Croc is just a little guy
Short Video about the Croc duology by Argonaut Software appreciating the charm of both games.
Transcript
So me and many others out there grew up with a silly little platform game on the playstation known as Croc: The Legend of the Gobbos. Croc is a little guy, he’s a buddy, he’s a friend and I adore his games. Croc came out in the golden age of 3d Scrimblo games known as the late 90s. Since Sonic hit the scene back in 91, he revolutionized mascot platformers in the 2d era, influencing characters that went for sonic’s hip swag and trying to mimic his cool attitude and honestly seeing all the advertising for these games dunking on gaming’s favorite family friendly fascist and his oppressive corporate overlords was a pretty funny bonding experience for everyone who wasn’t a Nintendo kid. This kind of advertising continued into the 3d era when Mario 64 released and to everyone’s surprise it was a good game. It inspired many other 3d platformers that quickly hit the market across the 5th generation that all competed with it, trying to knock Mario and his big 3d honker off his throne. Croc was already in development prior to this and released a bit later than was planned but it led to Croc’s advertising following the rest of the funny anti-mario smear campaigns at the time where in his, he literally fucking eat Mario, as well as Crash Bandicoot and Laura Croft. Weird choice to have those two included as well since they were also on the playstation but that’s just how confident they were in our boy Croc. Despite this game being advertised with the same attitude as the other hip radical mondo cool mascots that Sonic influenced throughout the 90s, Croc is actually nothing like those kinds of characters, no quips, no pop culture references, no extreme sports, Croc is just an innocent little goober. The origins of Croc originally being a Yoshi game is a well known fact when it comes to discussions about it, back when it’s developer, the British company Argonaut Software was still working with Nintendo on the Super FX chip for the Super Famicom. They also helped develop games for it like Stunt Race FX and a SNES successor to their Amiga game Starglider 2, it ended up being called Star Fox was some obscure title nobody ever heard of. During the time period of the n64’s development, Argonaut pitched this 3d platformer to Nintendo way before Mario 64 was announced. It’s been heavily speculated that Mario 64 was inspired from Miyamoto seeing this prototype for Croc. Nintendo rejected it leaving Argoanaut to have to rework their game into an original IP and during that time, Mario 64 suspiciously released really quickly before Croc could be released. Croc’s level design, mechanics and overall vibe doesn’t really fit anything close to the Yoshi game’s though and I’m actually glad I live in the timeline this didn’t become a Yoshi game and it got to carve out it’s own identity because what it became what spawned from it is a charming little series.
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos
The first Croc platformer released in 1997, is pretty simple and linear. Ground pound some boxes, save gobbos on the side and you operate on sonic’s ring health system but with diamonds instead. A toddler could understand how this game works pretty easily. The first world starts out pretty pleasant, bright and sunny with soothing music, a bit of a fantasy adventure vibe. The cave segments have a slight sinister melody to them but it’s an easy baby game so there’s nothing to worry about here. The world maps are my favorite type of world map, rotating around an island just like in Crash 1. The sheep hanging around level 3 are very cute and not seen in the level they're hanging out around, just on the map, idk why they’re here but I like them. The first boss has always stuck out to me as a very memorable moment of this game, kind of a tone changer in a way. The game’s antagonist Baron Dante turns this cute dumb little duck that I love, a perfect creature into….a sneech, like from Dr. Suess. It’s not intimidating at all and it’s still pretty pathetic in a loveable way. The vibes on the duck level rule though, the atmosphere starts to feel slightly off with its red sky and the typical happy music has a slightly almost unnoticeable somber change in it. This dopy boss fight is actually kind of intimidating because he just comes right at you while there’s a blood red sky. It’s amazing, also this boss fight is easy as shit. This pattern is the same throughout the game, dante turns some doofy looking little creature into a doofy looking big creature and they’re all pretty easy boss fights (except for the underwater one, fuck this guy). The biggest battle this game really faces is the controls, which aren’t ideal but they work. There almost like tank controls. I don’t quite know how to describe them but a basic action like walking and turning is something you have to get used to. I think Croc gets a pass for this though because the intro cutscene of the game establishes that Croc is still just a baby, we see him still just learning how to walk. He spontaneously grows up too fast out of thin air but he’s still just a baby forced to go on a journey to save the gobbos that were raising him before he was fully able to grasp the concept of mastering basic movement. Yes, this game has a narrative justification for it’s shitty controls and I fuck with that. Croc is surprisingly a very easy game early on. Despite the rough steering you have running on the ground, Croc's jumping momentum is really satisfying, especially when going from platform to platform. This momentum is the perfect way to make you feel like a croc god because by the time you reach the desert level, this part of the game is a turning point where the difficulty spikes up. No longer is Croc in his familiar grassy homeworld and the journey has been going on long enough that the fun from the following ice world has worn off. The desert world is a middle point in which Croc is far away from the comfort of home but nowhere near his