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Related articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9737156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9737156 https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaveBaggett/201310

Related articles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9737156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9737156 https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaveBaggett/20131031/203788/My_Hardest_Bug_Ever.php https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaveBaggett/20131031/203788/... Context helps; Crash was the playstation mario (or more appropriately, Sonic), a mascot, first-tier title & hoped-for killer app for the new console. I used to have a direct link to an article where they copped to tapping system memory in violation of Sony's developer rules, but justified by the ends.

bitwize 7y ago
Sony's developer rules are like YouTube's content policy: arbitrarily restrictive, but may be waived for favored parties. For example, SCEA (but not SCEJ!) had a "no sprite games" rule. The American marketing for the PlayStation leaned heavily on its 3D graphics and overall "next-gen-ness". Games that relied heavily on 2D sprite graphics were seen as detrimental to the console's image because they looked like something from the fourth console generation. But big-name developers could get exceptions for flagship titles, as Capcom did for Street Fighter Alpha and Mega Man 8. So we lost out on interesting sprite games from smaller developers that were released in the Japanese market because of this policy. It's no surprise, therefore, that Naughty Dog got away with violating a Sony policy -- even about messing with system memory -- to create a "system seller" title.
- Psyladine 7y ago
  Yes, the article in reference mentioned other developers harboring conspiracies like ' secret PlayStation libraries' supposedly at naughty dog's disposal, but actual credit by the developers was to their use of Lisp as a secret low level language, though admitting they also bent\broke some rules in the process.
stordoff 7y ago
The article mentioned in other comments (https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-bandicoot-part-3/ https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-ba...) seems to go into it: > First and foremost, they didn't follow PlayStation's library restrictions. Other developers often complained that Crash was using some sort of secret Sony library. That is the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that Crash used as little as it could of Sony's library and the programmers basically hacked everything right to the hardware.[...] > Hitting the hardware directly was against the rules. But by the time Sony saw the results they needed a Mario killer. It was too late for them to complain.

bitwize 7y ago

Sony's developer rules are like YouTube's content policy: arbitrarily restrictive, but may be waived for favored parties. For example, SCEA (but not SCEJ!) had a "no sprite games" rule. The American marketing for the PlayStation leaned heavily on its 3D graphics and overall "next-gen-ness". Games that relied heavily on 2D sprite graphics were seen as detrimental to the console's image because they looked like something from the fourth console generation. But big-name developers could get exceptions for flagship titles, as Capcom did for Street Fighter Alpha and Mega Man 8. So we lost out on interesting sprite games from smaller developers that were released in the Japanese market because of this policy. It's no surprise, therefore, that Naughty Dog got away with violating a Sony policy -- even about messing with system memory -- to create a "system seller" title.

Psyladine 7y ago
Yes, the article in reference mentioned other developers harboring conspiracies like ' secret PlayStation libraries' supposedly at naughty dog's disposal, but actual credit by the developers was to their use of Lisp as a secret low level language, though admitting they also bent\broke some rules in the process.

stordoff 7y ago

The article mentioned in other comments (https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-bandicoot-part-3/ https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-ba...) seems to go into it: > First and foremost, they didn't follow PlayStation's library restrictions. Other developers often complained that Crash was using some sort of secret Sony library. That is the exact opposite of the truth. The truth is that Crash used as little as it could of Sony's library and the programmers basically hacked everything right to the hardware.[...] > Hitting the hardware directly was against the rules. But by the time Sony saw the results they needed a Mario killer. It was too late for them to complain.