1: Once upon a time, Croc wasn't as we know him now - he was the star
of a dinosaur-themed racing game that was intended to be released on
the ill-fated SNES CD-ROM drive add-on. In fact, at one time, Croc was
not Croc, nor was he in his own game - he 'evolved' from Nintendo's
Yoshi!
2: Croc does not blink during play in the Saturn version of Croc:
Legend of the Gobbos, as he does in the PlayStation version. The only
time his eyes move is in the game's cutscenes.
3: When Croc walks, the first foot he puts forward is his left. This is
the same with running, sliding on slippery surfaces, swinging
hand-over-hand on monkey-bars, swimming (since Croc swims kind of like
he runs), and also when climbing - the first foot up onto a foothold is
his left. If he's walking backwards, he puts his right foot back first,
and always looks over his right shoulder to see where he's going.
Additionally, when he taps his foot, it's always the left one, too.
4: The background for the first full boss (the second actual boss) in
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos is different in the Saturn version of the
game. In the PlayStation and PC versions, it's a night-time forest-type
scene, but in the Saturn one, for some reason, it's one of the
backgrounds from the castle levels later in the game.
5: The Saturn version of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos shipped with a
really bizarre bug - if you put the CD in, and then started up the
console, Croc, and all of his enemies, would appear to be headless! In
actual fact, it looked this way because non-textured polygons weren't
displayed. The origin of this bug comes from a difference between
Saturn development-kits and the consumer version of the console, which
ultimately meant that it wasn't noticed until it was too late. In North
America, the buggy version of the game was recalled, and is now quite
tricky to find. However, in Europe, and particularly the UK, it is more
common, as it was not recalled there. The workaround is to start up the
Saturn first, then put the game in the CD drive and run it.
6: Some of the Croc team's members are fans of Capcom's Rockman/Mega
Man series! This was evidenced quite clearly when pictures were shown
from an early demo of a game called "Orchid" (though the final version
was never released), which was designed by the Lead Designer on the
Croc series. In this demo an image of a Servbot (from the MegaMan
Legends series) was used as a placeholder image on a character's shirt
whilst the final textures were being prepared.
7: Croc 2 was supposed to be titled "Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos",
but was sold without that subtitle. It is believed to have been removed
for marketing reasons.
8: The Croc engine has powered quite a few games by now, including
"Aladdin in Nasira's Revenge", "The Emperor's New Groove", "Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", and "Harry Potter and the Chamber
of Secrets".
9: The PlayStation 2 and XBox game "Malice" originally began life in
1999 as a game running on a modified version of the Croc 2 engine, and
was titled "Malice in Wonderland".
10: In two seperate Argonaut interviews in 2001, it was stated that
work on a third Croc title was supposed to begin soon. One of these
interviews also hinted that there was supposed to be a Croc racing
game!
11: The design document for Croc 2 was around twice the size of the
Yellow Pages (a really giant phone directory), and the one for Croc 1
was said to be similar in size. Collectively, around ten pages from
each of these documents were used in the creation of each game.
12: A misconception about the Croc series is that it's aimed entirely
at young children. However, it's been said before that the series has
long paid homage to the old-school platformers of gaming history, which
are usually quite difficult. This shows in both the difficulty of some
parts of the Croc series, and in how many "old-schoolers" play it. It
might be cute in looks, but that certainly doesn't mean it's just for
kids!
13: The gibberish "voices" for the Gobbos and other characters in Croc
2 were created from recording words in English, and then chopping them
up and mixing them around in order to acheive a 'babbling' effect.
Amusingly, this audio had to be checked over to make sure that none of
it resembled swearing.
14: Croc: Legend of the Gobbos did not contain a single line of
dialogue! The entire story was told through movement, gestures,
expressions, sound effects and music - much like a Tom & Jerry
cartoon.
15: Croc is vegetarian. His favourite vegetable is peas.
