[SPOILERS] IGN: Rebel’s Guide to Bandicoot Mayhem (Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time)


WARNING: This video contains some potential spoilers, if you don’t want to be spoiled, then please, do not watch it and go play the game if you can.

Evil scientists Dr. Cortex and Dr N.Tropy have ripped a hole in the fabric of spacetime! The fate of the multiverse rests on the shoulders of one orange bandicoot wearing shorts. Here’s a guide to help you cause some mayhem. Sponsored by Activision.

[SPOILERS] Captain Eggcellent: 20 Easter Eggs, Secrets & References (Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time)


WARNING: This video contains some potential spoilers, if you don’t want to be spoiled, then please, do not watch it and go play the game if you can.

With the latest in the Crash Bandicoot series releasing last week, I thought I would take the time to check out some of the hidden Easter eggs & references in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. The Crash Bandicoot Easter eggs in this video mainly reference previous Crash games, so its perfect for fans of the Crash Bandicoot games!

Digital Foundry: Crash Bandicoot 4 It’s About Time Complete Analysis – Best Played On Xbox One X + PS4 Pro


Crash Bandicoot is back in a brand new game – and it’s excellent fun… depending on the hardware you use. In this tech review, John Linneman tests all console versions and finds a stark divide between the enhanced consoles and their standard equivalents. This time, it’s all about performance and not necessarily the graphics…

ARTICLE

FakeNina: Deleted Dialog From Crash Twinsanity No. 15


This dialog was recorded for Madame Amberly’s Academy of Evil. As Crash and Cortex run through the corridors of the school we would have overheard lessons in evil geography, language, cooking, biology, and chemistry, and a meeting between a bad student named Eustace and the school psychologist.

Voices: Debi Derryberry, Susan Silo, et al
Art: Keith Webb, Richard Albon
Script: Paul Gardner

Darkaiser/Mr. Crash: Crash Team Racing (Aug 5, 1999 prototype) has been released – Purple Gem Cup & Gem Stone Valley Relics [PART 11/FINAL]


The August 5th, 1999 build is a preview version of CTR built a month and a half before the final NTSC build date of September 24th, 1999. This beta version was widely given out among North-american video game magazines to be used in preview articles before the game is released.

A full documentation of the differences can found at: tcrf.net
Download the game, patched and ready to go: hiddenpalace.org

This build has protection to prevent people from using the disc outside of Naughty Dog, or their reviewers.

Protection level 1:
If the disc does not detect a special memory card dongle, then the game will not boot. It is as simple as “if you see a string on the memory card, then boot. If the string is not on the memory card, then freeze”. Interestingly, the dongle’s internal name is “E3 dongle Copyright 1999 Naughty Dog, Inc.”, leading to believe that it was made specifically for E3 demo but later reused in subsequent builds.

Protection level 2:
After the game boots, there are 7 function pointers that are assigned incorrect values, which are incremented by an RNG before being executed. If a controller dongle is inserted, the controller will inject data into the RNG, then the RNG will increment the incorrect function pointers to the correct function addresses. Without the dongle, the incorrect pointers will execute, and crash the game.
In previous videos, we only had one function pointer working correctly, by setting a breakpoint before execution in no$psx emulator, and overriding the value manually. There were several bugs and instabilities.

Niko has spent over a year researching the retail game (94426), so within a few days, he finally was able to find how the entire function pointer system worked, and insert ASM that forces the RNG to return one value, which corrects all 7 function pointers, allowing the game to run.

Niko also fixed one of Naughty Dog’s mistakes that was present even with the dongles, that would prevent the game from loading Relic Race on Slide Coliseum and Turbo Track.

In the link below, there are miscellaneous content for this prototype:

  • GameShark codes that allow you to instantly beat Adventure Mode 100%, and unlock all rewards.
  • A guide for playing the original ISO by making your own memory card dongle, and using GameShark to apply the rest of the fixes.
  • We documented exactly how the ISO was patched, to learn how it was done.

Miscellaneous Content

Huge thanks to almarkowbender, gdias/Darkaiser, Gh0stBlade, let-over-lambda, mementomori/madmarsrocks, Niko, and psx-collector for making this release possible.

[LINKED] Lonefur: Crash Team Racing E3 1999 press kit images found


Ages ago I’ve been looking for CTR E3 1999 press kit images, and I’ve finally managed to find them, including ones that never were available on the internet before.

Unfortunately, they were provided in a preprint TIFF, already converted into a CMYK color space.

Dropbox link to a gallery.

Maybe someone will have use for them for historical reasons.

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