Prerelease:Crash Bash

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Crash Bash.

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

Development

An interview with Crash Bash producer Jon Williams revealed insight into the previously unknown development history of Crash Bash, while even including a showcase of several models and storyboard art.

• There was an unused playable character named Kanga-Soo that was meant to be the second "tail whip attack" character alongside Dingodile, but was removed before release at Mark Cerny's request and was replaced with Rilla Roo.

Initial Press Release

This is the earliest known version of the game. The photos from this build originate from a press kit that was given out during E3 2000. The trailer comes from the Official PlayStation Magazine. The previews showcase Polar and Tilt Panic, all Crate Crush levels, the podium, and a scrapped Pogo Pandemonium level.

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General Differences

• The shading on characters' models isn't as intense as it is in the final game.
• Cortex's 'N' is grey instead of brown.
• There is an erroneous brown triangle on Dingodile's snout.
• The underside of Dingodile's arms are tan-colored like they are in Warped.
• There is an erroneous grey triangle on Crash's shoe.
• Koala Kong and Rilla Roo weren't included as playable characters yet.
• Dingodile has a slower running animation.
• The HUD has different fonts and icons, most of which come from Crash Bandicoot: Warped, except for N. Brio, which uses unique artwork.
  • Characters have a blue circle with a yellow outline behind their icons in all minigames except for Pogo Pandemonium minigames.
• The timer shows 2 minute digits instead of one.
• When a character loses a life, rather than being represented through a small, fairy-like ghost, it's a large, strange-looking cartoon ghost.
• The trophy stats at the end of each round were displayed in a different manner. A trophy would appear on-screen for every victory the winning characters had (the trophy from the current match also flashed yellow and white), so the trophy list was shown a bit differently: the trophies for each character were listed vertically under their respective icons.
• The trophy list would always appear with a little fanfare that is unused in the final game.
• TNT and Nitro crates use textures from previous games.
• The back of the Speed Shoes powerup has glitchy textures.

Polar Push

• Boost bars use a "B" letter to represent the boost.

Pogo Pandemonium

• Characters' HUD have a paint color behind their icons.
• The character spins out when attacked in a Pogo minigame.
• All characters have pogo sticks, even the ones who normally use something else (such as Cortex and his jet-pack).
  • Each character has a different color pogo stick: Crash is blue, Coco is purple, Brio is a dark magenta, Tiny is green, Dingodile is red, and Cortex's color is unknown.
• The Pogo minigame keeps all characters on-screen after each round.
• The arrow shown in the right side of the arena is cyan instead of purple.
• The characters' paint color is in the wrong order.
• Missiles don't emit smoke particles.
• Breaking a purple crate won't bring up the total points you scored from your tiles.
• Players don't collide with each other.

Crate Crush

• The health bar is different.
• TNT crates spawn much more often.
• The chunks that fly off when a stone box hits something are simple sprites, whereas they're 3D animated polygons in the final game.

Scrapped Egypt Level

This Pogo Pandemonium level seems to have been replaced in the final game, and there are no real clues to determine what level it was replaced with.

• This level uses Space Bash's Crystal Challenge scenery.
• You can see Wumpa fruits lying around, even though Pogo minigames never have them since you don't get a health bar.
• The level only has a 4-way missile pickup, and shooting a player with a missile will encircle them in tiles of the attacker's color.
  • The level doesn't have a Speed Shoes pickup. However, every Pogo minigame in the final game includes the shoes.

Space Bash

• Space Bash used to have one of the Cortex billboards from Crash Bandicoot 3's motorcycle levels in the background.

Drain Bash

• Drain Bash used to have a wobbling lamp hanging from the ceiling. The lightbulb would flash all the time.
• The scenery is generally more neutrally-colored instead of having a blue tint on everything.
• It used stone boxes instead of reinforced crates.

Podium

• The podium is totally different. It has vents on the floor, the stands are closer apart and further back from the center, and the machine behind the first place stand has a different, simpler design with orange glowing rings.
• There are no fireworks in the background.
• The person in 4th place stands closer to the center.

