When was crash bandicoot created?

Answer 1

It was first developed by Naughty Dog development studio and published by Sony Entertainment as a PlayStation exclusive. The character and game rights have since been sold and transferred to various other studios and publishers over the years.

The earliest concepts for the game began development in 1994 with the codename 'sonic's ass game', the idea was to create a platformer that could compete with sonic games but from a 3rd person view behind the character. The developers jokingly suggested you would be looking at sonic's ass the entire game.

The first playable parts of the game were developed in 1995 and the main character was Willy the Wombat. The game was considered too boring and empty and developers began adding boxes to smash. As this became the main focus of the game and 'crashing' became the theme, the main character and graphics were revised along with the name to become Crash Bandicoot.

The first public demo was shown at game conventions in early 1996, the game was released later that year in August 1996.

Early sales of the game were good enough that development on Crash 2 was announced shortly after its release and development began in October 1996.

By 1999; 3 games had been released and met with commercial success but developer Naughty Dog's contract with Sony had expired. The game rights were sold and Crash was no longer a Sony exclusive. That marked the end of Crash's early years and the beginning of his ping pong history of showing up on other game consoles and being transferred among many developers.