Character design in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

⚠ Disclaimer: Before anything let me say that Crash Bandicoot is my favorite video game of all time, hence this article would not change this fact whatsoever.

Four days ago, Activision revealed the most anticipated new installment of the Crash Bandicoot franchise, marking the comeback of our beloved orange marsupial—twelve years after Crash: Mind Over Mutant. The new game, titled Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, is developed by Toys for Bob, a subsidiary studio of Activision Blizzard. It introduces a brand-new look for the characters, which sparked a wave of reactions—both positive and negative—from die-hard fans.

As one of the big fans of Crash myself, my first reaction when I saw the trailer during Summer Games Fest was, “Not again!”—mainly because of the new character design, which differs from the N. Sane Trilogy and Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, remastered by Vicarious Visions and Beenox respectively. Those remasters stayed faithful to the original character designs by Naughty Dog.

You see, starting from Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex through Crash: Mind Over Mutant, Crash and his friends went through many design changes. That created a major disconnect between the games and the fans, who felt like they were playing something that just didn’t feel like Crash Bandicoot anymore.

The Vicarious Visions era felt like the last hope for fans. VV did a fantastic job remastering the N. Sane Trilogy and passed on the assets to Beenox, who led the remastering of CTRNF. Fans were eager to see a new title, hoping it would be developed by the ever-loyal VV. But the surprise was shocking—it turned out that Toys for Bob, who had previously remastered the Spyro Reignited Trilogy (another PSX classic originally developed by Insomniac Games), were in charge of the new game, along with the unexpected character redesign.

As a Crash Bandicoot fan, I’d love to see a new game with fresh adventures and features—but with the same classic character design, to maintain the emotional connection with the original games and help us forget about the changing developers and the confusion it brought to the community. In the future, developers can gradually introduce changes to the character design in a way that preserves continuity—especially when we look at other platform franchises like Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, which have maintained consistent designs over the years.

That said, I’m now trying to see the new look as the developers’ point of view. I mean, I’ve thought about it a lot, and a good example that came to mind is Tom and Jerry—the famous cartoon that went through many design changes with each new animator and director. Yet, we still recognize Tom and Jerry, regardless of their design.

With that thought, I feel relieved—because no matter what happens to the character design, people will always love Crash Bandicoot.