---
title: 'How One Crash Bandicoot Level Helped Build Naughty Dog'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=AMLJQL5iPtU'
video_id: 'AMLJQL5iPtU'
date: 2026-09-25
duration_sec: 597
channel: 'IGN'
---

# How One Crash Bandicoot Level Helped Build Naughty Dog

> Source: [How One Crash Bandicoot Level Helped Build Naughty Dog](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AMLJQL5iPtU)

## Summary

This video explores the origins of the cinematic chase sequence in video games, tracing it back to the 1996 game Crash Bandicoot. It explains how the developers at Naughty Dog solved the problem of showing their character's face in a 3D space by creating the iconic 'running towards camera' chase, which became a blueprint for future games like Uncharted. The video also discusses how this design choice influenced adaptive difficulty and the broader shift in game design philosophy.

### Key Points

- **The Problem: Showing the Character's Face** [00:00] — In early 3D games, it was hard to show the character's face during gameplay. Naughty Dog wanted to show Crash Bandicoot's face more, which led to the creation of the chase sequence.
- **Baldur's Level: A Quick Chase** [01:00] — The fourth level of Crash Bandicoot, Baldur's, is a minute-long chase sequence that became the first of its kind, influencing countless games.
- **The Reverse of Sonic** [04:47] — The developers attempted the reverse of a Sonic level by having the player run into the screen, which was a breakthrough for cinematic perspective.
- **The Problem with 3D Space** [05:20] — Adding a dimension created too much empty space, diluting the ratio between choice and conflict. The solution was to take out a dimension, like time, to maintain tension.
- **Inspiration from Indiana Jones** [06:33] — Naughty Dog looked to cinema, specifically Indiana Jones, for inspiration to create a time-pressured environment, leading to the famous boulder chase.
- **Adaptive Difficulty** [07:15] — Crash Bandicoot introduced adaptive difficulty, where the game monitors player performance and adjusts the challenge, like slowing down the boulder or giving extra masks, to help players succeed.
- **The Legacy of Crash Bandicoot** [08:56] — Crash Bandicoot was a huge success and laid the foundation for Naughty Dog's cinematic ambitions, influencing games like Uncharted and the broader industry.

### Conclusion

Crash Bandicoot's chase sequences were a revolutionary solution to a design problem, creating a new genre of cinematic gameplay that influenced decades of game design and solidified Naughty Dog's place in gaming history.

