How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation | War Stories | Ars Technica
For today’s episode of War Stories, Ars Technica sat down with Naughty Dog Co-founder Andy Gavin to talk about the hurdles in bringing the original Crash Bandicoot to gamers around the world. When Andy and his partner Jason Rubin made the decision to bring the action platforming genre into three dimensions, it required living up to their company ethos of “leaving no stone unturned” in the search for memory - even if it meant hacking Sony’s library code.
Directed and Produced by Sean Dacanay
Edited and Graphics Animated by Jeremy Smolik
Footage used in the video:
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How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation | War Stories | Ars Technica
It's incredible how 25 years later, he can still talk about that game like he finished making it yesterday.
Andrew Burnes probably because he was so involved during it
Engineers brain
because many of the techniques he used still isn't used today and probably has had these things picked at by even modern game developers today, trying to fit huge levels into small RAM spaces, like Minecraft still has issues with not letting go of some of the levels with it's cache, they treat it always as "just in case they come back this way" this game basically NEEDED the disk and he used API that he created, he created framework that Playstation never bothered to make
@tim conway Yet the wedding ring on his hand seems to claim otherwise
@tim conway Well now Mr. Subway, aren't you a prime example of a man who believes that he is a cat and therefore hides behind such image? If I drop you from great heights, will you land on your paws ? Do you lick yourself from head to toe? For a tamed animal, you have the bite of a venomous wild snake ! Identity crisis maybe? I know, why not use the photo of a snake from now on, it would suit you better!
Sign of a true genius in a field: being able to simplify and articulate a complex subject in a way even someone with little knowledge will understand.
@hahalol GL funny not found
hahalol GL funny not found
Those animations helped so much
@@nak6050 LMAO!
I have no idea what he said but I understood what he said. I hope you understand.
Make no mistake: this man is a genius. He wrote dialects of the programming language Lisp, he got his bachelor's and PhD in fields unrelated to video game creation/programming, he's written novels ... this man is brimming with ideas.
love this comment
Gavin earned a Bachelor of Science in Neurobiological Science from Haverford College. - Wikipedia. God damn, I need to study more.
He even invented the covid mRNA vaccine back in 1994 and recently sold the patent to Moderna/Pfizer/JNJ. haha jk
Pretty obvious the way he talks hes a genius lol
He WAS NOT awarded a PhD. Why does everybody keep saying this? It's on his Wikipedia page and his personal Bio. He did some post-grad work but never completed his PhD. It's not a secret. Stop lying.
This guy is the embodiment of “If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.”
In my language - Bulgarian, we have some words for this - "The wolf neck is fat because do his job by himself"! :)
I think that mindset makes you a part of the white patriarchy and a racist somehow now. 😋
@@tcmtech7515 Oooo.....Kay?
I feel like a lot of the programmers for videogames in the 80s and 90s were like that
@@tcmtech7515 Yeah sorry we're just here for the Bandicoot appreciation, thanks for trying to stink it up though, Cortex.
This just tells me that old-school programmers were geniuses of the highest order
Yea, and then the web industry just destroyed everything, 99% of programmers those days are complete morons
The HR departments won't even hire guys like this anymore who actually love gaming and have pure 100% talent and skill.
Right?! All the little tricks used to eke out every drop of performance, and the ridiculous testing that went into ensuring nothing shipped broken… modern games are such a different product.
@@PwerGuido yep, and they make more than real engineers.
I think what's also so unique is that old-school programmers weren't just smart, they were clever. Anyone can learn to program, but it takes a pretty exceptional mind to think beyond limitations and push the medium forward.
He looks like he's really into it for the whole half hour, and he never stops smiling, it's great.
This game is a true mater piece of the PS1. It wasn't blocky had fluid motions was fast and overall a great game. He is probably immensely proud of it and all the work it took to make it.
He was looking at a picture of your mom they were holding up off camera
@@jokerraton8183 What a lameo
pure passion!
@@jokerraton8183 True, Trillby's mom is such a lovely lady
This dude is a true representation of someone who not only loves their craft, but has ultimately mastered it, from the explanations, to the execution. Remarkable.
This whole video is the best example of what "Computer Science as a career means" I have ever seen. Should be shown to every perspective game designer / CS major in HS.
He's very good at translating what they did into layman's terms, as well as being a good storyteller. I've never played a Crash game but I could listen to him for hours.
Treat yourself. They're so well made and bloody fantastic, even to this day.
You're missing out. I replayed and finished Crash 1 this year (not the remake, the original) and it really holds up.
I tried it out years ago as I've heard of it, but I can't say it was very enjoyable for me to play. But whatever, people have different tastes.
@@richardwicks4190 I recommend trying Crash 3 Warped first, since the Crash 1 and 2 (1 in particular) are insanely hard
@@Muffi210 I've basically grown out of this stuff. This is a 20 year old game after all. I worked on the xbox project for a bit, now I can't stand video games. The interesting bit of technological improvement, was the massive improvements we had year over year. Today, a computer from 2010 is hardly any different than a computer of today and there's really not much place to go with what we currently have other than lower power. Today, computers (tablets, phones, etc) are PROGRAMMED to slow down to entice you to buy a new one. There's really no significant technological improvement.