16: The background story in the instruction manual for Croc: Legend of
the Gobbos was written by one of the writers responsible for scripts in
the popular show The Simpsons. The series' Lead Designer was apparently
never particularly happy with this version of the story - it can be
guessed that this is because the story in the manual does not really
fit with the style of the game itself. The manual-story was purely
humourous, whereas the style of the game is quite whimsical. This did
not happen with the story in the manual for Croc 2 - that story stayed
true to the game's style, and was obviously written by somebody else.
17: Due to technical limitations, the individual 'rooms' in Croc:
Legend of the Gobbos really aren't too big in size, even though they
appear to be. To acheive this effect, the team behind the game came up
with a clever idea - since they couldn't make the levels any bigger
than they already had, they made Croc himself smaller, thus making the
areas seem more cavernous. This is easily observed if you compare the
PlayStation and PC versions of the game to the Saturn one - Croc wasn't
shrunk down in the Saturn port, so everything seems a lot more
enclosed.
18: Flibby, the boxing ladybug boss at the end of Forest Island in the
first Croc game, originally didn't have his boxing gloves. They were
added after a member of the focus team stated that the character's
movements resembled those of a boxer.
19: Both Croc 1 and 2 almost included parachuting levels (something
that fans have requested often), but due to time constraints affecting
how many ideas can be included in the games, they were never used.
20: One of the most touted features of Croc 2 was that there were
several themed tribes of Gobbos. The example of this that was always
given in previews, and other literature, was the Cowboys & Indians
tribe - there was even promotional art of the Cowboy Gobbos on the back
of the manual for Croc 2. Inexplicably, however, this most famous tribe
of them all was not in the game.
21: The lighting in each version of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos is
different. The PSX version has the best lighting, which looks smooth,
and includes coloured effects. The Saturn version's lighting looks
smooth, but lacks colour, and leaves some locations looking a bit drab.
The software rendering mode of the PC version of the game lacks
coloured lighting, and doesn't look very smooth at all - in other
words, it looks dog-ugly unless by some unlikely circumstance you have
one of the graphics cards that the game supports (which, by today's
standards, are long outdated and hard-to-find). It's unfortunate that
the PC version only supported a limited number of display cards, as
this leaves it looking quite horrendous on modern machines.
22: Even though the Gobbos are generally a peaceful race, they do
practice a form of martial arts for self-defence. This can be seen in
the intro for Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, and it is how Croc learned
how to perform his Tailswipe attack.
23: From "Shouting Lava Lava Lava" (a spoof of a song called 'Born
Slippy) on Forest Island, to "Lights, Camel, Action!" (a play on the
term "Lights, Camera, Action!") on the Desert Island, to "Crox
Interactive" (based on the name of the game's publisher, Fox
Interactive) on Crystal Island, nearly all of the level titles in Croc
1 are (sometimes quite bad) puns. This is not the case in Croc 2,
however.
24: Listening to how Croc sounds, and then to how Baron Dante sounds,
it might seem hard to believe, but all of the character voices in both
Croc 1 and Croc 2 were done by one guy. According to the Croc team, the
actor behind Croc, his friends, and his enemies is able to pitch his
voice both very high and very low, resulting in only one voice talent
being needed for every character in both games.
25: Croc's Tailswipe attack yells are "Honzoof!", "Kersplat!",
"Kerpow!", and "Kerboof!". His stomp attack yells are "Yezzoo!",
"Wahey!", "Shazam!", and "Kazoom!". All of them were going to be
replaced with new shouts for Croc 2, but the team decided that the
already-established ones were more recognisable, and simply had them
re-recorded instead.
26: In Croc 1, when Croc sidesteps to the left, he sort of drags his
right foot as he does so. This is not so when he sidesteps to the
right.
27: Croc's singular, protruding tooth is located on the left-hand side
of his mouth. If you ever see any artwork where it is located on the
right, then whoever published it flipped the image over for some
reason.
28: According to the manual for Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, there are
as many varieties of Dantini as there are stinks in a dump.
