I like playing around with retro gaming obscura, finding things to appreciate about it, and often even writing down how I'd follow up on these weird games. Croc is funny though, because it's come to be notable for its unnotability as a scrimblo collectathon(?) 3D platformer. Sure, maybe you saw that one twitter thread a couple years ago about how it sold way too much (as much as Banjo) to be considered obscure, or you heard the story of the Yoshi pitch, but one way or another it's seen as a dead end, influencing zero games after it.
But I think that can be helped. I mean, even I was pretty ready to dismiss Croc at first, but then I actually really warmed up to the tank controls?
(i'll be marking in bold things i find unique about croc.)
tank treads carefully
First off, this game has two control schemes due to Croc being on the brink of analog controllers (and Mario 64) coming along, allegedly mere weeks before going gold: analog off (tank controls) and analog on (approximated directional controls on a tank base). Analog mode is pretty slipshod, but the real reason I'd recommend against it is because the levels often look like this:
and this:
These are some mario hack ass tiny platforms. With tank controls though, they're all surprisingly unfrustrating jumps! The physics are pretty good, and with the camera (hopefully, usually) stuck behind you, all you need to do is be patient, aim down your sights, and move forward; so it helps that not only do tank controls make your direction consistent, but the turn speed dictates the pacing.
You can also strafe in mid-air for surprise adjustments. Repositioning & reorienting is a little finicky, but I can relate Croc's slow turning to classic-Sonic's slow acceleration: both are something you have to fight a little to get where you're going, and part of what makes movement technical, tense, and interesting, though it's much easier to move forwards in Croc. So as a base, this game plays pretty nice.
(Although, while it makes the game harder, no one's stopping you from toggling analog mode on a whim if you feel that eases some tension.)
crocodile the vector
Speaking of Sonic, I like looking for ways to keep the flow when I play games, and driving Croc like a car is alright. I discovered that the 180º quick-turn button is a surprisingly fun movement option, going beyond convenience and into feeling like I was doing flips. It gets a lot of use in compact levels, but you won't use it if you don't remember it's there, so I had to gradually learn where to incorporate it into elaborate plans for short sprints of movement.
For instance, take this section with a clockwise-rotating gear platform in 2-2. You need this key to rescue a gobbo:
I can jump to one end of the gear, run in a straight line to the opposite end, jump to the key, quick-turn, then jump back without even waiting for the camera to catch up (even in the most modern Mario game you wouldn't be able to do that without first double-checking that your stick is pointing you in the right direction); then I can quick-turn again to face the outside of the wheel, and just wait until it takes me back to start. You're not going fast, but I got a bit of a rush from it anyway.
I find it refreshing that I was planning ahead, seeking and finding places to cut time even though the pacing is so start & stop. It reminds me of Sonic 1, but in that game you can't see where you're going, and even in 3D Sonics where you can, you're incentivized to rush recklessly, only playing on instinct. There's a seed for something here... Even if Croc itself doesn't have the replay value to grow it.
(Also the anticipation of turning to where you wanna go, then rushing forward... for some reason, reminds me of spindashing or drifting, even if the presentation's not there. I dunno, food for thought.)
gamey but flavorful
Meanwhile, its level design carries over a lot from the 2D era, to the point where it feels like what might happen if you plopped Mario 64's camera in a Crash level. There's some mild exploration likely taking cues from Yoshi, but generally, all flat ground soon gives way to platforming challenges, making for some really gamey environments with little room left for wandering around or doing flips. Yet it still Feels like you're exploring, with your methodical movements and the low-angle close-up camera giving it a sense of awe despite the tiny and obviously-rectangular rooms.
(this one's from 2-B1; 2-B2 is another looker, but its dark and eerie look on PS1 doesn't translate well to PC lighting)
Awe that goes really well with Croc's happy accident of a laidback, muted vibe. The wordless gentle cuteness coming from its characters and cutscenes and music really helps it, as does being fairly pretty for PS1 era (although that's undercut by a huge lack of texture variety).
These days, 3D platformers prefer to lock or modify the camera for a level segment when they want to do something gamey or show something pretty, so I can't remember the last time I've seen a game try to have its cake and eat it like this.
(SRB2, maybe. dang, I wish mouseaim was standard in platformers by now)
leveling with you
On the other hand, I shouldn't sugarcoat it: the levels themselves are by far the biggest reason to get bored of Croc.