Can we also get some praise for the video editing here? Everything Andy said was accompanied by informative visuals and examples.
Hear hear!
fantastic visual storytelling
Yip, and no interruptions from the interviewer. Great work!
I just kept going.... "I member , i member🍇🍇"
"ME NO READ BOOK UNLESS IT HAVE PRETTY PICTURE HHNGG!"
He has a smile on his face the whole time. This guy loves what he does.
2nd time viewing this video an yeah he is totally in love with the magic of al sorts of tech for sure and yeah I feel as if even viwing this video agian i'm stil learning stuff i did not pick up on first time around. The Oddworld video is also an 11/10 video btw.
What he did
Maybe reminiscing the old times only can make him forgot the sorry state of the wokeness now
There are Sony lawyers off screen
@@ismailtopa3671 oh shove it.
When you hear about how game developers subvert and bypass the Sony API and even overwrite parts of the memory it uses, you realise why backwards compatibility between console generations is tricky
A jailbroken ps3 can play PS2 games not sure about a jailbroken PS4 maybe it can
@@chinossynthesizer705 I remember having the 60gig PS3 that could play all PS1, 2 & 3 games non-jail broken.. it was rare too, should look it up.
@@vxl2320 yeah I know that. it's the fat ps3 that shines silver chrome on the disc
@@chinossynthesizer705 slim ps3s can also play ps2 games through the ps2 classics emulator, not only games released as ps2 classics, there is a compatibility list of games and you can download ps2 roms and make them work
@@geronimo546 ye
This was the game that really sold me and my Dad on a Playstation in mid '96. We would stay up all night on the weekends beating it level by level and writing down the passwords excited about what the next stage would be. There was nothing like this before
hell yeah brother, those were the days
Ohhhhh the memories!
Man, your dad sounds like a cool guy
@@jorgeglez7088 One day you will be too
He'll yeah, and once we learned about the crystals and gems you could get and all the other secrets....oh man!@!
This guy is an insanely skilled problem-solver.
That's the sign of a good coder for sure!
Wonder if he could solve the ND problem at Naughty Dog in 2020
@@jangalexisruiz7491 what problem
@@dreamcastdazia4753 neil druckman?
@@whodatninja439 Yeah, so what did he do?
Needs memory Sees code Andy: It's free real estate
I was searching for a free real estate comment xD
@@dpellek74 #thegaytering
@@dpellek74 what happened?
joshua melling The crack is talking, ignore him
@utewbing kzhead.info/sun/ZqmhkpGCfWWrknk/bejne.html
They don't make games like this anymore and I can see why; the brains behind all this are astounding. These men were true pioneers.
incredible video, Andys passion really bleeds through
Good to see you here
Wow, it's rare to see a guy this smart that speaks so fluidly and easily about technical and abstract topics.
this is known as “true genius” ,)
Ben Eater is one.
John Carmack too. Fun guys.
it is called knowing
Yea his ability to clearly communicate complex topics is impressive
honestly, the fact that he "stole their memory" and his company is called *naughty* dog is hilarious.
ikr
Glad you pointed this out lmao. What a guy lol he looks like a candidate for the real santa claus one day.
"Bad boy!"
I guess it was because he was stealing bytes out of sony!
@@xxqqzzaa total dad joke
My absolute favorite interview on this platform. Please do one with Andy on Jak & Daxter and the incredible engineering that went into making a PS2 game with zero loading screens!
They created all jak games using a custom language called GOAL which directly interfaced with the hardware so imagine a very fast interpreted language similar to python
This dude had no internet, no joker libraries and surely enough, no example (to follow of) of what he wanted to do. Maybe it had to be this way for it to happen but anyways, this is Legend levels of passion, hard work and determination, not random luck. I have just one word for you sir : RESPECT...
I agree with most of the above, but luck always factors in.
yes but lots of game before. Build on previous and expand + seems to be a master lever programmer
I agree with the luck factor. Hard workers work harder to have more luck.
The internet existed in 1994, so he definitely had access to that. He just had to figure out how the software/hardware worked on a brand new device, so that's not really relevant.
@@jakecarlin9402 The internet in those times are the equivalent of iron in the neolithic. It was there but the real use came after, when a lot of generous people started sharing nice (and scary ) things. I'm Engineer myself and having access to internet changed a LOT of things like getting the right datasheet for your components and stuff.
The comparison between the graphics in this game and Tomb Raider really shows that the efforts in level design and graphics optimization paid out really well. It was a game that was half a generation ahead of the rest.
pitthepig True this was one of the 1st PS1 games I could tolerate since all the rest had super warpy polygons.
The 3DO is a worse joke but he can't really diss a platform that he made a game from though.