E3 Demo

The earliest publicly playable version was seen at E3 2000 on May 11–13. The game had a playable demo featuring at least six different minigames. Crashball and Pogo-a-Gogo are unavailable, however some footage and preview images actually show Crashball in a very similar build to the E3 one.

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General Differences

• The game's logo is different.
• Rilla Roo wasn't present in the game at this point.
• Koala Kong's icon here is a different version unique to builds around this time and was not used in the final release.
• Koala Kong doesn't have a taunt voice.
• The main menu doesn't have any options and the player is only able to choose between 7 characters.
• Minigames lack a Rule screen.
• In one video, Koala Kong's silver trophy is blinking due to a glitch. Later in the video, Coco's silver trophy is also blinking in Desert Fox. It seems this bug always happens to the 4th player.

Ballistix

• Hovercrafts are missing strip lights.
• The HUD shows three digits.

Polar Push

• The boost bars are smaller.
• Dingodile's tail is pointed up when idle on Polar.

Tank Wars

• Land mines have a very different design.
• Cortex and Brio's tank projectiles move faster.

Warp Room

• The "Press X to Select" uses the big font. The text also uses the letter X in favor of the ✕ button symbol.
• The warp room is very different. There are no teleport option to other warp rooms or Load/Save neither boss level.

Pogo Painter

• Breaking the purple ! crates won't show the player's color score.

Desert Fox

• The timer has a bug that doesn't show the "0", causing the game to show ":52" instead of "0:52".

Press Kit Images

This is the earliest known build using the final icon designs, plus the earliest apparition of Rilla Roo. It's dated in-between the E3 demo and the July prototype, so it's likely from June 2000.

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General Differences

• The shading on characters' models isn't as intense as it is in the final game.
• Cortex's 'N' is grey instead of brown.
• There is an erroneous brown triangle on Dingodile's snout.
• The underside of Dingodile's arms are tan-colored like they are in Warped.

Ballistix

• Hovercrafts are still missing strip lights on their sides.

Polar Push

• The boost bar is smaller.

Tank Wars

• The HUD doesn't include the mines that each player has.
• On the bottom-left corner of the Desert Fox screenshot, there is a floating object not used in the final game. It might be an early version of the mine pick-up.

Title Screen

Character Select

• The icon order is different. Instead of separating the characters between Aku and Uka teams, it just separates them by type (i.e. Crash + Coco, Cortex + Brio, Tiny + Kong, Dingodile + Rilla Roo).
• The text denoting players 1, 2, 3, and 4 is different, with another font, color and without being inside a purple square.
• The platforms are all yellow. In the final version, each one uses different colors.

Level Select

• The Crate Crush minigame type was originally simply referred to as "Bash".
• The text uses the letter X in favor of the ✕ button symbol.
• Space Bash and Snow Bash are unlocked from the start.
• There is no hyphen between "left right" and "up down".
• The padlock has a grey color instead of light blue.

Warp Room

• The first Warp Room lacks a lot of details like the floor cement or the jungle theme.
• The Ballistix and Crate Crush levels are switched in each warp room. As a result, Jungle Bash and Crashball are switched.
• Relics appear in place of gems.
• The challenge select shows the name of the collectible you earn from it (Trophy, Relic, Crystal) under the item itself.

Jungle Bash

• The trophy rules screen is more basic: only the general description is present, which is followed right below by the controls hints.
  • "Kicks boxes" instead of "Press to kick crates".
  • "Picks up and throws boxes" instead of "Press to pick up crates - Press again to throw".
  • "Collect fruit to increase [...]" instead of "Collect Wumpa fruit to increase [...]".

Tilt Panic

• The timer has a bug that doesn't show the "0" in the minute digit.

N. Ballism

• N. Gin's hovercraft is a different color, a shade of yellow-orange in contrast to the final's purple.
• The ball limit for each character in N. Ballism is normally 20, but here it shows limits that go as high as 25.