Now, I argue cramped rooms can be fun, well-paced playgrounds as long as you don't clutter them too much, since they're rarely a straight line and it keeps lulls to a minimum, so you're never too far from something to do. The problem is that most of the time that something is always the same filler:
The above screenshot is from 3-1, world 3 out of 4, and it's still just climbing grates, stomping blocks, waiting for platforms, grabbing a key and then backtracking for a button, which is all pretty slow and old hat by now. And of course, the stricter stages get, the less room there is to play around.
And while on paper each level tries to have something unique about it, it's one thing to have a setpiece, and another to give it presence: most feel underexplored and underexposed. (Though on the other hand, whenever Croc gets Too creative with a button-based whack-a-mole challenge, I regret ever asking for novelty.)
Rooms in a level often feel interchangeable, with no overarching theme, and the nonsequitur titles don't help. Even when the rooms are good, such as the following screens all from 2-1, "Lights Camel Action", which features no camels:
When content's so sparse and jumbled like this, it all blends together, and that's where this game really falls apart. They didn't need to make more content (if anything I'd have taken less levels) but you could honestly improve this a lot by just revising the existing levels. Aren't there modding tools for this? Here, someone do something about it: https://croc.fandom.com/wiki/Hacking_and_Modifications#Helpful_Links
Not every level is that weakly built, but they save all the cool stuff for endgame (4-4 is one of my favorites), with maybe a couple other strongly-themed exceptions like 2-2 and 3-2. If you're interested in sampling any stages i mentioned for yourself, and don't mind having the secret levels pre-unlocked, here's a 100% password (LLLLDRRLLDRDLUR). Maybe play world 1 first though. The bosses are also funny to check out because this game's not very good at combat design either
exit stage left
One final awkward thing I neglected to mention is, the gobbos and gems are all optional for the normal ending, even though a ton of the level design is devoted to them. Between that and the sonic rings-style health system, Croc gives you a lot of permission to ignore itself. That'd be fine on its own, but the levels just... check out this room in 1-3. the hallway on the bottom has a second door offscreen you come in from:
If you don't care for any of this stuff, this hallway is a straight line with two rats in it. It's a bit of a shame, since for a game with Yoshi's Island rules, 100%ing it felt pretty reasonable.
In the 1996 prototype, instead of 6 gobbos and 5 gems, stages had 3 gobbos to rescue but they were all required to beat the level. It's easy to see why this would've been overbearing, but clearly they went too far in the other direction: something like Mario 64's star doors would've been appropriate.
croconclusion
Overall I enjoyed Croc, but I wouldn't return to it without way way better levels. (And like, an in-game timer for replay value.) Either way I'm satisfied that I have like, coherent thoughts on it, after being left a bit confused by some reviews i saw. But did it deserve its fate of relative obscurity? A little bit...
The thing about Croc is that almost everything I like about it is kind of an accident. The devs had intended to make an expansive playful adventure like Mario 64, and there's clues everywhere you look. So it makes sense that audiences judged it on those terms, regardless of what game was developed in what order. Croc's devs did so too, hence why the sequel leaves its quirks behind. We can wonder about what-ifs, but I think Croc 1 was always going to be forgotten quickly, and its mechanics lost in limbo. (So was Croc 2, really. That game's a useful case study to contrast with this one)
This is kind of weird for me, since I'm used to playing strange games where I focus on what the dev was trying to do instead. Like Sonic games. Still, I'm here to appreciate and dig up ideas either way.
So, would I recommend you put tank controls in a new platformer? Well, unless you play as a vehicle, or lara croft, then probably not wholesale. Croc 1's controls are fairly unintuitive and context-sensitive and full of buttons just for adjusting yourself. But my point was that they can do stuff most other control schemes can't, and if you liked how any of that sounded, you should consider your own solutions:
- say you like the feel of tank controls but find them overbearing at times. you could have your character get on and off a bicycle?
- maybe you just want the moments where you line yourself up for a jump like it's golf. ah, snolf
- suppose you made a particularly precarious set of platforms, but players keep dying because they're not taking their time. maybe you make it so you can't jump until you attack a barrier, or something? or you change the camera to be intentionally disorienting and scary for a sec? some way to beg players to take a moment
- a quick-turn button is a goofy amount of complexity, but surely you can find other ways to make reversing reliable. like tweaking a more typical u-turn maneuver. Or if your character can walljump, maybe you can just put more collectibles near walls.