destination. This world really tests Croc and the lonely atmosphere of the game really sets in. It’s a struggle, the platforming gets more difficult and precise, the levels much longer and the game overs will set you back to the beginning making you repeat the same monotony again and again, having to go on detours to get keys to progress through the stage and hopefully getting better each time but mistakes always happen and it’s not guaranteed. A lot of trial and error occurs, but this game is very do-able. It’s a struggle and sometimes you feel like giving up but you will beat it and you keep going. This portion of the game is my earliest remembered experience with anxiety. Croc is a very lonely video game. Croc is just a little guy by himself trying to rescue all his friends that were captured but the world aside from a few repeating bug eyed enemies is VERY EMPTY. It becomes unsettling. It’s not like in Crash Bandicoot where you had a wacky cast of memorable bosses with their own backstories and goals or spyro who was always talking with his elder dragons that he rescued throughout his journey. NO!, Croc has nobody, he rescues a few gobbos, they go in his backpack and you never hear from them again. The gobbos you rescue have no input on the game or story or change anything really. (besides unlocking a 100% completion bonus world that I have never bothered trying to get). It doesn’t matter if you saved every single one or avoided rescuing any of them, this game still feels creepy. There is nothing dark about this game, it’s a pretty delightful game most of the time and any creature in it is pretty goofy and fun, but the vibes this world gives off are unsettling. Croc walking through the black void by himself while the game loads makes me uneasy. This anxiousness really hits during the water levels. The music across the game is pretty jolly, it’s nice but once your in the water, shit gets moody and feels depressing. Croc’s swimming controls being shit just adds to how distressing this feels. The darkness, the narrow corridors, the odd usage of tech that you don’t see anywhere else in the game, it’s very claustrophobic. Croc is just a little guy and this game really makes you feel sad for him. I want to keep going to get him out of this. I want to help my friend. Most platforming protagonists would control in a way to make all of this much easier but the shitty controls Croc has elevates the eerieness of the game. The same way tank controls make the survival horror games of that era much scarier than they would have been if you had competent controls. After your able to beat the desert world, you will come out skilled enough to take on the rest of the game no problem. It still is challenging in the final world but it’s nothing you wouldn’t already be able to handle at this point. Overall though, croc 1 is a fun little platformer that I enjoy and I can’t imagine the Playstation without it.
Saturn Croc
There is a saturn version which has a crustier aesthetic. The saturn was definitely more of a 2d console but that didn’t stop it from having 3d platformers occasionally. One example I played recently was Ninpen Manmaru which was based off of an anime about a cute little penguin ninja who should be terrifying from his lack of pupils, but he’s still cute regardless. Even off of just watching one episode, the anime this game is based on is quite an experience, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s got 3d mushrooms and also the ending credits were animated by Masaaki Yuasa, the Devilman Crybaby guy. When it comes to Ninpen Manmaru’s video game tie-in on the saturn though, this game is a nightmare to play and literally hates children which are the target audience because even as a video game conquering adult, this game reminded me of Croc if Croc was trying to kill you. The experience of playing this game got me to give croc on saturn a serious try out of wanting to chase the experience of playing a game that was playable and it did. Croc on saturn doesn’t control as well as it does on playstation and that’s mainly the controllers fault. You simply have less to work with and let’s be real, this controller was not meant for 3d games. Croc on Saturn does though have a bit more visual swag. Maybe it’s an emulator fuck up because I definitely was having some emulation issues but I love the wavy look of the menu text. Also shoutout the saturn version’s options menu. I think the still image for this menu is way cooler and much vibeyer than the playstation’s options. I can’t forget to mention all the cute little 3d models they have for each setting. The best being the little birds for the sound effects volume slider. The Saturn version triumphs on this aspect since A.) The birds are bigger and B.) they do a funny little frantic rotating around the screen which you don’t get on the playstation. I think this is silly and it makes me smile. I also like these cute little images you get on Saturn croc’s save menu. The game itself is pretty much the same just worse controls. Some areas look a bit different because of that saturn crust such as the game just being darker and having shorter render distance making things a little more scary and unknown at times and some of the death pits like in the level where you fight the boxing lady bug, have some texture to them resembling some black ink-like substance rather than just being a purely black pit like on Playstation. I also noticed that Saturn croc handles the transitions out of boss fights differently. The playstation version had this awkward way of ending fights by not having a death animation for them and the game just abruptly showing you the result screen with the boss just freezing in place, kind of adds to the unsettling atmosphere this game has. On saturn, they changed this by the screen fading out as you get the last hit, showing you the post boss cut scene and then showing you the results screen. Even though this technically is better, I kind of prefer the playstation’s clumsy way of handling this. The skung is part of this game’s charm for me.