@@StriderVM 3DO still responsible for the biggest tech deal in the history of gaming. The technology was good just too advanced for gaming at the time. A
Comparation...? Comparation?
@@ens0246 corrected.
Crash didn't look like any other playstation game. This man wasn't ahead of his time, he was building the future.
it still looks amazing imo, especially for a PS1 game, imo it looks closer to a 2000 pc game
I remember hearing a story about Crash's first appearance at a video game expo and people were convinced there was a bank of computers behind the Crash display. People didn't believe the visuals were actually being produced by just a PlayStation
Yep, he's kind of a John Carmak... indeed they're born in the very same year, 1 month apart!
It still looks great, having played the game for the first time fairly recently.
Yeah and now The Last of Us ll looks better than any other game as well. Next-gen already on PS4!
I feel like todays devs still have this amount of passion but the higher ups sap it all away. In this case, he was the developer AND the owner so his passion, and the passion of his team, were really shown in every way possible at the time.
There's quite a bit indie game market these days and they can get a pretty wide release just on marketplaces like Steam, Play store, etc depending. I think it's easier than ever for small time game devs, though more competition than ever
naahhh just too many woke clowns in these companies now
This guy needs to be a college professor on game design. His works need to be passed on for generations and generations. It's legendary.
Fascinating. Seems this guy also has a talent in simplifying and communicating the essence of their programming problems. Bravo on pushing the boundaries!
Unfortunately they didn't know mario 64 existed while creating this. Seems they were trying to be the first but got beat by nintendo months and even years earlier
Andy Gavin is legend, and so nice, he follows me on Twitter
MobileCyris Alpha Waves for Atari ST came out in 1990
And it still looks waaay better than blocky mario 64 and its wishy washy controlls. I looove platforming games but most early 3d once are for me unplayable, most games are to enpty like galvin mentioned 3d opens way more empty space. M64 is for me an to empty boring world with way to slow and indirect controlles. I love mario but get rid of m64, never liked it a bit. Crash does soo much better.
Tobi Esto Crash used a D-pad in a 3d platformer, your entire argument is invalid. Also you're right, what's the point of exploring a 3d environment? To enjoy it? Yawn. I'd rather whip rocks at passing trains. Maybe if my aim is good I can ricochet one directly back into my eyesocket so I don't have to read your anecdotal ill-informed opinion ever again.
I bet developers of other ps1 games were absolutely stunned when they saw Crash Bandicoot.
That's what I was just thinking. Imagine being a developer of that Tomb Raider game and seeing all the extra detail they managed to get in Crash Bandicoot. Stunned is the right word.
It was the Playstation from 1994, not the Playstation one which was a smaller version that came out in 2000 :)
Yeah, Crash Bandicoot looked significantly better than your average Playstation game, and definitely set the standard for the rest of the "OG" years.
Andy mentioned some patents and I hope they paid off for him and Naughty Dog, it sounded like they earned it. Learning about the trials and solutions make Crash Bandicoot sound like a technical marvel.
Damn just imagine how tomb raider and other good PS1 games would have benn if they knew the memory trick
I remember buying the first Playstation and honestly the game I played the most was Crash Bandicoot. There was just no comparison to any other game at the time. It was mind-blowing.
I played Crash 3 to death when I was very little to the point the disc got really scratched and my controller broke! It was so good I've played Mario 64 and that doesn't even come close.
@@kindmulberry7196 Crash 2 and 3 are the best 3D linear platformers of all time.
This guys brilliant. Was amazing just listening to him talk and he was remembering things from 1995 casually. Wow. Its almost like hes telling you the game hes currently working on but this was 30 years ago. You can still see the passion in him he had when making it. Absolutely amazing.
I can describe stuff I wrote in my 20s like this, and in more detail than I could describe stuff that I did about 6 months ago. Human memory is funny like that.
Sony owes so much of its video game dominance to this man. He literally laid the ground work for all modern video games by himself. Wild.
dont forget plumber boy and sonics azz
bro i look like kratos
Not really... lol. That's the Big Man History flaw. He had a team of people to help him along the way! He didn't come up with everything by himself.
Hog wild.
@@dandiaz19934 You are correct, but people will always be most fascinated by the rare genius who can make the very most of all the extensive labour and progress available at a given time. In some sense, the work of the majority amounts to enabling such figures. After all, is it not the pinnacle of creations in any given genre, that we live to be inspired by?
I'm so sick of the word "innovation" because it has become almost meaningless in the corporate software world (where I work). _This_ guy was a *true* innovator.
Not only that he was a innovater, he spoke like a true artist there at the end. Making a point on how u should force your technical skills by expanding on your imagination. Its quiet beautiful.
I really like how he finished the story, "transcend mediocrity" and if the corpo world is too boring for you, transcend it!:)
Abundance caps imagination. limitations will forever drive curiosity to push the envelope.
its really insane what he talks about. I learned his technologies at the university, and it´s even more impressive that he came up along with this ideas by himself without stackoverflow
@@xa4169 That's the whole theory behind Pico-8, the "fantasy console" that is a virtual machine with no physical counterpart (like an *emulator* for a console that never existed). It's also why the Raspberry Pi has become attractive to so many people who are *already proficient in programming* even though the system was designed to be for *learning* how to program.