July Prototype

Predating the July 26th, 2000 demo, this North American demo was built sometime in July for magazines and online articles. All minigames from the first 3 warp hubs are available, but Bearminator, El Pogo Loco, and Big Bad Fox don't appear in any sources of footage from this build.

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General Differences

• The shading on characters' models isn't as intense as it is in the final game.
• Cortex's 'N' is grey instead of brown.
• There is an erroneous brown triangle on Dingodile's snout.
• In rules screens for minigames, the L1 and R1 icons use dark letters and are placed vertically.

Polar Push

• The boost bar is smaller.

Pogo Pandemonium

• Breaking a purple crate won't bring up the total points you scored from your tiles.
• The smoke particles that come from rockets are more abundant.

Tank Wars

• The HUD doesn't include the mines that each player has.

Crash Dash

• The boost bar is smaller.

Title Screen

• Only Adventure and Battle modes are selectable options.
• The highlighted option will be colored black instead of yellow.
• Descriptions of the modes are missing.
• Crash uses his in-game model in the menu rather than his cutscene model.

Character Select

• The icon order is different. Instead of separating the characters between Aku and Uka teams, it just separates them by type (i.e. Crash + Coco, Cortex + Brio, Tiny + Kong, Dingodile + Rilla Roo).
• The text denoting players 1, 2, 3, and 4 is different, with another font, color and without being inside a purple square.
• The platforms are all yellow. In the final version, each one uses different colors.

Warp Room

• The first Warp Room lacks a lot of details like the floor cement or the jungle theme.
• The Ballistix and Crate Crush levels are switched in each warp room. As a result, Jungle Bash and Crashball are switched, as well as Space Bash and Beach Ball.

Crashball

• The trophy rules screen is more basic: it starts with "Defend your goal" instead of the "OBJECTIVE" title, which is followed right below by the controls hints, instead of explaining the main rules.
• When the round starts, everyone starts with 0 points. In prototype versions of the game close to this build, it can be seen that everyone's points would incrementally increase from 0 to 15 as the round started.

Polar Panic

• There is no mist above the ocean.
• The trophy rules screen is more basic: it starts with "Knock other players off the ice to win", which is followed right below by the controls hints.
  • After "When falling", a period is used instead of a comma.

Jungle Bash

• The trophy rules screen is more basic: only the general description is present, which is followed right below by the controls hints.
  • "Kicks boxes" instead of "Press to kick crates".
  • "Picks up and throws boxes" instead of "Press to pick up crates - Press again to throw".
  • "Collect fruit to increase [...]" instead of "Collect Wumpa fruit to increase [...]".

Papu Pummel

• Papu Papu doesn't have a healthbar. This is because the objective for the boss was different. The early objective can be observed in builds such as the July 26th, 2000 demo.

Pogo-a-Gogo

• It uses the crystal challenge arena by default.

N. Ballism

• N. Gin's hovercraft is a different color, a shade of yellow-orange in contrast to the final's purple.

Metal Fox

• The spawn positions of player 2 and player 4 are swapped.

Dot Dash

• Green pillars can be seen on the side of the arena.

Japanese Prototype

A trailer found on PurePure Plus Vol. 007 (Disc 1) shows a pre-release Japanese build, which appears to be close to the August 25th, 2000 demo. uses early elements, which could mean that it was being worked on while the game was in development.

• The characters are using early textures.
• Minigames names are in English.
• Bearminator's icon is different.
  • The scope border doesn't cover the bottom of the screen.
• An early version of Dragon Drop can be seen where the crystal challenge arena is the default scenery.
  • For some reason, this is the only minigame where the character icons are from the international versions.
• In Big Bad Fox, there are bomb pick-ups in ? crate form.
• Papu Papu's icon is different.
• The early version of the character select screen is still present.

September Prototype

The version seen here is later than any of the other preview versions on this page and was covered on GameSpot. It appears identical to the September 14th, 2000 build.

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• It already shows the final icon order, but this time using "Good" and "Evil" words instead of Aku Aku and Uka Uka.
• The "P1" word is different, with another font, color and without being inside a purple square.
• The platforms are all yellow. In the final version, each one uses different colors.