‘WWhen people play video games, they want to have fun,” Josh Mansell, composer of Naughty Dog’s early Crash Bandicoot games, tells me. It’s a simple word, but one that laid the foundation for everything that PlayStation’s most famous mascot would represent. “Crash Bandicoot” was fun, even when players were banging their heads against CRT TVs in frustration when “Slippery Climb”’s paranoid, creepy music started playing his 100th time. And Mansell’s soundtrack was there to remind us of that from start to finish.

However, the characteristically eccentric, manic energy that fuels Crash’s reckless platforming adventures didn’t come out of nowhere. “When I was working on the game, I was throwing things at the wall to see what would stick,” Mansell says.

Crash wasn’t as fast as Sonic or as approachable as Mario. He was scruffier, edgier, and an underdog than his sanitized mainstream stablemates. And the music captured that. It was insistent, encouraging, and quirky. A witty little Looney Tunes cartoon about someone getting addicted to sugar and accidentally wandering into the third dimension. However, that cheerful Hawaiian surf rock atmosphere was almost something completely different.

Early drafts of the score for the first Crash Bandicoot game were ambient and drum-heavy, focusing on creating a sonic jungle around Crash. So you will feel like you are with him on this dangerous island, surrounded by plants as deadly as animals. . This music was actually very similar to one of Mansell’s earliest projects as a composer, his American Kraft cheese commercial. “This commercial is about a little kid going through a jungle, and it’s all animated, and even the beat I used there is very similar to one of the beats that ended up in ‘Crash.’ I did.

“The early, more ambient stuff works better. It draws you into the jungle and into the immersive nature of what games should be.”

But Crash Bandicoot is not Uncharted or The Last of Us. Mansell had worked with Naughty His Dog during his “punk” days, and created Crash as a rival (and parody) of Sonic the Hedgehog. Developer’s “Hollywood” days were still two generations ahead of him, and at this point the music needed to be weird and quirky, more akin to a Saturday morning cartoon than a prime-time TV show.

And it was Hog Wild, one of Crash Bandicoot’s most infamous levels, that provided Mansell with the inspiration he needed to fit firmly into Crash’s baggy jolt. “‘Hog Wild’ was a big turning point, especially in terms of the feedback I got regarding the music,” he says. “They were pointing me in the direction of creating a more ‘experimental’ score, using all the percussion and ambience. Environmental sounds. And I think the reactions were divided. ”

Some producers at publisher Universal were not convinced by this more experimental approach. Mansell has previously been quoted as referencing the likes of Aphex Twin and Juan Atkins in these early scores, but that is completely untrue. Mansell says he admires the way the musicians were able to create deep soundscapes with limited space and tools. And that’s what he wanted to do with the Clash, more than “imitate the kind of music they were making”. We weren’t going to get someone like Alberto Balsalme from Crash Bandicoot, right?

“Hog Wild’s music was more…I don’t want to make a pun and say Universal…more comical,” Mansell says. “People laughed at it, and I started to feel like there was an even more positive response. It didn’t sound like Mario music, but it sounded like our own version of Mario. It was more animated, more It’s going to be character-driven.”

“This is what it’s supposed to sound like” when you’re jumping over things on a pig’s back, Mansell points out. And he’s right. Both in music and gaming, Hog Wild is a solid introduction to what Crash Bandicoot is all about. This is where this game departs from its infamous 2D platforming cousins Mario and Sonic. Hog Wild is his eighth level in the game and represents what Crash needs to be: fun, fast, reckless, and stupid. The perfect mascot for Sony and his fledgling PlayStation console.

“[Hog Wild] It was an eye-opener. That’s when I started to see what this game was all about. You’re playing a comic. You are a cartoon character. The person who designed the character was involved with Looney Tunes, right? Charles Zembilas brought that sensibility to the game before I stepped in. ”

Mansell is first and foremost a drummer, and you’ll find that Crash Bandicoot’s melodies, from the first game all the way to Crash Team Racing, are all very percussive and assertive. Just as you can tell that Dave Grohl writes vocal parts from a drummer’s perspective, you can tell that Mansell has a rhythmic heart. Everything about Crash feels groovy, uplifting, and tireless. He specifically mentions Stewart Copeland of the Police as an influence in this regard (“one of my favorite drummers of all time”), and for him the Ruins level of Clash 2 is a true “hat”. ). This creates an interesting loop. Two years after the release of Crash Bandicoot, Copland began composing the music for the Spyro the Dragon series, which also happened to be fortuitous for Mansell.

When Crash finds his feet, or “butt,” consider that during development it was called “Sonic’s Butt Game” because everyone kept paying attention to Crash’s polygonal butt. Mansell felt encouraged. According to the composer, Crash 2 (Cortex Strikes Back) and 3 (Warped) became more “musical” and he began drafting in a more personal style, taking liberties with this blossoming series (very Newly encouraged by its unexpected success in Japan) into the stratosphere.