A look at the first prototype I've found of "Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex" - specifically the "Crashes to Ashes" level, which in this build is very different to the one that made the final game
Reminder: The lifespan of CD-Rs was greatly overestimated back in their day and a lot of first-gen ones are already rotting and degrading away as the organic dye breaks down. Backup those precious beta discs!
The Jeep is actually in the final game. But not in this particular level, but another one, where you're being chased by Rhinos, can't remember the name of the level
It's in two levels, actually. The first is in the rhino chase part in Jungle Rumble (otherwise the level is mostly on foot), and the second is the entire Smokey and the Bandicoot level (since it's one of those hog/polar bear/motorcycle riding kind of levels).
This version of the hub made it into the manual! In the section where it tells you about the hub system, there's an image that shows this version of the warp room barrier, as well as the gap in the center (which is actually the secret warp room platform in the final version). I was always wondering about this for too many years! Do you have any early builds of Crash 'n' Burn? I know for a fact that despite the amount of research people have done on it, most would still love to see how it truly looked in its early incarnations. Also, make a video about Finding Nemo! I'm sure there'll be some great behind the scenes stuff in there.
Well, the title screen is 10 times better than the final one, at least it's not ripping of completely the Crash Bandicoot 3 one. Anyway, this is very interesting, Wrath of Cortex is one of my favorite Crash Bandicoot games.
You are awesome. Your video games have been apart of my childhood. Growing up, I always was curious about the development for those games. It really makes my day to learn some behind the scene stuff from you!
I'd love to hear more about the storyline of this game. Some people theorised about a proper plot explaining why each level had to be visited, but that it was cut for time constraints. Thanks for your hard work!!
Would it be possible to do a full let's play of this beta? As this version seems nearly complete, and the fans could also help compare the differences.
Oh just like... Stop being greedy and release it for everyone to play. I'll never understand why some people hold back alpha/beta versions of old games or old films that were made before film preservation was taken seriously.. If you died and no one else knew about what you had then it could very well be lost to time.
@@cookiesontoast9981 dude. We should be thankful he even does the things that he does do. I'd like the ISOs too, but it's probably illegal for him to give them to us.
It’s amazing to get your insights and perspectives on this. Thanks for taking the time. My son still plays Finding Nemo for the GC every now and then when he gets an itch for it and it’s taken on a new meaning for me to watch him knowing the work you put into these titles.
Jon you really need to do a longplay of this. Maybe a livestream similarly to that Madagascar build? Also, the lightning rods, platform in the middle and other graphics in the hub are missing and the gates are missing the particle effects seen in the final. I should mention offtopically that the lighting rods mentioned before are actually missing their particles in the Xbox and GameCube versions.
I'd love to see an even earlier build from back when the game was totally different. With that cool new logo you and Rodney Matthews should team up and make Game Hut Studios.
Love these behind the scenes videos. Actually working on a Wrath of Cortex video at the minute as practice for a module in my game design degree. And as a game design student I must say these videos are really fascinating. Here's hoping for more hidden prototype gems.
Wow, this is super interesting! Great find, Jon! There are some minor differences in the warp room, like Coco facing towards the camera and not really doing anything. In the final build she's on a laptop, facing away. The middle section is also a platform that leads to the secret levels, etc. Looking at one of my early magazines, there are screenshots of some oddities which I wonder if they're from this build or not. I'm eager to see Crash N Burn (level 21), as one screenshot shows an entire vertical section that isn't in the final game, one with a big blue enemy in that level, as well as an odd camera angle near the level's crystal. In the same mag, Crash appears in his mech in Compactor Reactor (level 5) when it doesn't feature there in the final game. I see other screenshots with minor things missing, like particle/heat effects for Fahrenheit Frenzy or a different placement of an enemy, but I guess Compactor Reactor and Crash N Burn particularly interest me from this beta build.
Thank you very much Jon. Crash TWoC was met with reverence when I got it as a Platinum title from the local Morrisons. Always nice to see a little BtS!
the earliest memory I have of receiving a video game as a christmas gift was this game. it's cool to see some behind the scenes of it. I should go back and finish it, I don't think I ever did.
Despite everything, TWoC was a pretty decent game with amazing soundtrack and levels. I've really enjoyed it! Thank you for all of your Games and Videos!
It definitely was! And it gets way too much unnecessary hate nowadays from crash fans who are harsh to it. It's one of my favorite crash games next to Crash 2, Warped, & the first two GBA games.
The soundtrack sounds too much like A Bugs Life for PS1 than it does like a Crash game, because the two had the same composers and both were dev'd by Travelers Tales.
@Gianfranco Ridolfi Yep, initially they were going to include a minigame during the loading on the first PS2 version, but they ran outta time, scrap the idea, and probably forgot to shorten the loading as a result of cutting it out.
I'd love to see more Crash related content. Wrath of Cortex was the first Crash game my parents bought me, and it was the first PS2 game I ever played.