I wish I could have worked with Andy. He's the first developer I've ever seen able to not only relate the craft to average people, but also able to keep his head about him, where so many others don't even bother.
I was holding my breath. I didn't think they'd be able to make the game, and I really wanted to play it. Fortunately, there at the end, it sounded like everything worked out. Any idea when Crash Bandicoot is coming to this Playing Station?
Oh sure. It should be coming out... I think they said the release date will be September 9th, 1996. I can't wait for the release myself.
@@DalionHeartTTV that's like -25 years. I'll be so much younger by then :(
@@christophluger793 That's rough, buddy.
@@christophluger793 lol
Nintendo isn't involved anymore, therefore there is no longer a space in between. Now it's just PlayStation. This new game called Resident Evil has my attention peaked!
"...the boulder level. The dimension we're actually taking out there is time." Wow, that blew my mind just a bit.
Im Stoned ... reading this comment blew my mind haha
@Klip One the fact that you don't get it has nothing to do with being stoned lmao
Time is a dimension, I'm surprised this is news to y'all. And he took most of it out, but not all just enough to make it intense and interesting. They're decision making was genius given what was available .
The dimension is always there they just hid it from you. Unable to perceive its passing because it doesn't matter there's a boulder coming after you. Run run run. P.s. I'm high too. Lol
MINE TOO 🧠💥
"Then there was the Atari Jaguar... We just sort of took it as a bit of a joke" I applaud you
For some who even barely knows what coding is, this was very interesting to watch. He's a smart guy with passion for his art.
My 9 yo son asked for crash 4 this Christmas.. great to see these old titles still around. Got it for the switch
"...the atari jaguar was just a bit of a joke" Damn, that was cold
But true.
The Jaguar wasn't really that bad, on paper, it just needed some really clever coder to figure out how to harness it's raw power. Which never happened.
@@MickeyD2012 You could say that about the Saturn or the Playstation 3. Sure, you COULD take the time to get the most out the system... OR make your game on a skew that wasn't designed by a sociopath and make a lazy port for the over complicated POS, if you could even be bothered.
The case mold was later used in making toilet seats.
@@nachobroryan8824 You joke about that, but there was a machine that did _something_ for dentists that was made with the same mold. It even had a cartridge jammed in the slot.
Thought I'd watch a few seconds. Then got addicted to listening to this guy. I'm blown away by the talents of early game developers.
Same
Desperation is the mother of all invention
Same here
Well, he does have a Ph.D. from M.I.T.
Wow, I heard of Naughty Dog but never knew its creator. Andy has an incredible passion you can just see through the whole video and is definitely a genius! This is what I think gaming needs more of. Incredible!
This is one of the best videos ever made, editing, guest, everything just done absolutely great. Perfect balance of technical terms without dumbing it down too much. Awesome work!
that was incredible. none of this shallow buzzwords and 2 minute banter, as someone that does extreme low level embedded hardware engineering this was super satisfying to learn about much respect to these legends
Embedded programming is a lot of fun, I really enjoy working around hardware limitations and finding creative solutions. You really notice the difference in programming style when you get to talking with web developers lol
@@AaronBonBarron Web developer code makes me cry more than onions, haha
Extreme!
Hell yeah! Not embedded programing, but I worked with an old 2011 Dell laptop for years and it could handle stuff like video editing pretty well despite its aging limitations. I made that thing work dammit!
@@casperes0912 It has nothing to do with web dev on its own tho. Depending on what you want your web page to do, you can run into the same issues and have to approach solving them in a similar way these Crash devs had to.
The way he made use of the huge disk space is actually genius. He made the console more powerful than it was intended to be by clever programming.
Atari did something similar with their "bank switching" method on the 2600. Even the Genesis did it.
SNES cartridges had cpu chips inside them for certain games, to enhance performance. The one I remember is called Super FX. There were a number of other chips as well. I just don't know what they were called.
It is called caching or paging and a standard technique. Win95 did it.
Why I love software. With good enough code even crappy hardware can be useful
@@frank234561 they were all Super FX or Super FX2
What an amazing interview, not only is Andy crazy talented on both a technical and creative level, but he can also explain things really well. Will watch the extended version for sure!
this was so fascinating. really appreciated the part about reducing dimensions/ removing degrees of freedom to increase intensity
His word choice and logic behind explanation is impressive He's smart
Programmers tend to be smart. The really good ones can even talk to non-programmers and make some amount of sense. He's definitely one of them.
WELL THIS IS ONE HELL OF AN ENGINEER
Yea but give the guy a hammer and see how dumb he looks
@@xjww8623 he's an engineer, he'd probably figure out a better way to use the hammer.
