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00:05Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're taking a look at 25 facts about Crash Bandicoot that
00:12you may not have known about. Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long,
00:26so be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:32The Million Dollar Marsupial, Crash Bandicoot 2, Cortex Strikes Back.
00:51Normally, a video game sequel reuses a lot of assets from the previous game
00:56in order to save everybody time and money. However, Naughty Dog wanted to make Cortex
01:00Strikes Back better in every way possible. To push the PS1 even further and deliver a higher
01:06quality game, Sony and Naughty Dog spent roughly 2 million dollars on the sequel's development.
01:11Most of this was because the team built an entirely new engine that allowed for more animations,
01:17more detailed textures, and what have you. In 2025 money, that budget inflates to more than 4 million
01:30dollars.
01:31Destined for failure? Crash Team Racing.
01:40We often remark about how amazing CTR was and how it somehow manages to hold up today with its
01:46excellent controls and mechanics. But what some fans forget is that this was made to be a spin-off
01:51so bad that it would kill Crash Bandicoot as a franchise. At the time, Naughty Dog received an
01:58absurdly small cut of the sales made by all three Crash games. It led to a lot of resentment towards
02:04Universal Interactive, who owned the rights to Crash. And so, just before their three-game contract was up
02:10and Universal ran away with the marsupial, Naughty Dog made a freebie game for them. A cart racer with a
02:17steep learning curve, and a stupid-looking alien villain that was ridiculous enough to potentially
02:23kill the franchise. Alas, that's not how it went, now did it? Region-locking story. Crash Bandicoot
02:32Warped. Naughty Dog took a really interesting approach to warps loading screens. Rather than
02:45have a loading screen like the previous games had, players would sometimes receive messages from the
02:50different bosses. But Japanese players got more cutscenes than just this. After defeating a boss,
02:57Japanese players would unlock a fully animated cutscene, like one where Cortex briefly reenacts a
03:03scene from the 1940 Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator. Another one of these videos was a
03:09mockumentary showing Crash traveling to Australia in search of bandicoots. Why these cutscenes were not
03:17given to any other version is beyond us, but it could be cultural differences in humor and storytelling,
03:22if we had to guess. Motor World, the best theme park outside of Springfield. Crash Tag Team Racing.
03:30Hey, you're that crushed bandicooter fella, ain't ya? Well, I got a little something for that private
03:36dancer in your life. When a developer reuses assets, they mostly keep the recycling between games of the
03:42same franchise, or at the very least, games that share similarities in aesthetics. But in Crash Tag Team
03:49Racing, there is one sound effect you have likely heard from a completely different game. If it does,
03:55you have likely played a lot of The Simpsons Hit and Run, which has the exact same sound effect.
04:02Not only that, but some of the characters in Crash Tag Team Racing reuse lines that can be heard by
04:07some of Springfield's NPCs. Even Pasadena Possum reuses a line that was uttered by Homer Simpson himself.
04:24The Komodo Boy and Father, Crash Bash.
04:43The ties between Crash and The Simpsons Family don't stop at just a few reused sound effects and
04:49voice lines. Years prior to Tag Team Racing, Crash Bash had an odd run-in with Homer and Bart in
04:56the most
04:57bizarre way imaginable. As most Crash fans may already know, the demo build of Crash Bash included
05:03a code that could grant the player access to a debug menu, and every demo build contained pretty much the
05:10entire game. But if you loaded into the boss fight against Komodo, Moe, and Joe, you would find that
05:15their icons on the top of the screen are of Homer and Bart Simpson? These were likely placeholder icons,
05:23but at the time, Eurocom had no history of developing any kind of Simpsons video game whatsoever.
05:30So why this is in here is anybody's guess.
05:34Creating a Monstrosity
05:35Crash Bash
05:44While we're on the subject of Crash Bash and its oddities, let's address the kangaroo gorilla in the
05:49room. Rilla-Roo is perhaps the most absurd Crash Bandicoot character ever created on account of his
05:56dumb face and his lack of relevance to the series prior. And after, for that matter. Well, there is a
06:03reason for his inclusion here, and it's just as dumb as his face. Originally, Eurocom wanted to
06:09include a female character for the Uka Uka team named Kanga Sue, until Mark Cerny got involved.
06:16According to producer John Williams, not that one, Cerny was worried that there'd be concerns about
06:21beating up female characters in a game that had already featured Coco Bandicoot as a playable
06:27character. And so, Eurocom went back to the drawing board with the kangaroo hybrid idea,
06:33and wound up with Rilla-Roo. And Coco is still in the game. So, RIP and Peace Kanga Sue
06:46Fixing the Monstrosity Crash Team Racing Nitro Fuel
06:58After his debut in Crash Bash, Rilla-Roo would be absent from the series entirely until December 2019.