## Transcript

As Leon Kennedy, we fled from a giant mechanical statue. Eleven years later, we guided Nathan Drake and his brother Sam as they escaped from relentless pursuers on a motorbike. And recently, we helped forge a path through a literal wave of plague-infested rats for a plague tale, The Meteor.
Three examples from literally hundreds of cinematic chase sequences in video games that can all trace their roots back to an unlikely source. The colourful cartoon platformer that started it all, Crash Bandicoot.
The running towards camera chase sequence is as popular now as it ever been, raising the cinematic tension in blockbuster games for the last 30 years. But it's beginning to humble, and its widespread use is all thanks to the Crash developers at Naughty Dog trying to solve a single problem.
How do we show our characters' face more? I think Crash has a place in history. From a quick fix solution to a triple A staple, this is how an early Crash Bandicoot level inspired decades of cinematic level design.
Baldur's is the fourth level in Crash Bandicoot, and takes an average player around 60 seconds to complete. Nested amongst 31 other levels, featuring lengthy side-scrolling gauntlets, tricky platforming
and painful difficulty spikes to overcome, it would be easy to assume that a quick, minute-long chase sequence would have been a particular highlight. But Baldur's was the first of its kind. Any video game sequence where a character is chased towards the camera can trace its
origins back to Crash Bandicoot. Perhaps the series it informs the most, though, was Naughty Dog's Own Uncharted series, which features multiple sequences of Nathan Drake running towards camera across the entire series,
as if it were a mandatory part of all Naughty Dog games' DNA. Oh, man. They make you go. Push the start button. I knew that. All right. In a 2019 interview with IGN, Jason Rubin, the co-creator of Crash Bandicoot, said,
It's the modern Naughty Dog playing the antique Naughty Dog. But again, what Nathan doesn't understand is, this is basically the game that led you. You did, though, because of this game. The level design for Baldur's began its journey in 1994.
Naughty Dog, then a small independent studio fresh off the modestly performing Way of the Warrior, was ready to take the next step, and the soon-to-launch Sony PlayStation gave it the platform to try something no one had ever done before,
create the first great 3D platformer. Super Mario 64 was still two years away and under lock and key so the genre rules were yet to be established by the king of platformers Crash creator and Naughty Dog founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin saw an opportunity to
stake their claim in the burgeoning genre. They immediately got to work experimenting with how platforming could work in 3D, but they soon ran into an issue. We were trying to preserve all the good elements of classic platform games.
To maintain a solid control feel, we kept the camera relatively stable and oriented the control axis relative to the camera. This may seem obvious, but it wasn't at the time, and many 3D games use different, and usually inferior, schemes.
Gavin later said in a 2020 interview with Ars Technica, What would it really be like to do a platformer in 3D? Imagine you're going through loops like in Sonic the Hedgehog, or you're jumping platforms or collecting stuff in 3D. The camera's always behind you. All you do is see Sonic's ass,
but the front of the character is where the expression is. Locking the camera behind the characters now a tried and true method, used in almost all third-person action games today. But Gavin and Ruben were concerned this perspective would limit the character's
ability to connect with players. A thought that was particularly troubling considering the technical hurdles that the team had overcome to bring Crash's expression to life. When Crash pulls his flat face out of the sand, shakes it off, looks confused, leaps
up, looks at the camera and does his great big goofy smile, that's old Crash as a character. No 2D game could afford that art, and no other 3D game had the facial animation that our system brought, and thus the main character transformed from an emotionless vehicle to
an emotive friend. The thing that Naughty Dog knew their character was something special, and his ability to and react like a newly tuned character separated them not only from the current competition,
but eventually even Super Mario 64. The competition that they didn't even know they had. Yahoo! For this advantage to work though, they needed to find more ways to get Crash's face across
the centre. Our solution, which evolved over the next two years, was multi-fold. First, the character would start the game facing the screen. Second, we added 2D levels that guaranteed quality gameplay and a chance to see the character in a familiar pose, allowing comparisons against
the old 2D games. And third we would attempt the reverse of a Sonic Act level the run into the screen A desire to show more of Crash face led the developers to make their first breakthrough into cinematic territory and ultimately create the blueprint for Crash Bandicoot
most iconic perspective. The angle switch, though, led to another issue. In the Sonic-esque levels, players were always presented with the oncoming threat on the horizon. Despite the level of challenge, the linear path always gave players the intel they needed
to progress, ensuring that any failure was the fault of the player's ability rather than the game design. When you stripped that intel away, you lost the core fundamental of the design. Players were now running into the unknown, so the obstacle path had to be light and forgiving.
And much like other 3D games of the era, where open spaces became detrimental to conflict, Crash's front-facing levels, through necessity, had been stripped of any challenge or drama. In 3D platforming, you can just go to the right and avoid enemies entirely.
You've added a whole dimension to the space, so now there's too much empty space. It diluted the ratio between choice and conflict. We had to figure out how to compensate for this to maintain the action pace. With all our technical and art successes, the game could not have succeeded without good gameplay.
This was by far the hardest part of making Crash Bandicoot. We had this realisation that basically we had added a dimension, So the simplest strategy was to take out a dimension in some way. An example of that was the boulder level.
The dimension we're actually taking out there is time. The solution was to use time to dictate Crash's running speed. To increase attention, Crash could no longer leisurely navigate the path.
Naughty Dog looked to cinema for inspiration and settled on Indiana Jones' iconic boulder escape as a device to help force players into a time-pressured environment, vital to maintaining the desired level of conflict.
All of this became the legendary Boulder level, aping that moment from Raiders of the Lost Ark when the giant stone balls started rolling towards Indy.
The combination of character and conflict gave birth to Crash Bandicoot's chase sequence. Its immediate success cemented the form as not only a Crash Bandicoot staple, but also the cinematic inspiration for both Naughty Dog titles and other developers' action games for years back on.
But Boulder's influence wasn't limited to presentation. Crash Bandicoot arrived at the tail end of an era of punishing difficulty In a time where arcade was king most casual players couldn finish a game and game design often targeted difficulty to drive revenue After all a failed run led to another coin in the slot
But despite making sure Crash had its fair share of difficulty, Ruben and Gavin also wanted to create an approachable game, one that challenged skilled players, but also accommodated beginners, and, perhaps more importantly, children. We realised that if
a novice player died a lot of times, we should give them an Aku Aku at the start of a round, and they had a better chance to progress. We also figured out that if you died a lot while running from the boulder, we could slow it down a little each time.
If you died too much, a fruit crate would suddenly become a continue point. Eventually, everyone succeeded at Crash. It's in this approach that you can see how, alongside scripted cinematic sequences, Crash Bandicoot also helped introduce another major video game design philosophy.
Adaptive difficulty had been experimented with before, But in 1996, alongside the launch of Resident Evil, the background act of monitoring a player's performance and adapting the game's challenge to accommodate really began to take shape.
The medium began to move away from punishing players for quarters to creating a dynamic experience that could tailor itself to your skill level. Are we going to start the snack talking mode? No, top easy mode, I just switch it.
That's way easier. Not with you talking. Crash Bandicoot was an overwhelming success. The small team of developers managed to birth a PlayStation icon who still celebrated 30 years later, and laid the foundations for Naughty Dog to become the renowned, elite developer that we all know today.
I think we sold under 100,000, maybe 100,000 copies of Wario the Warrior. Yeah. We sold 9,000 copies of Crash. Crash Bandicoot was really the crucible in which Naughty Dog's philosophy was forged. We wanted to make a truly great game that was going to be a classic,
and to do that, we came to believe that everything in it had to be great. Naughty Dog exists today because of the risk taken on Crash Bandicoot. Their desire to show off impressive 3D animation, led to a reinvention of platforming perspective,
inspired a generation of chase sequences, and, perhaps most importantly, sparked Naughty Dog's cinematic ambitions. You good?
If you liked that video, why not check out more Art of the Levels on IGN? We recently made an episode about Resident Evil's Spencer Mansion and have also revisited some of the classic levels in the history of GTA.
And for everything else Crash Bandicoot, be sure to stick with IGN.