@@xjww8623 you could say this about anyone in human history, there's always something you won't know how to do
Crash Bandicoot II, Crash Bandicoot III Warped, Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash was my freaking childhood. So many good memories killing hundreds (thousands?) of hours with friends at our summer house in the country side with these games. Legendary games.
I just want to say the editing on this video is absolutely amazing. It added so much and I really felt it brought out what Andy was saying
It is astounding how hardware-focused their thinking had to be. His concepts are on machine-level most of the time.
That’s how it was with all the technical limitations
Yeah, you couldn't really do much without thinking at machine-level then =D
compare with today's web devs "ah yeah let me throw in this 1MB library over here so that I dont write one extra method by hand"
@Nicholas Seamans very insightful comment
In the "olden days" a programmer had to understand the hardware at the deepest level and manipulate it directly
this guy is a big reason why Naughty Dog is known for such quality gaming today.
Jupiter Wilky May you can see it can’t you? Naughty Dog games get THE MOST out of the PlayStation hardware possible, and it all started way back here.. looking for just that (literally) “1 byte” extra memory. Amazing!
@@fafmotorsport It's insane how Uncharted 3 or The Last of us could easily pass as a ps4 game. They were the only ones to push the ps3 to its limits.
@@desfefe I heard that many studios never bothered to utilize the full range of the PS3 cell architecture because it was so tricky programming for it, and not enough programmers were up to snuff on how to do it. Those who did however made the best games, or I should say the games that ran the best!
@@soulextracter I mean the jury is out really. Most ps3 ports ran terribly because developers could not be bothered to learn how to code for it effectively. By the end though, you could see ps3 titles looking generally better than the xbox counter parts. Naughty Dog will always be known as the studio that will be innovative and try to push the hardware to its limits. Just look at Uncharted 4!
I bought a PS4 (never had a PS3), and the first game I played was The Last of Us Remastered. I was blown away. Next I played Horizon Zero Dawn, a game a generation younger than TLoU, and it just didn't look as good. Yes, TLoU was remastered, but its basis is still PS3-era hardware, and it looked better than a game designed for PS4 hardware.
incredible video! crash bandicoot was a huge part of my childhood, my mom owned a ps1 and she loved the crash games, we were too poor to afford all the games we wanted at the time as we owned a house and were constantly working on repairs so we found out how to burn games onto disks and thats how me and my mom bonded in those years, CTR was both mine and her favorite of the 4 games, great music, playable boss characters, fun world to drive around and we could play it together! i still much prefer the classic games over the remakes cause i just really prefer the classic visual style over the more modern style of the remakes
Some of my best memories are playing crash with my mom, and waking up in the middle of the night beside her in bed, and drifting back off to tomb raider. I remember going to the sony store to get the PS1 like it was yesterday. What a trip down memory lane. And i have to agree, older games just have something special about them. all the games now just seem like half assed copies of copies of copies. Wish there were people as dedicated as Andy in the industry these days.
This was (and still is) hands down one of my favorite games. I still have my Playstation from '95 with all my games, and now my kids enjoy them. This has became one of their favorites as well.
Big credit to the editor who perfectly timed the ducktales intro song to him saying ducktales
lo ikr
Out of all the seconds in this video I happen to read your comment within 10 seconds of that part popping up😂
This wasn't just a war story, this was a war documentary!
And a love letter...
They actually wrote up pretty much the whole process of making Crash Bandicoot. It's a very interesting read.
I remember going to Blockbuster and having this on continuous rental when it came out, I was waiting for Christmas to come so hopefully we got it for Christmas, we did!!! Thank you for this game before it's time and this video, one of the very earliest reasons I wanted to get into video game development and now am. Super informative video and love the passion.
I can't believe I'm watching this at 3 in the morning. The way he explains things is mesmerizing. Easy to understand, engaging. The choice of graphics to represent what he's talking about made the experience more enjoyable. Good episode.
man this guy is a treasure that game was absolutely mind bending back then and as he said, it aged so much better than his competition
@Leonardo Santuario dead joke
@Leonardo Santuario yes, still under 30 but of course
In my country, until like mid 2000s there was a tv show where ppl called and played through their phone, even in today's money one minute was so expensive!🤣
Better than Mario 64? Not sure if I agree with that.
@@PaTrick-cf6ev Hugo ?
Watching this felt like I collected xp and leveled up in computer science.
apfel nymous LoL for real
Hardly
@@mrnarason k
@@alalalala57 k
@@mrnarason k
Thank you for the fun! Played it 20 years ago. Came back to it and finished Crash1 last year. Still looks great
I deeply enjoy listening to someone talk about something they clearly love, and have in-depth knowledge about. I could have gone more than an hour of this break down. It was stellar.
This guy is super smart
This guys a genius innovator
He's definitely up there with John Carmack and Volker Wertich.
I mean if you consider what they managed to achieve with so little Staff, money and time, he better be super smart!
Game devs, artist, animator, and musics all require brain and ideas.
