clones during 2003-2006 (and the sandbox trend continues to this day) There are a lot of cover based shooters nowadays. These games are fairly indistinguishable. The style of and mechanics of Crash Bandicoot were never widely copied, apart from those two few exceptions (and out of those the only nonlisence game Super Magnetic Neo still plays quite differently, as the game plays with magnetism and there's no attack moves). Crash Bandicoot played very differently compared to other contemporary 3D platformers, and to this day there really haven't been any other games that recreate the experience.

[dsheinem]

Again, I just see the roots of what Naughty Dog did in Crash in bits and pieces of plenty of previous games - not all of which are in the platforming genre. Crash took a lot of elements and refined them to create something more functional, fluid, and fun. But ND weren't bringing entirely new design concepts to the table.

That's inevitable in any genre that already exists. What matter is that the style of Crash Bandicoot hasn't really ever been plagiarized. There were a lot of Doom clones in 1994-1997. There were a lot of Mario Kart clones in 1996-2000. There were many GTA clones during 2003-2006 (and the sandbox trend continues to this day) There are a lot of cover based shooters nowadays. These games are fairly indistinguishable. The style of and mechanics of Crash Bandicoot were never widely copied, apart from those two few exceptions (and out of those the only nonlisence game Super Magnetic Neo still plays quite differently, as the game plays with magnetism and there's no attack moves). Crash Bandicoot played very differently compared to other contemporary 3D platformers, and to this day there really haven't been any other games that recreate the experience.

I thought we were arguing about the game's own influences, not its influence on subsequent games....

[Xeogred]

Are the Crash sequels like the first game at all? I can't remember at all as I've barely touched them (if at all). I always liked how weird the first Crash was, with the tube like levels, the 2D perspective in a lot of stages, etc. It's always made the game stand out to this day for me. For better or worse, those Indiana Jones rolling stone stages are a pain to go back to.

[Menegrothx]

The sequels (Naughty Dog made 2 platformers sequels, after that the series went to hell as other developers took over, tough the first non ND Crash was somewhat decent) are similiar, though different. There's no more life grinding, there's a 5 levels->boss fight->new world structure and you can save whenever you want, sadly there are more vehicle sections, but also new challenge stages. The third game had time runs, which were really well designed on some stages. You got a button for sprinting after killing the final boss, and you could try to do time run on stages, the apple boxes would turn into time boxes, which would freeze the time for 1/2/3 seconds, so there was a lot of risk and reward going on with that system, if you wanted to get the platinum trophies.

This is one of the best examples I can think of when it comes to actual precision platforming in 3D platformers (jumping on top of the enemies to avoid the water)

[Xeogred]

That definitely looks pretty refined compared to the first game.

[Menegrothx]

The first game has a lower poly count or something like that, the sequels have better graphics. But the first game is the hardest, even when you discount the "artificial challenge" created by the saving system, I think it still has from desing POV the hardest platforming. But the third game comes close somewhat when it comes to doing the time runs, too bad a lot of that consits of annoying flying/jet ski/racing levels

The first Crash game actually has some of the finest designed platforming challenges of the PS1 generation platformers. Klonoa is another great game in that category, and the Pandemonium games to some extent. And the Tombi/Tomba games from what I've gathered. So mostly 2.5D stuff and 2D sections in a 3D game.