Croc 2
Croc was a multi-platform game on everything at the time including a PC port which I can’t get working but funnily enough Nintendo 64 didn’t get a port, probably out of spite. There was a 2d platformer on the gameboy color though which I played a bit of and think it’s a cute little game. I gave up though, it got too hard for me and don’t feel like coming back to it. But now I want to move on to the sequel and finale to this duology, Croc 2. Which also had a gameboy color port and i’ll mention that this version is pretty cool, It’s structured kind of like a zelda game but with croc controls. I didn’t play much of this version either but I think it’s neat. On to the real Croc 2 which sadly only released on Playstation, this sequel takes a much different direction tone-wise and a slightly different approach to it’s gameplay structure. Croc 2 gives you little villages as hub worlds that are hangouts for all the little Gobbos. The entire vibe changes from croc 1’s lonesome hero on a mystical quest coming of age story to croc 2 feeling like a post adventure summer vacation. The game even starts out with croc and his little gobbo friends chillin’ on the beach and the title screens even set here which is cute. Croc 2 still involves Croc having to go on a journey this time to find the whereabouts of his real family from a letter he found but the inclusion of hub worlds which are different gobbo villages really changes the atmosphere immensely into something that’s less lonely. Each of the levels that you access in the hub worlds are still linear stages but each level having a storyline, a specific mission, a favor to Croc’s little friends makes everything feel much more connected and with the items you can purchase if you want to back track and explore more hidden areas to find extra collectables , this game feel more like your in an open world. This definitely gives off similar energy to collectathons on the N64 that were being released at the time, specifically the ones by Rare. Croc 2 has a much more cozy vibe compared to the first game. The game’s massive variety and unique scenarios for each level keeps things from getting boring and Croc even controls significantly better than he did in the first game and with some extra moves as well that gives you better mobility. Sadly the camera is kind of worse and the game is a bit difficult later on especially with it’s unforgiving checkpoints and game overs. The diamonds are no longer your health and instead they are hearts which also function as your lives. They are very hard to come by and you don’t heal to full after a game over once you have a higher max health. It’s my biggest grip with this game. Some of these missions are very long and it gets frustrating once you die because you have to start the entire thing over and over again. The forest fire mission where you have to rescue 50 gobbos is where you really see where this health system becomes obnoxious. Same with a level late in the game where you have to find 30 babies and carry each one over to a nearby play pen. This level made me second guess liking this game, it wouldn’t have been so bad if they included a mini map so you don’t keep running around in circles. These are two of the only levels in the game that aren’t linear which is why they stand out to me as the hardest parts of this game. The rest of the game is pretty fun though, the level design isn’t perfect, there are some parts that are difficult to not get hurt in but Croc is genuinely fun to control in this game and I honestly love just hanging out in this world. Once the game was over, I was sad there wasn’t more. I actually wanted the game to be longer but it’s still a decent length with four worlds. Croc 2 is a much happier time than Croc 1 (when you aren’t forced to find 30 babies), no longer is anything unsettling like the first game, it’s just a fun little scrimblo. There is some other games I skipped over like some old lesser known cell phone games or whatever the fuck that Croc’s World series on Switch is that’s unrelated to this Croc. This is actually a hilarious act of straight up copyright infringement. I came out of replaying the Croc duology as an adult with this series now being near and dear to me. They are nowhere near the best 3d platformers but they have such a pure and loveable energy to them. This series very unintentionally started with a game that introduces you to Croc as a baby in a lonely scary world learning to adapt and survive in it and its sequel has Croc mature and surrounded by friends that he doesn’t hesitate to help out and manages to chill and enjoy the world he’s in. A way i’ve felt about real life and Croc to me represents my own perception of life and that things do get better. Croc is the most pure scrimblo, he is more scrimblo than any scrimblo can be and he is what I think of, when I hear the word scrimblo. Croc is my friend and he is just a little guy.