Croc! Legend of the Gobbos

[Master]

Bumping, I found this on DYKGaming:

[Rulez]

Come to think of it, I have heard of that very recently. Wh-- oh it was on Game Grumps! They discussed something about Super Mario 64, then suddeny this. It's a very neat piece of trivia!

[Adsolution]

I think Croc is really quite awful. The graphics are bad, the environments make no literal or artistic sense (and furthermore seem completely uninspired), the mechanics and gameplay are disgusting, and there's absolutely nothing about it that stands out whatsoever among other 3D platformers of its generation.

That is all!

[Haruka]

I think Croc is really quite awful. The graphics are bad, the environments make no literal or artistic sense (and furthermore seem completely uninspired), the mechanics and gameplay are disgusting, and there's absolutely nothing about it that stands out whatsoever among other 3D platformers of its generation.

That is all!

I dare to totally disagree with this. I bet you played the PlayStation 1 version, and not the PC one. I do think that Croc was quite a platforming rival of Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot, with variated level design and challenging gameplay. The graphics aren't as bad as most people say, I think they were pretty nice for their time (the PC graphics and FPS are by far more clean than in PS1) and this game has got one of the best videogame soundtracks I've heard. Sure, the boss battles are one of the things that deserved more effort from the developers since these weren't challenging at all, but the normal levels reward this. And I'm just not saying this because I'm a fan of the franchise because I equally like Mario and Crash.

[Adsolution]

I've recently tried out both versions, so I can confirm that I've experienced it in the optimal fashion. I just personally don't see the magic in it at all. Many people do however, so clearly it must be doing something right for them.

[Haruka]

That's probably the same feeling I have towards Sonic. People praise the 2D games a lot, but for some reason I can't like it.

[Master]

Each to their own, I've enjoyed the 2D games as well as some of the 3D ones.

[Clara Knight]

I understand that not everybody may like the series, but I don't know, even if the controls are a little wacky in the PS1 version I still enjoy it to pieces. I guess it's just me having a thing for cute characters. ouo'

Now about the trivia I'm not sure if this is true... I would like an official source to make sure of this information.
Because in the most popular fanwebsite it got mentioned (by the developper of the game itself) that Croc was indeed inspired in Yoshi, but he never mentionned he was meant to be Yoshi at first. This seems to be a little weird for me, knowing that 'Argonaut Games' and 'Nintendo' are two distinct game companies.

[Haruka]

^

What I do remember is that Croc was inspired in Yoshi, but not that he was a prototype Yoshi. I think the picture that was posted a while ago isn't 100% true.

[buildersith]

I don't know about this, but I could see it being true, after all, Argonaut did develop & engineer the super fx chip for The Super Nintendo and along with it created the original starfox, so I could see Croc being Yoshi in a very early concept very much possible.

[Haruka]

Oh you're right, thanks for remembering me about that Super Nintendo fact. I wanted to search for an old Croc source to post in here but I can't seem to find it...

[Clara Knight]

I don't know about this, but I could see it being true, after all, Argonaut did develop & engineer the super fx chip for The Super Nintendo and along with it created the original starfox, so I could see Croc being Yoshi in a very early concept very much possible.

Oh this I didn't know. Thanks for mentioning this, now I admit it would be more likely possible to happen in this case. I'm surprised!

[Cairnie]

Because DYKG almost never sources their "facts" there was an article on Eurogamer that mentions it:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... f-star-fox

My boyfriend recently picked up a copy of the 1st Croc on Sega Saturn while we were on our last holiday and he was having a hard time getting used to the controls (if he may be honest he said it "controls like Bubsy 3D but in a better game"). I'm looking into getting a copy on PS1 myself.

[Haruka]

The PS1 controls aren't quite great, I can tell you, but fortunately the PC version doesn't have any issues with the controlling.

[Bzzit]

I had trouble adapting to the Ps1 versions controls as a kid and only progressing up until around the ice levels. I played it again recently and found myself in a similar scenario. Whilst its a decent game, the level design becomes repetitive in my opinion and by the time I got to the ice themed levels yet again I began to grow a bit bored of these similar looking underground sections always taking up a large portion of the levels. The soundtrack is awesome though. I personally prefer Crash and Spyro for ps1, but id like to try the Pc version sometime.

[Clara Knight]

I admit one of the biggest flaws of the PS1 version are the controls, I took a good while to get used to them (I was easely failing my jumps, even in the first level).
One of the reason is that you seem to control Croc like you would control a car. It was quite weird for me to see in a platformer game that, if I was pressing the down button, Croc wouldn't run in the oposite direction but walking backwards. This was very tricky when I wanted to position myself for difficult jumps in the desert levels.

I'm also a little sad that despite of the difficulty of some levels, the boss battles are incredibly easy to defeat (especially Chumly) , even Dante himself (well I'm not saying you can defeat him at first, even if some people did it, but you can notice easely the mechanism to defeat him. I'm glad his battle had 3 phases, or else it would have been pretty short).
However, if it wasn't the 'corner jump' trick, the true final boss (Crystal Dante) would be much harder to defeat!

At least, let's admit the game has got awesome soundtracks. And the game itself has got it's own charm. ^^

[OCG]

PC versions of both Crocs are best one. I like how in Croc 2 you can but HD Resolution if you have good PC.

[Rulez]

I never played Croc, but apparently it's similar to the first Kao the Kangaroo (mainly from the controls). I enjoyed Kao, and I still like it, but it's really just "okay", and from what I see, Croc is worse?

[Haruka]

I would rather say that Kao is worse. I played it before and it was clearly inspired in Croc (tail whip and the Kao's footprints). I dislike how slow Kao moves in the scenario when he does not have the spring powerup. I believe the graphism of Kao could have been better too.

[Rulez]

Mhm, that's interesting. I gotta play Croc soon then, because "back in the day" everybody always went on about how amazing Croc is and in fact, it seemed like every Polish child of my age was essentially:

duuuuhhh KAO duuuhhhh RAYMAN 2 THEN 3 duuuuhhhhh CROC duuuhhhh WTF IS RAYMAN 1 I DUNNO duhhhhhh KAO 2 HOLY SHIT SO GRAPHICS

Except for Croc and the Rayman 1 part, that was me :/