So Crash fans were due a surprise this week at Comic-Con. Well, it turns out that the main surprise is a new level and it’s so difficult that Naughty Dog cut it from the original game… Good luck!
Takeaways:
- At San Diego Comic-Con developer Vicarious Visions announced that the level ‘Stormy Ascent’, originally cut from the first game, is now available for free until the 19th August. After that it will be $2.99.
- The original stage’s level designer Taylor Kurosaki said: “It was one of the last levels I finished during production, and as we prepared to deliver our Gold Master to Sony for manufacturing, the decision was made to cut it”.
- He than talked about the difficulty of the stage: “It was playable, but just too damn difficult, and we ran out of time to make it easier. It remained on the disc as it was less risky just leaving it rather than trying to remove it.”
- Using the well-known cheat cartridge called GameShark, (back when cheats were a thing), players managed to find the level in the original game.
- Vicarious Visions wanted to make the level available to all, but had trouble remaking it as they struggled to complete the level themselves… No, really.
- Lucky the tortuous level wasn’t all that was announced: Dark Horse Comics confirmed the upcoming release of The Crash Bandicoot Files: How Willy the Wombat Sparked Marsupial Mania. Debuting in March 2018, it’s a lavish 150-page hardcover book that contains the original design document for Crash Bandicoot.
- But there’s even more news, you can now share the craziness of Crash and friends with CrashMoji, the new emoji and sticker app. CrashMoji is available this week on the App Store and the Google Play Store. Feel the love.
Phew. That’s a lot of Crash news folks. With the level of hype this new stage has received, I’m now determined to beat it. Here’s a taster of what it offers:
Will you be giving it a go?