29: In Europe, the word "Gobbo" is usually pronounced "GOBB - OH", but
in North America, it tends to be pronounced "GOE - BOE". The reason for
this is not known.
30: Only the PlayStation version of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos has the
full soundtrack. The PC and Saturn versions have two slightly differing
shortened CD-DA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) soundtracks. On the
upside, however, you can listen to the music from the PC and Saturn
versions in a CD player, just so long as you skip Track 1 (which is the
game data).
31: When Tailswiping in Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, Croc always spins
anti-clockwise, unless forced to spin clockwise by a push to the right
on the controller.
32: When standing still, Croc's tail always swings from right to left.
Never from left to right.
33: Croc 1 was originally going to include a snowboarding level, but it
was removed. However, Croc's snowboard-riding animations remained in
the game, and can be seen when Croc walks onto a slippery surface and
slides off of it again in the early levels of the game.
34: In each level of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, Croc usually has two
different 'boredom' animations that will occur if you leave him
standing around for a little while without doing anything.
35: The computer-generated artwork used to promote Croc: Pau Pau
Island! (the Japanese version of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos) was
created by Argonaut, rather than by Fox Interactive (Fox did not
publish the Japanese version of Croc 1). It can also be seen during the
installation process and game-launcher of the PC version of the game,
from any region. The promotional art for the Japanese version of Croc
2, which was titled "Croc Adventure", was simply a combination of
polygonal renders from the game itself, and Fox Interactive's artwork
for the Western version of the game.
36: Croc has a large adopted 'family' - in Croc: Legend of the Gobbos,
there are 144 regular Gobbos to be rescued, as well as King Rufus
(Croc's adoptive father), making a total of 145 of them! This does not
even count the additional tribal Gobbos seen in Croc 2.
37: Croc's arch-nemesis, Baron Dante, was originally called "Denver"!
The name was changed when the Lead Designer, who is also a movie fan,
joined the Croc team (to quote; "Denver? That sounds rubbish!").
'Dante' was picked as a name as homage to the movie director, Joe
Dante. The 'Baron' part was added "Because it sounds mean".
38: The little enemies in Croc 1 that spit miniature fireballs (seen in
some stages on Forest Island) aren't seen in some locations in the
Saturn version of the game.
39: A Dreamcast port of Croc 2 was planned, but it was cancelled when
Fox Interactive dropped support for the machine. Publishers have a lot
of influence on what developers do, so Argonaut had to stop working on
the game. As far as is known from the little information and
screenshots of the game that there were, it was simply a straight port
of the PlayStation version of the game. Whether or not it had any extra
features is not known.
40: Both the PSX and Saturn versions of Croc 1 had support for the
analogue controllers available for each machine. The support in the
PlayStation version was better, however, as it actually responded to
how much pressure the player put on the controller. The Saturn
version's was not so good, as it tried to make the analogue pad mimic a
digital one, the end result being that it was easier to simply play in
digital mode, because the analogue controller made it impossible to do
anything.
41: There are five islands in the Gobbo Archipelago (the setting for
the first game). They are; Forest Island, Ice Island, Desert Island,
Castle Island, and the mysterious hidden Crystal Island. These islands
are inhabited by regular Gobbos, and not by tribal ones like those seen
in Croc 2.
42: In the promotional literature and manual for Croc 2, it was stated
that the new character - a portly feline by the name of Swap Meet Pete
- knew more about the game's events than he was letting on. However, it
was never really specified what he knew about. He overcharges for some
of the supplies he sells, too, the greedy git (it is believed that Swap
Meet Pete is actually meant to be a pun on the term "fat cat", which is
used to describe money-grabbing businessmen).
43: In Croc 1, objects such as balloons and jellies are transparent in
the PlayStation and PC versions, but solid in the Saturn version, due
to how difficult it was to work with transparency on the machine.
Additionally, Croc's shadow is transparent in the PSX and PC versions,
but in the Saturn port it's dithered (that is, sort of see-through, due
to being made from a 'checkered' pattern containing solid black dots
and blank spaces) during play and solid during the cutscenes.
