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Released back in 1996, it's easy to see why Crash Bandicoot became such a hit.
Positioned by Sony as a mascot character for its 32-bit PlayStation, Crash had the look and attitude to go toe-to-toe with Sonic and Mario. It's little wonder, then, that his debut title sold 6.8 million units worldwide and established a franchise that remains an ongoing concern today.
However, Crash's status as a PlayStation icon is interesting because Sony never actually owned the character – Crash was a Universal Studios property because Naughty Dog inked a three-game publishing deal with the studio following a collaboration on the 3DO fighting game Way of the Warrior in 1994.
That deal, which was brokered by video game legend Mark Cerny, is the topic of a conversation between Naughty Dog founder Jason Rubin and The Game Business' Chris Dring – and he doesn't have a lot of positive things to say about it, if I'm honest.
As reported by Eurogamer, Rubin says that "it was extremely hard to say goodbye to Crash [...] The relationship with Universal was abysmal."
Rubin – who, since leaving Naughty Dog, has held roles at THQ and Meta – explains that when the studio was relocated to Universal Studios as part of the publishing arrangement, they were placed in hallways on the "30-some-odd floor", which meant the heat was often unbearable:
"They would turn the AC off at 6pm - Crash Bandicoot working hours ended at 4am. So by 4am on a summer's day on the 34th floor it was over 100 degrees in the building. I'm not exaggerating. I know that to be a fact because our servers would shut down at about 105 degrees. They wouldn't let us bring in air conditioning on our own, they wouldn't put the AC on, so we had to bring in ice and a fan to keep Crash Team Racing going."
"I want to point out they gave me a little over 100 million dollars in the first few weeks, yet they were still doing this with us," Rubin adds. "So when we talk about a bad relationship, this relationship was abysmal. The bottom line, the reason for this, was they realised they added nothing but owning the license."
Things got so bad, Rubin reveals, that threats of violence were made against Naughty Dog staff:
"To give you an idea, one of the people working [at Universal] put a target - that he had gone and shot with real bullets - on the wall, and said to Andy [Gavin, Naughty Dog co-founder] 'your partner ought to look at this, I'm not a bad shot' about something. It was abysmal."
Rubin stresses that Cerny was not part of Universal at that point and was not responsible for this treatment.
"There could be a movie about this," he adds. "It was a crazy time. It was not hard to say goodbye to Universal, but the fact that [Crash Team Racing] existed was Sony stepping up to the plate and doing the right thing for all parties, and it wasn't going to happen again."