Prerelease:Crash Bash

This page details prerelease 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 take Rilla Roo's spot, but was removed before release at Mark Cerny's request and was replaced with Rilla.

Early

• The HUD has different fonts and icons, most of which come from Crash Bandicoot 3, except for N. Brio, which uses unique artwork.
• The health bar is different.
• The chunks that fly off when a blocky crate hits something are simple sprites, whereas they're 3D animated polygons in the final game.
• 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).
• When a character loses a life, rather than being represented through a small, fairy-like ghost, it's a weird and much larger ghost.
• Boost bars use a "B" letter to represent the boost.
• Drain Bash used to have a wobbling lamp hanging from the ceiling. The lightbulb would flash all the time.
• The trophy stats at the end of each round were shown differently. A trophy would appear on-screen for every victory the winning character's had (the current trophy also flashed yellow), so the trophy list was shown a bit differently: the trophies for each character were listed under their respective icons. The trophy list would always appear with a little fanfare that is unused in the final game.
• The Pogo minigame keeps all characters on-screen after each round.
• Koala Kong (presumably) wasn't added yet, as he was never seen in minigames during the trailer.

• TNT and Nitro crates have models from previous games.

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

• The game used the Kgs mass instead of Ibs.

• This unknown minigame looks like Pogo Painter, but with the Crystal Challenge background.
• Characters' HUD have a paint color behind their icons.
• The characters' paint color has the wrong order here.
• You can see Wumpa fruits lying around, even though Pogo minigames never have them since you don't get a health bar.
• The arrow shown in the right side of the arena is cyan instead of purple.
• The tile coloring worked slightly different - Crash's paint color is green, but he's standing on a red square.

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.

Minigame	Order
Jungle Bash	Level 1
Polar Panic	Level 2
Desert Fox	Level 3
Pogo Painter	Level 4
Space Bash	Level 5
Tilt Panic	Level 6
Crashball	Unavailable
Pogo-a-Gogo	Unavailable

• The game's logo is different.
• Rilla Roo wasn't present in the game at this point.
• The main menu doesn't have any options and the player is only able to choose between 7 characters.
• 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.
• Minigames lack a Rule screen.
• Koala Kong doesn't have a taunt voice.
• Bouncing in the purple ! crates in Pogo Painter won't show the player's total score.
• Dingodile's tail in Polar levels is pointed up when idle.
• The boost bars are smaller in Polar levels.

• 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.
• Land mines have a very different design.

This video has a mix of both early and E3 versions.

• The timer in Desert Fox has a bug that doesn't show the "0", causing the game to show ":52" instead of "0:52".
• Cortex's shot from his tank goes faster.
• Hovercrafts in Crashball are missing strip decals.

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

Press Kit Images

This is the earliest known build using the final icon designs, plus the earliest apparition of Rilla Roo.

• Crate Crush genre was originally called just "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.

• Hovercrafts are still missing strip decals.
• The background is different.
• The ball limit for each character in N. Ballism is normally 20, but here it shows limits that go as high as 25.

• On the bottom-left corner, there is a floating object not used in the final game. It might be an early version of the mine pick-up.

IGN / GameSpot Release

The game is slightly more complete in this version, as hovercrafts now have strip decals. However, the game is still very far from completion.

• Only Adventure and Battle modes are selectable options.

• 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 "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.

• The first Warp Room lacks a lot of details like the floor cement or the jungle theme.
• Jungle Bash and Crashball are switched.

Late GameSpot Build

The version seen here is later than any of the other preview versions covered. It appears to be a similar version of the game to the August 25th, 2000 demo, as it now features a Jungle theme on the first warp room.

• 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.

Japanese Trailer

This trailer can be found on PurePure Plus Vol. 007 (Disc 1). The Japanese build uses early elements, which could mean that it was being worked on while the game was in development.

• The characters are using early textures.
• 0:00 The minigames names are in English.
• 0:16 Bearminator's early icon can be seen. The binocular vision is also not covering the entire screen.
• 0:21 An early version of Dragon Drop can be seen. It's identical to the version present in some August 2nd, 2000 demo builds.
• 0:24 Crates models are used as ammos on Big Bad Fox.
• 0:26 Papu Papu's early icon can be seen.
• 0:35 The first version of the character select screen is shown. The icon order is sorted by character type instead of Aku Aku and Uka Uka teams.