07:07As part of the post-launch support for CTR Nitro Fueled, Beanox announced a new winter-themed
07:13Grand Prix that added in five new characters, including the dumb Kanga Gorilla himself. However,
07:20players were not super happy with his new look. How do you make such a stupid-looking
07:26character look even worse than he did 19 years ago? Needless to say, fans were just not thrilled at
07:36all. Although, Beanox made amends when they dropped Nitro Fueled's final update. Not only did they add
07:42even more characters and even more carts, they even gave everybody a new, fixed version of Rilla-Roo as a
07:50completely separate character, free to anybody who had unlocked the redesigned version. All was forgiven, and then some.
08:13Crash has had a number of cameos and crossovers with games outside of just Spyro. We'll get to
08:19some of them in a bit, but the most obscure one folks may not know about involves a game called
08:24Dragon Seeds. This little-known tactics RPG had players hatching and raising dragons before having
08:31them fight in tournaments. One of the cool things about this game was how save files from other games
08:36could earn you special dragon eggs. Having a save file of Crash Bandicoot 2 Cortex Strikes Back would
08:42net you the Aussie Egg. Unfortunately, nothing about the dragon resembles the Bandicoot in any way, shape,
08:49or form. Looks like a Digimon if we're being quite honest. Fire Cortex's hair stylist, Crash Bandicoot
08:56Warped! Crash, Crash, Crash, why must you always muck in my mud? Oh look, I have a mask helping me
09:06too.
09:07We will find out which one is more powerful soon enough. If you've played Warped enough times, you may
09:13notice some inconsistencies in a couple of areas. Most notably, Cortex's hair color. Why do we see it
09:20with a bluish tint in cutscenes, but it's purple in Tiny's boss fight, only to be pitch black in
09:27Cortex's own boss fight? Well, the reason for this is because Warped uses three entirely different
09:34character models for Cortex, and we have seen two of them before. The one we see in the Time Twister
09:39is
09:40brand new with blue hues to match the lighting. The one in Tiny's boss fight is taken from Cortex
09:46Strikes Back, and the one in Cortex's own boss fight is the same model that we saw all the way
09:52back in 1996,
09:53right in the original Crash Bandicoot. Names are everything. Crash of the Titans.
10:06A title like Crash of the Titans is somewhat fitting for this strange outing, but there was a brief
10:12moment where we almost got a completely different name. At one point, Radical Entertainment wanted to
10:17call the game Crash Jackin. Care to take a wild guess as to why that name might have been swiftly
10:24dismissed. The Spyro Crossovers
10:33Throughout the Bandicoot's history, we have seen Spyro make several appearances from Crash Nitro
10:38Kart on GBA to his brief cameo in Crash Twinsanity. But how did this relationship between the mascots
10:44even begin? Well, coincidentally, Naughty Dog used to be next door to Spyro's developers,
10:50the folks at Insomniac Games, as both were working under Universal Interactive within the same lot.
10:56Though it started out with sharing demo builds and easter eggs, we wouldn't get an official crossover
11:01until Crash Purple and Spyro Orange launched for the GBA in 2004. And it was completely botched in
11:08terms of quality. Just saying. The other monstrosity. Crash Nitro Kart 3D.
11:25Speaking of botched attempts, Crash Nitro Kart 3D was somewhat of an attempt at capitalizing on the
11:32new mobile game market. Alas, this was among the worst of the Crash games ever made. Not only were
11:38the controls horrendous, but the characters looked nothing like any of their designs from the
11:43previous games. How in the world do you make Nitrous Oxide look like a Walmart Xenomorph? And
11:50since when did Ripperoo take up boxing like a bootleg kangaroo jack? Trust us, there are so many reasons
11:57why us fans have largely forgotten about this game.
12:07Jess Harnell BC. Before Crash. Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of Cortex. And Crash Tag Team Racing.
12:25Some fans consider Crash Tag Team Racing as Jess Harnell's debut in the franchise, but that's
12:31merely a misconception. Though it was his first time voicing Crash, Harnell had performed in another
12:37Crash game years prior. In Wrath of Cortex, Uka Uka frees a group of masks known as the Elemental.
12:45These masks are voiced by some very notable actors such as Mark Hamill and Arlie Ermey. As for the
12:52Wind Elemental Lolo, why that mask was voiced by none other than Mr. Jess Harnell himself.
13:06Replaced! Crash Bandicoot 2. Cortex Strikes Back.
13:11Uh oh! Prepare the female Bandicoot. One of the biggest mysteries some Crash fans are still unaware
13:19of is why Tana was absent from the franchise for as long as she was. Before Beanox and Vicarious
13:26Visions had reintroduced her into the world, Tana had only ever appeared in the original Crash Bandicoot
13:31and that god-awful Mario Party ripoff Crash Boom Bang. So what happened to her? Well,
13:38internal backlash happened. Behind closed doors, one Universal executive viewed Tana as a design that
13:44was quote, sexist, while Sony discovered Japanese players kept thinking Tana was a middle-aged woman.