@@meanmole3212 agreed
It warms my heart that there was an actual naughty dog
This video resonated with me to the point that I believe that, in a few years, I will look back and think "yup, the 29th of December of 2021... that was the turning point of my career". This video is brilliantly made and has many layers of genius behind it. Andy is great. And so is the production team behind it. Thank you for posting such a joy.
In 1997 I was 12 years old and got a Playstation for birthday and a bit later on Crash Bandicoot. I didn´t have any clue about the technology behind graphics but even at this age I could clearly feel this game just looked unbelievable and different. "Why does it look so good!?" And look at it now, it aged so well. Naughty Dog has been one of the most creative game publishers for decades and they always seemed to squeeze the most out of the hardware. With minds like Andy Gavin among them it doesn´t surprise me at all anymore. Thank you so much for giving me some context to those intuitions I had for many years!
PS5: "Let's add a superfast SSD so you can rapidly load in high resolution assets, without using too much memory" So... this is the guy that started it all, trying to surpass 2MB levels.
at least for games yeah this guy was undeniably a pioneer. also he had to figure out how to make it work, so he built his game around it. the ps5 they learned that was their clear bottleneck, so Sony fixed it themselves so game devs wont have to. kind of like having a better game engine at the hardware level. if only windows would figure that out
Those times the games were much more optimized for the specific hardware
@@vbtt no, thats just how all console games have to work. but at the same time i think the ps3 era was the most optimized
Many games on the 360 and PS3 did the same thing with disc streaming.
@@robertt9342 512mb ram in those, i could understand the need. PCs at the time had up to 8gb i think
Andy, your work blew my mind as a kid and gave my paraplegic grandfather and I something to bond over. He's now confined to a bed and your work still boosts his spirits. Thank you so much.
And I’m sure he helped to shape the direction the industry was going. Much of the stuff he just throws out there, off the cuff, are firsts in the industry, new ways of thinking about 3d at the time, and an intellectual property that helped to turn the PlayStation into a destination platform when it was new. Very impressive. He was able to take many different ideas, and synthesize them into finished products using a difficult medium.
Sending love your way 🙏❤
Look into the Gerson Therapy
@@secundusytp4517 I'm a holistic dude myself and I appreciate the thought, but i'm pretty sure he's past that at 80yrs old.
@@stickybuns8626 There is no age at which the body cannot heal itself if you make a genuine effort.
Wish he could have helped with Tomb Raider and other PS1 franchises that got dated because after watching this video, I finally understand why Crash is one of the few games which still hold up.
Tomb Raider had a realistic art style, so there was nothing that could have been done more with the limited hardware.
WOW! I know the very basics about how computer hardware works, and interacts with eachother, but this guy explained this EXTREMELY complex topic in a very easily digestible way. I could watch this guy explain how anything works, he's a natural teacher.
"Imagine what SONIC would look like in 3D!" *Finger on the Monkey Paw curls*
Hahaha
Sonic Adventure.
On the other...non monkey paw (rabbit's hind paw, I guess), Utopia exists.
Marc Carran oof
Sonic 3D Blast. 11/9/1996
MAKE MORE OF THESE. DONT SKIMP ON THE TECHNICAL JARGON!
This was even better than that. He went full theoretical computer science a couple of times
So damned fascinating. Hearing a cool guy talk about this stuff makes me euphoric!
I didn't understand 3/4 of this video
@@venicebeachsportsnetwork6677 it was very simplified, tbh. But if I were to watch medical videos I wouldn't understand 3/4 of it
@@privateagent it was still interesting cause I loved the game and realize the guy is genius cause he did SO much more with the hardware then others at the time
Truly amazing! just the memory management part was incredible. Reminds me a bit of the work John Carmack did for Doom. Thank You Ars for some truly great videos
Wow this is the best technical and passionate interview I've ever seen, I learned as much as I did in a CS course but with a lot more entertainment and excitement included!
1996: we can take full advantage of this 2MB with clever optimization to only load what we need. 2020: this spreadsheet app is 300MB. That custom vertex position compression sounds insane. The values weren't fixed bit widths? Must have been a ton of work to design and code that.
I opened a gigabyte spreadsheet once...
@@metal_brrr_2005 App != Files app can open
He should have used Unity.
I figured it did something like temporal framing, where every frame a new value is used for a given vertex position, but if that frame in the data isn't specified, it assumes that it should use the previous value.
Like first thing that comes to my mind is you can halve the resolution of the dimension - i.e. there is no real difference if a vertice moves 1 or 2 small units between frames if the animation is very expressive, so that saves you 1b per dimension per vertex already. Then I guess you could estimate (or actually check) what is your max value that you'll need and adjust the size of cell to that. And maybe some bit compression if it actually pays off and presto
This is a story I've heard many times, but never in such extraordinary detail exploring the technical aspects. Crash Bandicoot is a marvelous video game franchise and an even better development story!
