How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation | Ars Technica Series
EightBit Man
Member
I love the first Crash bandicoot game in particular. Being a big fan of Donkey Kong Country, the jungle setting and humor made me feel right at home. It felt like the obvious step of the traditional 2D side-scrolling platform game - still linear, but with added depth. It was what Super Mario 64 should've been.
It's a great and interesting story how it came to be.
It's a great and interesting story how it came to be.
Flying Toaster
Member
Ultima Online is still one of the best games ever made. No one understands how advanced it really was and it makes me sad that an MMO has yet to achieve the feel of awe that I had with UO originally.
waltyftmus Prime
Member
Never been a fan of Crash, might be a depth perception thing, but just dont like it.
StormCell
Member
I feel you there. It's the only MMO that ever truly hooked me, and everything that has come after it has fallen short thanks to my time with UO.
Rest
All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
Can you change that video link to one that's not in a playlist? It autoplays with no way to stop it but refreshing the page.
Trogdor1123
Gold Member
Wait, are you saying Mario 64 wasn't better than crash? Cause it was. this is coming from a guy that just loves crash.
PocoJoe
Banned
Indeed
UO had "everything", from tens and tens different professions to boats, houses and castles to buy and place in the world.
I played on one small free shard(abrupt utopia) around 2000-2003 and still clearly my best online gaming memories.
Just epic adventures, pvp, stealing stuff from others and finding the weirdest ways to have fun and make profit.
Nothing comes even close tge variety
EightBit Man
Member
Yes, I am lol. Never liked Super Mario 64 to be honest, being a big fan of the Super Mario titles preceding it. Graphically, while some things were pretty impressive, generally it left me cold. Mario being able to kick-jump? No great power-ups or tons and tons of levels and worlds? Nah, not my thing. I'm a fan of orthodox (skill-based) platform action instead of exploration, which was the main outline of the game. Super Mario Sunshine, while building further upon that formula was a more polished, interesting, and enjoyable experience to me.
Within context I can understand why it impressed an entire generation, but it was never my thing.
JordanN
Banned
That's what the first video in the OP is for (Crash Bandicoot). It's not in a playlist.
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Rest
All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
I meant the second video.
JordanN
Banned
It doesn't autoplay for me. I just clicked it and paused the video without problems.
I'm on desktop too by the way.
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Old Retro
Member
I never cared for it either. Mario 64 and Tomb Raider were the champion platformers of that era for me. First video is pure genius though.
JordanN
Banned
So I just finished watching the first video. While there was a lot of stuff I already knew about from previous interviews, I really appreciated the breakdown of how Crash got around the memory limits.
The PS1 disc could hold 640mb data but only 1 MB could ever be accessed instantly. They didn't stream directly from the disc since it would take 6 seconds to access 1 MB every time, so what Gavin did was give PS1 instructions to break up the memory into smaller chunks (or pages) and each chunks would stream whatever data they actually needed at a certain time.
A lot of games on the original PS1 never made use of the disc except for music or video, because they just fit all their assets in the 1 MB memory and call it a day. But Naughty Dog did want to use all 640mb space and stream it to the memory, giving the impression of a much larger game than what was possible.
Very innovative and forward thinking use of limited technology back then. Gavin also explained in the video that it was not always the Playstation's fault why some games had very limited graphics. He explained that the original code or library the PS1 shipped with only used like 33% of the GPU. Naughty Dog basically had to go in and rewrite the code themselves to get access to the complete 100% of the actual power available.
The PS1 disc could hold 640mb data but only 1 MB could ever be accessed instantly. They didn't stream directly from the disc since it would take 6 seconds to access 1 MB every time, so what Gavin did was give PS1 instructions to break up the memory into smaller chunks (or pages) and each chunks would stream whatever data they actually needed at a certain time.
A lot of games on the original PS1 never made use of the disc except for music or video, because they just fit all their assets in the 1 MB memory and call it a day. But Naughty Dog did want to use all 640mb space and stream it to the memory, giving the impression of a much larger game than what was possible.
Very innovative and forward thinking use of limited technology back then. Gavin also explained in the video that it was not always the Playstation's fault why some games had very limited graphics. He explained that the original code or library the PS1 shipped with only used like 33% of the GPU. Naughty Dog basically had to go in and rewrite the code themselves to get access to the complete 100% of the actual power available.
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