13:50With this feedback in mind, Naughty Dog and Sony worked together to create a brand new female
13:55character for Crash to hang around with. And that is how he got his sister, Coco.
13:59Cheats of Future Past. Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled.
14:12We often reminisce about the days where we could use cheat codes to unlock things and modify the game
14:17for some extra harmless fun. Well, Nitro Fueled was one of the few games of the modern era to include
14:23fun
14:24codes to toy around with. For starters, Penta Penguin was only obtainable by inputting the same cheat code
14:29he was locked behind in the original CTR. It even says Penguin Yay Won! But then you have some really
14:35fun ones like races only lasting one lap and a code that gives every track ice physics. Of course,
14:42there are also codes for unlimited turbo, infinite items, and a whole bunch more.
14:55Uncharted Love.
14:59Is there a problem?
15:01No. No, just uh, how do you uh, how do you make it go?
15:07By now we have all heard about and seen the part in Uncharted 4 where Nathan Drake gets to play
15:12a
15:12level from the original Crash Bandicoot. But did anybody notice the handful of instances where Crash
15:18paid tribute to the treasure hunter? In the intro for Cortex Strikes Back in Insane Trilogy,
15:24Coco can be seen watching Uncharted 4 just as her laptop dies. Then in a promotional social media video
15:31for Crash 4, Crash and Coco are shown to be playing Uncharted 4. For as brief as these moments were,
15:38it was really nice seeing fans and developers celebrate decades worth of Naughty Dog history together.
15:44A critical difference in quality. Crash Nitro Kart!
15:58Crash Nitro Kart was such a weird anomaly in terms of technical performance. Tell us,
16:03which version of the game do you think was more busted? The Xbox version, the PS2 version,
16:09or the GameCube version? Now, in most circumstances, GameCube versions of multi-platform games were the
16:15games that suffered in graphical fidelity and sometimes technical performance. But in Crash
16:20Nitro Kart's case, the PS2 version was the broken iteration as it suffered a handful of bugs with
16:27collision detection. Tracks like Electron Avenue and Hyperspaceway were more frustrating to deal with as
16:33it was possible to fall through the tracks in certain areas. And so, Crash Nitro Kart had its name
16:40unfairly soiled while the few Xbox and GameCube players that existed got to enjoy the game as intended.
16:53Insanity for Twinsanity. Crash Twinsanity.
16:58It is I, Aku Aku. My duty is to protect you. You may summon me by breaking open these crates.
17:07CNK may have had some severe problems in performance, but Crash Twinsanity was an
17:11unfinished disaster. You can like Twinsanity for the humor, for the concepts, or whatever reason you
17:18may have. But there is just no excuse for poorly designed levels that are plagued by all sorts of
17:24game-breaking bugs. So many that players are still finding more today. How could this have possibly
17:30happened? Well, it turns out that developer Traveler's Tales had to do a complete overhaul of the game
17:36while they were already super deep into development. Twinsanity's original story saw the evil twins
17:43leading an army to extract pieces of different planets to create their own planet. Which is
17:49exactly the same plot that we experienced in 2002's Ratchet & Clank. Unfortunately, so many assets had
17:56already been made by the time that they realized this. And so, the rest of Twinsanity's development
18:02was spent scrambling to finish the game and come up with a story that wasn't directly ripping off of
18:08another IP.
18:10Yes! The crystal is mine!
18:14Honoring sports legends. Crash tag team racing.
18:18I will win the deed to the park for sure, and destroy every bandicoot foolish enough to face me on
18:24the tracks!
18:27On the surface, chick-gizzard lips and stew just seem like colorful characters based on tropes of sports
18:34commentators. You know, the slow-speaking straight man paired with a hyperactive guy who's way too into
18:41the sport. The trope isn't too far off from the real deal though. Chick and Stew are actually based on
18:47two famous sports commentators, Howard Cossel and George Foreman respectively. Sadly, both have long
18:54since passed. Cossel died in 1995, whereas Foreman just passed away in March 2025. Though they may be
19:02gone, their personalities remain immortalized in two of the funniest characters in the Crash Bandicoot
19:08franchise.
19:14Replaced 2. Oxide strikes back. Crash Team Racing Nitro Fuel.
19:31Going back to Nitro Fueled one last time, the game saw an interesting change in appearance in one of its
19:37final seasons of post-launch support. By now, we're all used to seeing Crash on the title screen
19:42with his shiny gold trophy and everything. However, the Gasmoxia Grand Prix brought an
19:47interesting new look to the game. For the entire season, players would see an animation where Crash
19:53gets abducted and replaced by Nitrous Oxide. Honestly, of all the title screen variants we got to
19:59see during Nitro Fueled's time, this had to have been the best of the bunch. Replaced 3.