Square Eyed Jak indeed it is jak, btw loved your crash bandicoot ranked levels video
Well said
@Hellen Mek same
I love how he can explain these complex programming languages in simple terms for us laymen to understand well. 27:40 it sounds like modern streaming loading techniques we use for getting games to run well today, except in very very early terms on the Playstation 1, which is incredibly impressive they were able to do this.
im extremely thankful for these people to sit down and explain this stuff for us and for whoever makes these animations to simplify and explain better , thank you for the content
This guy is a genius in his seemingly simple solutions for otherwise complicated technical issues. He is very creative and inspiring!
💯% agree. He seems genuinely passionate about his work. That type of thing greatly increases the chances of success.
Not just his ideas, but pulling them off in an era where programming and computer technology was much more complex than it is now. From the user/software development side, I mean. This would be trivial now, but back then? Earth-shattering!
@@crystallakedood True that, exploring the programming frontier with absolutely no help to point you in any direction whatsoever
@@williammino3534 The guy has a PhD from MIT and worked on the mars rover. I believe he was introduced to LISP early on and that seemed to make a big difference here.
cgirl111 yeah he started working for naughty dog at age 14.
This explains why I always thought the playstation sounded different when it played Crash...
You mean the constant CD-reading sounds?
@@stevethepocket i think so. Remember i was super scared as a kid when i first loaded it. Thought the cd laser was broken or something
There's a series of articles by Andy Gavin called "Making Crash Bandicoot" (which I coincidentally just read again immediately before this video was uploaded), which goes into more detail on a lot of the topics addressed in this video, and more. One humorous excerpt relevant to your comment is as follows: Andy had given [Sony employee] Kelly a rough idea of how we were getting so much detail through the system: spooling. Kelly asked Andy if he understood correctly that any move forward or backward in a level entailed loading in new data, a CD “hit.” Andy proudly stated that indeed it did. Kelly asked how many of these CD hits Andy thought a gamer that finished Crash would have. Andy did some thinking and off the top of his head said “Roughly 120,000.” Kelly became very silent for a moment and then quietly mumbled “the PlayStation CD drive is ‘rated’ for 70,000.” Kelly thought some more and said “let’s not mention that to anyone” and went back to get Sony on board with Crash.
@@Gamer2k4 Yeah, they wouldn't want a warranty class action because a rouge game developer pushing the envelope too far.
@@Gamer2k4 😆... Brilliant.
I got this game for my now 28 year old son when he was like 5 or 6 for Christmas and we spent the afternoon getting though level one. He's a full on gamer now and I could probably get through level one in about two minutes.
My dad did the same, I got a playstation and Crash and Spyro the Dragon when I was about 4-5 years old, thanks to him I love the creativity and wonderful world of video games. I'm 27 in a week, and still love and play games to this day.
It's amazing to see how my childhood's favorite game was made by talented and passionate guys who knew exactly what they were doing. These guys are geniuses for sure.
Just wow, how they managed to squeeze every last bit of resource out of the machine. And he's so passionate about it, still. Meanwhile today, my Android Studio running out of RAM on a 32 GB machine, or a calculator app needs to download 120 MB of questionable libraries.
My favorite MP3 player on iPhone is 120MB. I'm stunned even now.
@Leonardo Santuario lol do you just spam this everywhere?
@Leonardo Santuario oh...okay then lol
Different programming techniques, but most importantly back then every byte counted since the hardware was very expensive, while today it's much more affordable.
@Leonardo Santuario ok boomer
Andy has a fantastic energy. Dude never stops smiling for a single second. Every word out of his mouth is said with passion and enthusiasm for his work. I often come back to this video from time to time because of entertaining he is to watch.
Quote by founder of Brabus fits here: “I don’t work for money, I work for passion”
@Shelly George Stolen comment...
5:37 a trip down memory lane. I was playing that game in 6th grade at school in the late 90's. Could never remember its name!
Freaking beautiful. This is why I sometimes pine for "the old days" of consoles. Because the hardware limitations were such that programmers, designers, artists and so on had to work closer together. You had to get creative with how you were gonna pack stuff in. And after that - since you couldn't just slap "Big Mommas RTX version 9.000" on the game and call it a day; You had to spend even more time on the game design itself.
That also means that games were much more limited in scope. I have tons of respect for the guys back in the days, they were/are absolute units that helped video games to reach the peak. But today we also have masterfully made games with deep game design and striking visuals. You just don't have to be such a monster to create good things because there is much less limitations so you don't neet to push too hard to get what you want, and I don't think it's such a bad thing tbh. Just take indie games made by one guy or a small team that were all made with work done close together as you just said.
@@morgen3369 Also back then these guys were driven by passion for games Approaching with art instead of business thats why games came out good Today its all about lets make games so we can start next game project This makes game dull just look at new battlefield, game build upon lets make money no art involved
Seeing Andy Gavin talk, I'm getting some _heavy_ Steve Wozniak vibes: brilliant in his respective field, has a clear passion talking about his field of expertise, & is brilliant enough to explain it in a manner that anyone could understand.
As a programmer, listening to this guys knowledge is mentally like eating 5 star chocolate cake.
