Whenever I’ve told someone that there is a Croc remaster releasing soon, I was often met with a giddily excited reaction. For a certain age bracket of gamers, Croc was THE 90s gaming mascot. An early trailblazer of 3D platforming gameplay with charming characters and catchy music.
I, like many children, embraced Croc Legend of the Gobbos wholeheartedly. So I guess it isn’t surprising that there would be such enthusiasm for this reptilian remaster.
And yet, I am surprised — because Croc is a kinda lousy game.
With modern improvements and a comprehensive archive of historical materials, does this remaster help restore Croc to my nostalgic memories?
Winding Back The Croc
To be fair, Croc is more a product of its time than an offensively bad game. Released in 1997, the game dropped when developers were still figuring out 3D platforming. While you’d sometimes end up with a classic like Super Mario 64, more often than not you’d find yourself saddled with a Bubsy 3D.
Croc lands somewhere in the middle. While the cutesy worlds captured my imagination as a child, returning to it as an adult revealed largely empty environments with copy-pasted enemies and repetitive obstacles. Combine that with a limited moveset and the whole experience left me wanting more variety.
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The original game’s tank controls aren’t inherently bad, but are something of an acquired taste. For this remaster, the Perth-based development team at Titanium Studios have added a modern analog control scheme. Switching the control scheme is as simple as using your analog stick for modern controls or the D-pad for the classic setup. While the analog sticks are more accessible for a modern audience, it does render a mostly easy game even more simple.
None of this is to say that there isn’t some fun in revisiting Croc. Familiar levels and characters tickle a nostalgic pleasure center in my brain, and the straightforward game design will appeal to younger audiences, even if they occasionally need to battle some loose controls and hitboxes. But if you haven’t touched this game in over 25 years and go in expecting a top-notch platformer, you might be in for a croc – err, I mean shock.
Fresh Coat Of Scales
This remastered edition offers up a range of graphical options that you can tweak and tune to your liking. There’s two presets, ‘remastered’ being a high-res, modern clean look, while ‘retro’ is an upscaled approximation of the PlayStation 1 style. There are individual toggles to switch on updated character models and textures, as well as a re-worked lighting system.
All of these offerings work well and the flexibility to adjust is a great option. I found myself generally gravitating towards the retro stylings. The grittier textures and slightly darker environments felt more evocative of the original art style.
The fabulous music and memorable characters barks all remain intact, immediately prompting a rush of memories. The long loading times you’d experience on the PS1 are absent and the game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second on the Nintendo Switch.
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This is not a ground-up remake like the wonderful Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, but as far as remasters go, a lot of care and love went into making this the best possible way to play Croc today, warts and all.
Croc-full of History
Where this release shines is how its bonus archival content, or the ‘Crocipedia’, terrifically plays tribute to Croc Legend of the Gobbos‘ legacy. There are interviews with the original team, the crew behind the remaster as well as games journalists discussing Croc’s place within gaming history. You’ll find plenty of concept art, videos of discarded test levels and promotional materials from the time.
Some of the material has a level of detail rarely seen in remasters like this. There’s a massive game design document made while Croc Legend of the Gobbos was in development. It’s a fascinating insight into game development in the 1990’s, with fun nuggets such as the writer describing Rayman as follows, ‘Good quality graphics support the average gameplay’. Ouch!
Even more illuminating is a production bible for a proposed Croc TV series that never came to light. This 38 page document details never-made episode outlines in a way that fascinates me as both a video game and television nerd.
There’s even a Japanese commerical as well as instructions on how to crochet your own Croc doll.
This sort of preservation is vital to recording video game history and the team behind this remaster went above and beyond in representing Croc’s small but important position in the gaming landscape.
What a Croc!
Croc Legend of the Gobbos is a remarkable tribute to an unremarkable game. In a lot of ways, this makes me even more glad it exists. The titans of the genre will have fans picking apart lines of code and the developers will be hunted down for interviews for the rest of time, but the B-tier games deserve to have their history maintained in much the same way.
I’d argue that the archival material is almost worth the cost of admission alone. That being said, while I don’t think the game itself stands the test of time, it is still fun to revisit it and relive some childhood memories.
Perhaps this would feel more substantial if they also bundled in Croc 2. As it stands, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos Remastered functions as the absolute best way to play a game that might be better off in the recesses of your brain.
And anyway, we’re all just holding out for an inevitable Buck Bumble remaster, aren’t we??
Quest Daily scores Croc Legend of the Gobbos:
7/10
Croc Legend of the Gobbos is available April 3rd on Nintendo Switch, PC via GOG, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
A review code for Croc Legend of the Gobbos was supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review
