How Naughty Dog Optimized Crash Bandicoot for PlayStation

Ars Technica · Interview · YouTube title: How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation | War Stories | Ars Technica

Why it's here

It is one of the most frequently recommended videos on HN for old-school game development hacks under tight hardware constraints.

What it covers

In Ars Technica's War Stories, Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin explains how the team squeezed Crash Bandicoot onto the original PlayStation. They overwrote Sony library code in RAM, built custom animation compression, and streamed assets around slow seek times.