I knew exactly what the dome model was being used for. And also i never knew what that green blob item was being used for, cause it's still loaded in the level. Turns out to be a projectile :oooo Wrathgasm
When you were going through the level select menu there was a level under the bonus list just titled 'Game Over' and I think it'd be cool to see what that is! Even if it's just the one room in the game over screen it'd still be cool to see crash running around in there
This inspired me to run into my office and pull out the walk through book for CBTWOC, wish I still had my copy of the game from my childhood, but I can reminisce via the book. Drain damage was the hardest boss fight in that game for me back then. Anyways I never really paid attention to the QnA section in the back of the book before now, kinda impressive it only took slightly over a year to develop the game. Also the fact that you guys wanted to make it an adventure roaming style game then, but didnt have the time. Which obviously the idea moved on to become twinsanity.
@@MSCLeap75 it might have, im just going off the QnA answers at the end of the guide book where the one from Jon reads "...when the format was settled, it was about 12-14 months of development" and one from Arthur reads "In all, the project was accomplished in around 12-14 months." Which are just numbers they could have been pulling off the top of their heads at the time. Nothing specific like this is the exact day we started to the release date. Edit: And honestly the less time it took them the more impressive it is technically
@@FreakGene They definitely did a great job with the graphical effects in the levels which makes them feel slightly realistic compared to other games in the series. Things like the water, fire, fog, & particle effects make the levels look great & give them that atmospheric feel.
I would be interested in a documentary style video. Like a 20 minute video where you walk us trough how ps2 games or modern games are made at travelers tales or tt games.
There are some remnants of it in the final game. Go to the middle of the warp room without unlocking the bonus levels. The camera will detach from the auto lock.
I saw a video once claiming that there was a loading screen minigame in the review copy of this game that was cut last minute. Any info on this? Would have made the long load times a bit more tolerable haha.
@@fixedfunshow They don't anymore, but it used to be patented by Namco, yeah. Jon said that's why the game loaded for so long - they had a loading minigame and to avoid patent issues they had to strip it at the last minute. However they did fix it for the second round of discs.
This is great! Thank you for showing this! It's nice to see that the jeep was used in other levels. There is supposed to be another level where the jeep was used, Compactor Reactor from the 1st Warp Room but it was cut. I don't suppose you would have that deleted section in that CD?
+GameHut HOOOOOLY SHIT. This is big. Do you remember if you guys built an iteration that was based on Mark Cerny's mock-up prototype? (The open-world idea having to do with the volcano island) Also, would you ever consider releasing footage of Twinsanity beta? A bunch of material was left out of the final product, so I'm just interested to see how it looked previously.
Would you happen to still have an E3 build laying around? I know the E3 warp room is present in the final game's files, but it'll be interesting to see that warp room as it was meant to be
The HUB area doesn't have the little pad area that sends you towards the bonus areas of the game, The Load/Save Screen is extremely still, unlike how the original final release had those sparkle effects moving around as you were either loading your save, or not loading. The Menu doesn't have the space-esque theme, and is located in Coco's lab, something we do not see in the final game at all, Well at least in game, It is mentioned during the intro when all three heroes go into the warp room at the start of the game. Overall, you can only get the Debug in the Xbox Version of the game through hacking the files, as seen by one of Beta M's videos of him screwing around with the items, Don't recall the title of the video, But I DO know he was screwing around with crates in one of the roller ball levels. Overall, Interesting.
Your work on Sonic R so impressed a PlayStation owning friend of mine, he was swayed to try Rascal on PSOne. Do you have betas to show from Rascal too at all, I wonder?
Hey Jon, did you know that someone made this super awesome mod of the level The Gauntlet from this game? It even uses unused assets from the game. If you'd like, I can post a link for you so you can have a look at it.
Also, could you show off the loading times that you said in the Madagascar stream had the loading mini game you had to take out last minute? If it's in there I mean
I honestly didn’t know that Crunch was supposed to be double his size in Crashes to Ashes. Nor did I know that the Jeep was going to be used in that boss level.
Why was Crash's animation of jumping into the water cut? In fact, why was a lot of interesting content cut? Finally, do any of the prototypes have a vastly different or unused version of the volcano level that can be seen in commercials?
Something I've always wondered about this game is that (in the GameCube version at least) the FPS seems very inconsistent. Not so much in the "dropping frames" kind of way, but more that there seem to be areas that are hard-coded to switch to a different FPS cap, so to speak, though I can't say that for sure. Is this the case? If so, do you think there's any way to disable this from happening? Particularly for use with emulators, which can likely handle more things going on than the original consoles.
The GameCube version is a very rough port, with lots of framerate drops and other graphical issues. I believe it was developed by Eurocom (which is strange, as most of their other games from that era looked clean and ran beautifully). The PS2 and Xbox versions, on the other hand, maintain a solid 60fps at nearly all times. It is possible in theory to fix the poor performance by using Dolphin's overclock feature, but doing this also drastically increases the system requirements. I have a pretty good quad-core CPU, and I can't even get close to a locked 60 without my CPU bottlenecking it and slowing the game/emu down.
jon, theres this project that's been in development since 2006 called project axsx, which is supposed to basically revive sonic x-treme from the dead. do you think you could/would you have any interest in helping the creator, Andrew with the project, or are you busy with something? I personally think sonic x-treme was going to be the best 3d sonic platformer, and this project has had my attention for quite awhile. it would be cool if you lent the creator a hand. :.)