- or maybe a dedicated button for reversing is an adequate amount of complexity if you make up more uses for it. can it be overloaded for other acrobatics? or what about a time rewind? (cmon if megaman 11 can just put in a timeslow as an aid mechanic, why not braid's rewind)
- perhaps you're in awe at the idea of platforming in 3D without fear of straying from a straight line, so you make a 2.5D platformer where the player controls the camera anyway
- or you get weird and give a 3D game a button that locks you to 2D
- but maybe giving your character low acceleration is good enough for your purposes. and mouseaim. and a spindash. look, please just make more 3d sonics or else i will
other Croc odds n ends:
(click to expand)
- when in the air over a platform, you inherit its motion as if already standing on it. this is probably a naive implementation of moving platforms, and feels funny, but it's surprisingly very helpful
- you can't ground pound when near a floor, to allow buffering jump inputs. this is good, but it could've used a lil tweak, as it was grinding my gears when trying to stomp blocks.
- whenever you spawn in a room, the camera's zoomed in a little bit more until you press a button. I wonder if it's a cinematic touch, or if it's because the camera was getting stuck in the doorway in the prototype
- i forgot to mention the extra-secret secret rooms you can teleport to. sometimes there's sparkles, sometimes you have to stomp stuff to make sparkles appear. they have the good sense to never put important collectibles in any, just 1-ups
- level passwords will 100% all levels up to the previous secret level, so I don't have a way to give you a password that doesn't unlock secret levels. Also, for some reason, any password from the start of world 4 onwards will unlock and 100% all *later* levels as well???
- in the prototype, quick-turn has you do a full cartoon skid animation if you're moving, where in the final Croc will literally do a flip to turn on a dime. we've been seeing cartoon skids for decades, so seeing this change makes me think we've been taking them for granted. like, i think dash-dancing in smash is kind of annoying for being "tech" and not just the default
- in the prototype, cages were opened by buttons, whereas in the final, they're opened by taking keys to them. again, easy things to take for granted, but next time you feel like your game needs camera pans to show what a distant button did, consider something else. i think it's impressive that croc gets away with not touching the camera outside of bosses
- prototype levels and concept art often have stronger theming than their equivalents in the final game, making it clear they were more ambitious than they could actually deliver on.
- speaking of, some of these concepts instead carried over intact into croc 2. they're quite naive however: if croc 1 is a weird accident driven by tech limits and circumstance, croc 2 is a game ripped straight out of a kid's sketches... and no offense, but it's not very good. Though I like each stage having a concrete quest
- while I'm here railing on the sequel, when Croc just moves in the direction you're pointing, the controls feel not only squirrely and impatient (a bad fit for the increased difficulty), but very barebones (a bad fit for the increased open space): all the player expression is missing in 2! all it has is the fakest "longjump" i've ever seen
- if you look up the history of Croc's development, you'll find a lot of Argonaut founder and current croc owner Jez San claiming uncle shigeru nintendo apologized to him on the E3 floor for stealing their 3D platformer pitch. I respect his dev work, but I wouldn't trust "entrepreneurs" with any tall tales that haven't been corroborated, cr*pto guys deserve about as much credibility as tommy tallarico
- i hope the back of croc's eyeballs in all these screenshots don't give you nightmares. not the most well-thought-out 3D character design
In a while, crocodile...
thanks for reading! it's scary to write something like this without apologizing for my weird takes, but i hope the sincerity is appreciated. I was actually worried "deep dive into a game i'd never played before and probably won't again" would be an unfitting first blog post for me, but it totally hit all the notes: the unusual focus on mechanical mastery, guessing dev intentions, comparing things to sonic and spindashing... I guess that's just my style. I'm not sure I'll post anything this elaborate anytime soon, though.
credits & links
this post owes a lot to these Random Hoo Haas articles, which you should read if you want to learn more about Croc from someone with more nostalgia for it https://randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com/gw/croc/ https://randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com/gw/croc/2.html
images are from croc wiki: a helpful resource, but clearly needs some love compared to the wikia it split off from https://crocwiki.com/wiki/List_of_levels https://crocwiki.com/wiki/Gallery:Croc:_Legend_of_the_Gobbos
I played the PS1 versions for most of this, but the Definitive Edition fan mod for PC is pretty good and loads fast if you don't mind some odd lighting and texture errors.
special thanks to a friend for bugging me to make a blog. you asked for it <3
also to another friend for sharing a random croc meme that set me off on this journey over 2 weeks ago
