Pretty, Little, Pixels | Croc Legend of the Gobbos—Remastered
After a while, Crocodile
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Edits: Morgan Shaver (they/them), Nathan Miller (he/him), and Bex Stump (she/her).
Developing Croc in 1996 was as much of an exploration into 3D game development as it was a creation of the PlayStation game itself, with the dedicated, but tiny team—consisting of just over a dozen employees—connecting the puzzle pieces as they all went along, with their passion for creating art they themselves enjoyed at the center of it all.
“We didn’t have these sophisticated game engines back then. There was no Unity. Everything was hand coded, usually by a guy in the middle of the night. In the ninties you had to write everything from scratch. It’s like you were making a movie, but you were also inventing a camera at the same time. Every game you made, you had to make a new piece of technology.”
“Yeah, today, your first choice, when you want to build a game, is to decide which game engine you’re going to use; is it like Unity, Unreal Engine, is it something else? And all the tools you need are there, the tech is decided for you, on the creating and production side. Back then … it wasn’t like that.”
Mike Arkin and Jez San (Co-CEO and CEO/Argonauts Founder) speaking about how technology has transformed game development in the years since development of the original Croc Legend of the Gobbos
Before Croc was even part of the idea, Argonauts pitched Nintendo on a 3D Yoshi platformer, hoping Nintendo and Argonauts could continue their push into 3D game development. The two companies had just successfully shipped Star Fox, as well as Stunt Racer FX—in addition to creating the Super FX chip for Nintendo—but Nintendo decided to sever ties with Argonauts, after canceling the release of Star Fox 2, the last game from the partnership.
“We had a 3-game deal with Nintendo, which included teaching [Nintendo] 3D technology. We did Star Fox, Stunt Race, and Star Fox 2, which didn’t come out at the time. And after that, we pitched them our idea for the first 3D platform game, which was using the Yoshi character. We mocked it up, did videos, and a mini prototype on the PC. We tried to get Nintendo interested in it.
We knew they’d never let us use the Mario character, so we deliberately used Yoshi, thinking that you know, Nintendo would possibly consider us doing a Yoshi 3D platformer. They weren’t interested in having an outside company use their characters, so they were quite clear they were going to do it themselves, and that became Mario 64.
Meanwhile, we really wanted to do a 3D platform game, so we started from scratch. We threw away all of the art and concepts for the orignal Yoshi game, and started designing new characters, and a new world, and that became Croc.”
Jez San discussing the birth of Croc
Game development continued, ultimately still in conceptual stages, as the developer simultaneously continued its search for what the game’s character would look like—and what a 3D game would look and play like.
It was all new territory, for everyone—even for the team that had pioneered the 3D capabilities that appeared toward the end of the Super Nintendo’s lifecycle.
“You never quite know how it’s going to be when you’re working on it, but you can feel at the time that something’s working. The team was jelling really well. We were really fortunate that we had just reached this point of natural alignment where everybody was working in sync, everybody’s style fell into place. Jez gave us the space to be really creative, which is incredibly rare when you think about Jez was also funding it all. We weren’t being directed by a publisher, and in some ways that gave us extra space [and the room] to explore. The design of the character—all the characters—was on the team, and … every new character that was drawn got the team so excited. “
Jason Smith, Croc's Original Animator, discussing the development of the original game
Croc began life as a single fanged crocodile—inspired by an artist’s cat’s single tooth—that was tough-looking, and was even equipped with a gun. Though the character would quickly transform into a more cute and adorable version, once the rest of the team started playing with the character.
“We were just kind of making things up as we went along. We turned out so many sketches. The designers were just kind of overwhelmed, and they would just be looking through [everyone’s ideas] to see what inspired ideas for gameplay.”
Jason Smith discussing the development of the original release of Croc
The team had created a demo of Croc running through a snowy, piped terrain on Sega Saturn development hardware, but it was lacking the necessary technological capabilities for what the team wanted to achieve.
Argonauts had a proof of concept, a character, and a vision for what they hoped to create—and that was a major start.
Once a PlayStation dev kit arrived, the pieces were all on the table, especially once the team witnessed what Jumping Flash, a launch title for the PlayStation, was doing with its take on early 3D platforming.
A game was pitched to Jez, and the team essentially decided to crack open the eggs that were the game design and player objectives for Yoshi’s Island—a stellar example of a 2D platformer with 3D flourish, in the team’s mind, and from the end of Super Nintendo’s lifecycle—as a blueprint for their approach to developing Croc.
“Croc was Argonaut’s most successful game. And because it was our own IP, and because we had funding to finish the game—under our own steam—before we published it, the deal [could be] much better with the publisher, with Fox. [Our deal] was much better than a normal deal a game developer would sign, where you would sign it early, and you’d sell your soul to do the game.”
Jez San discussing the creation of Croc
The PlayStation console’s limitations in draw distance—and the team’s desire to avoid “fog” in levels—influenced the room-based development of Croc’s game design. Puzzles were thought of as a way of interacting with environments in a more meaningful way.
Argonauts designed a 3D level editor that was tile based and written in DOS, which allowed the team to create levels quickly, as assets and tools were designed. This left more time for creative decisions, and gave the team the ability to make levels right up until the last moment.
“Yeah, we designed the Super FX chip, which at the time was called ‘The M.A.R.I.O. chip,’ which stood for ‘Mathematical Argonaut Rotation Input Output’ Chip. And then Nintendo renamed it ‘The Super FX chip,’ and that stuck.”
Jez San discussing Argonauts creating the Super FX chip for Nintendo
E3 footage of Crash Bandicoot and Bubsy 3D were finally revealed to the public, as developers working on their first 3D games were starting to show their hands, giving Argonauts a peek at how other developers were handling the challenges of game development.
PlayStation sent Argonauts a DualShock controller—the first PlayStation controller with joysticks—two weeks before Croc Legend of the Gobbos was scheduled to go gold and ship. This left them with no time to optimize it, and only enough time to essentially program the stick to function as a wiggly D-pad. Cameras in games were still a new concept, with the entire space still being a new frontier for developers, which would quickly become the biggest sticking point for players on release day.
Still, the game’s atmosphere was enough to carry it forward, yielding not just a successful launch, but a legacy as well. The iconic soundtrack was composed alongside the game’s levels were designed, becoming just as much a character as the fang-toothed, green guy himself.
Nearly thirty years later, Croc Legend of the Gobbos Remastered released after the original, planned release date, as a result of the sheer magnitude of extras that kept coming out of boxes from attics and basements of people who worked on the original Croc, excited to share their stories and memrobillia for the game’s special features. (It’s literally called the Crocipedia, because everything in the world of Croc is cute.)
The original Croc is also accessible and playable in the remaster, along with so many great features, including the ability to play with the original controls, for the sickos. Because Argonauts thought of absolutely everything when putting together this Remaster—just like when they constructed the orignal game.
“I feel there was kind of a purity to making games back then. There was nobody on the team that I remember that was asked to do things that would ‘ship the most units.’ It felt like everybody just wanted to make the best and most fun experience they could. We were given the space to take risks and to fail at things, and that’s how you grow, and create new ideas.
I don’t wanna sound pretentious, but you’re creating art, and it doesn’t always feel like that being on game teams now.”
Jason Smith, Croc's Original Animator, discussing the development of the original game
Croc Legend of the Gobbos has always been a special video game, but the remaster allows one of my favorite 3D platformers to look and play the way it’s always deserved.