What is 5 star chocolate cake?
@@dylanfarnum4121 cake made by Gordon Ramsey
What kind of things did you start out with learning how to program. I son is into the inside of computer and I have know idea were to start him.
@@robmo7033 is your son in school? There are companies that offer intensive programming courses online. Many computer repair shops offer free classes for many types of hardware and software. If your son is in school, he should be able to take extensive programming courses, or register for classes at a vocational school or community college, or he could probably find multiple computer science undergrad tutors that would be willing to mentor him for free. If your son is young you should strongly consider pursuing one or more of these options, if he's naturally talented and creative there's no limit to how successful he can become.
@@dylanfarnum4121 he is 6. So I am trying to find something for him in this age group.
I had beaten most of N64's best titles before I got a Playstation. The graphics in Crash 3 blew my mind despite being a on a arguably less powerful 3D machine. After watching this interview, I now know how such feats were made possible. This man's creative genius is astounding.
Thank you for this incredible presentation! This is truly an amazing piece of creativity! This needs to be taught in schools before it is too late.
"Think about it - Sonic in 3D! What is that gonna look like?" I've got some bad news for you...
Surely they've come out with a good one by now?
its called sonic adventure and in late 1998 it was mindblowing even compared to pc games. hope this helps
Sonic 3D Blast on Sega
@@infinityesq.4226 Yes, I was one of the first to get the console and the game. It was pretty amazing for its time and I think it has aged very well
inf inf was this the game on the sega where you could play as knuckles and tails aswell? I remember playing my grandad’s sega back in 99’ when I was a kid and there was a 3D sonic game but I can’t remember the name
I want to shake this man hand... not because he hacked the ps1 . But because he made one of my favorite child games 😭
NO HAND SHAKES ALLOWED! OR WE ALL GONNA DIIIIIIIIIE!!!!
Same.. crash bandicoot, tekken 3 and tekken tag 1 and later Warcraft 3 and dota 1. These 5 games have been amazing
@Tradin War Stories BEAT ME TO IT! 😂😂
missed out on playing crashed games as a kid. Really interesting how he found all these solutions while working on the game. Pretty impressive and normally couldnt be done. Makes me want to try crash bandicoot now.
pick up a PS1 and the crash games- i promise you, they hold up and play better than most games today. If you dont wanna grab the console, they remastered and released crash 1/2/3 on steam a year or so ago- definitely worth the purchase if you like platformers.
I love this video. This is so fascinating and wildly interesting at the same time. The days when people tried to develop the absolute best games they could, instead of today where they cut every corner possible to make money.
Andy neglected to mention the fact that he *wrote an entire damn programming language/dialect of Lisp* (Game Object-Oriented Lisp/GOOL) to make level design/revision easier whilst still retaining the lean-and-mean performance they were looking for. And GOOL, to the best of my knowledge, was being used even into the Jak and Daxter series.
AFAIK, they still use it for The Last Of Us
"Hey plumber boy, mustache man, your worst nightmare has arrived". Is now going to be my go to phrase when walking into a room.
Except that mario is still going strong and crash isn't. 🤷🏼♂️
@@ItzJigz187 Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was a commercial success, selling over 2.5 million copies in the first three months of its release, increasing to ten million by February 2019. Source - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_Bandicoot_N._Sane_Trilogy
@@AtariWow Not to mention the remake for Xbox One and Playstation 4, and the release of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. Edit: I realized we're talking about the same thing there.
Having the ability to communicate and explain different problems and how to approach them is a fundamental skill set of a great teacher. I would have loved to have Andy come into a computer science course for a lecture exploring dynamic memory allocation, data compression, etc for the sake of pushing the limits of a defined/constrained memory space. So many people that claim to be programmers now barely understand low level hardware interactions and how to manipulate those to find efficient solutions. People have gotten too relaxed with high level routes that bypass hardware interactions entirely.
At 22:46 it is explained that the high frequency details of a texture is removed when compressing to jpg, much like with mp3. The visualization shows the frequency spectrum, but the "before and after" is not accuratetly showing this. The high frequencies are -in a shifted FFT2 transform- the data that is further away from the center (in the center we have the low frequency data). So it should really be shown as a black "fog of war" affect.
Thanks to everyone involved for getting this youtube series going. The animations make the already great interview really enjoyable.
Those animations makes me remember computerphile! Hehe...
I remember this history well. It's great to get the inside take.
TayZonday ATTENTION FOLKS, WE HAVE A LEGEND IN THE COMMENTS
TayZonday no way!!!
Old school gaming meets old school KZhead. Amazing!
Hi Tay!!!
Chocolate Rain!
Wow what a throwback. Did not know how sophisticated this was to put together back then. Most interesting video I watched in a long time
I was 7 the day this game came out. I played it everyday, for hours in 96-97. I can still close my eyes and picture sitting on my bed, playing the game, the look of my room, everything. Thanks for your hard work, it had a profound impact on my childhood memories. Cheers.