20:04Lext. Crash Twinsanity.
20:07So, Emperor Velo the 27th, we meet at last, face to face.
20:14Another massive change older fans will never forget is how we went from Clancy Brown as the voice of
20:20Cortex to Lex Lang. At the time, the change felt very sudden, albeit appropriate for the series' sense
20:27of humor. The reason for this change in cast stems from two problems regarding Brown's tenure. First off,
20:34Brown was not happy with how little Universal Interactive was paying him. Menial payment was a
20:39frequent issue with Universal and has been stated several times by former Naughty Dog staff. Secondly,
20:45Universal themselves wanted a change in Cortex's character as, according to Lex Lang himself,
20:51Universal found Cortex, the villain of the entire franchise by the way, to be, quote,
20:57too mean. And so, Brown and Universal went their separate ways. Lang has been the voice of Cortex since
21:042004. And so I've organized a little gathering, like a birthday party, except the exact opposite.
21:13The Cancelled Cartoons. By now, you've probably noticed how we haven't talked much about the
21:19original Crash Bandicoot. I mean, come on, you want to hear about the Cancelled animated series from
21:23back when the first game was being made? We've heard that story a million times already. I'm not
21:28going through it again. But did you ever hear about the second attempt that was made in 2020?
21:34In January 2021, information and test animations were leaked of a series called The Crash Bandicoot
21:40Insane Cartoon Show. The show was to have a 30-minute runtime composed of short seven-minute stories to make
21:47up a full episode. Unfortunately, Activision and Amazon executives were butting heads over the direction
21:54of the show. While Activision wanted the cartoon to incorporate adult humor, similar to old cartoons
22:00like Looney Tunes and Animaniacs, Amazon wanted the show to be as kid-friendly as possible. Activision
22:06couldn't get the show picked up by any other networks, and Netflix was out of the question as
22:10Skylanders Academy soiled the relationship between the two. And so, The Crash Bandicoot Insane
22:16was cancelled. RIP and peace. A cheeky celebration. Crash Bandicoot 4, It's About Time. It's About
22:30Time was rather cheeky and somewhat dismissive of the past 20 years of Crash games, more than we may
22:36like to admit. Granted, it's all in good fun, but the way the game retcons so many games that came
22:42out
22:42after Warped is almost Star Wars levels of erasure. And it all comes from one little detail in the
22:49opening. As Uka Uka and Entropy make another attempt to return to the past, we see Cortex has
22:55been etching into stone the number of attempts they've made to escape.
22:59Face it, Entropy! It's going to fail! Again!
23:0422 etchings! To represent the number of years that had passed since Warped. Trust us, we were all ready for
23:11a new era of Crash games, but man, what does this mean for the characters and stories we saw in
23:16Wrath of
23:17Cortex, Twinsanity, Entranced, and all of the others? The E-Zone games. While we all focus on the typical
23:25video games made for consoles, handhelds, and PC, there was another line of Crash games that almost
23:32nobody remembers. In the late 90s, a studio called E-Zone had developed four PC games starring the
23:40Orange Bandicoot. Admittedly, they were nothing remarkable. Crash Invaders was a simple Space
23:46Invaders clone, Crash Out was a copycat of Breakout, Crash Ball was just a Crash-themed Pong knockoff,
23:53and what of the fourth game? Nobody knows, as that game has never been recovered, and it may never be
24:00recovered given how old the games and the hardware made to run them are.
24:04The real Trophy Girls. Crash Team Racing. This is truly the coolest piece of Crash Bandicoot lore and
24:13trivia ever conceived. CTR fans may be familiar with Trophy Girls Isabella, Liz, Amy, and Megumi,
24:21but what about the women they represent? Yes, each of the CTR Trophy Girls are based on real women,
24:28and they all had a heavy hand in marketing Crash Bandicoot across the world. Amy Matsumura Blair
24:34was the marketing manager at SIE and was responsible for writing the ads for all of the Crash games.
24:41Isabelle Tomatis was the product manager for SIE Europe during CTR's development. Elizabeth Ashford
24:47was the PR manager for SIE Europe during CTR's development. And Megumi Hosoya was the product and
24:54marketing manager for SIE and was responsible for creating the famous Crash Dance that first aired
25:01during Japanese ads for Crash Bandicoot. In CTR Nitro Fueled, all four Trophy Girls are even given
25:08accents that reflect the countries all four Sony alumni were from. All four have long since moved
25:13on from PlayStation, hopefully living their own lives in complete comfort.
25:26Did any of these tidbits surprise you? Let us know down in the comments,
25:30and don't forget to subscribe to Mojo Plays for more great videos every day!
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