44: Baron Dante's evil powers appear to stem from the crystals which
are both a protective force and a currency to Croc and to Gobbo-kind.
At the very end of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, provided you have
collected everything and unlocked all of the game's secrets, you get to
fight Baron Dante's final form, Crystal Dante, who is not only made out
of crystal, but explodes into dozens of smaller crystals when defeated.
Croc takes one as a souvenir, and it is probably for this reason that
Baron Dante is missing his right eye, and wears an eye-patch in Croc 2.
45: Croc had an impressive 180-degree running flip move in his debut
game, but it was missing from Croc 2. Oddly, it was mentioned in Croc
2's promotional literature, though.
46: Earlier versions of Croc 2 contained some amusing uses of British
words and phrase-structure. Interestingly, there was a slight 'dispute'
(though nothing serious, of course) between the UK folks at Argonaut,
and some of Fox Interactive's US people, as to whether or not the word
"cheeky" existed. For the unaware, "cheeky" is a word that essentially
means that someone has a bit of an attitude - usually a sort of
mischeivous, jokey one. As you can see, the word applies quite well to
some of the characters in the Croc series.
47: The binoculars Croc receives at the start of Croc 2 were originally
a telescope. Additionally, in the aforementioned earlier versions of
Croc 2, the binoculars were actually referred to as binoculars, rather
than "Magic Eye Zoomers".
48: As hinted at in the previous point, the Gobbos spoke more coherent
English in the earlier versions of Croc 2 (except in some very early
versions, which had some typographical errors). By the final version,
however, their words had been "dumbed down" somewhat. Though amusing,
it never seemed as clever as when they spoke proper English.
49: Croc 2 is one of the very few games where spellings were changed
during the localisation process to reflect the territory the game was
being sold in. For example, near to the beginning of the game, the King
of the Sailor Tribe wishes Croc well in finding his parents; In the US
version of the game, he uses the word "Mom" when he says 'Mom and Dad',
but in the UK version of the game, the spelling has been altered to
"Mum" instead, since that is the word used there.
50: The US version of Croc 2 featured a product placement for Nabisco's
Gummi Savers candy. This isn't present in the European version of the
game, due to Gummi Savers not being sold there.
51: The PC version of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos contains a mention
under the Special Thanks section of the credits that the other versions
do not have - it says, "Croc widows and orphans", and was the idea of
the game's lead tester, because everyone on the game's team had spent
so much time working on it, rather than being with their families.
52: The Croc team always wanted to make a Croc 64 for the Nintendo 64
console, but were never able to due to the fact that they couldn't fit
everything they wanted to do onto a cartridge.
53: The early screenshots of Croc 2 used a placeholder image for the
character faces on the dialogue bubbles (the placeholder was of the
character Swap Meet Pete, looking more like a beaver than a cat). The
image was thought to be taken out of the game, but it later turned out
to be viewable 50% of the time with a specific version of the
PlayStation emulator for Windows, "bleem!", because it didn't support
Croc 2 properly.
54: Croc's official height is roughly 4 feet. This is known because
during the promotion of Croc 2, Fox Interactive USA gave away a
life-size plushie Croc, who stood 4 feet or so.
55: The first known screenshot of Croc 2 was published in the E3 1998
(Metal Gear Solid cover) issue of an independent UK PlayStation
magazine by the name of "Play". The image showed Croc walking
backwards, in the area where you fight the 'Village Smashing Automaton'
boss in the Caveman Village. Croc does not have the ability to walk
backwards in the final version of the game. However, in the PC version,
this can be enabled.
56: Each individual area in Croc 1 (excluding boss fight arenas) has
two tunes that will be cycled through. The first is the default one,
and the second is an alternative one that will play after a few minutes
of silence once the first one has finished.
57: The backgrounds in the Saturn version of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos
are flat, and seem to be 'fixed' to the camera in some way, whereas the
backgrounds in the PSX version of the game are 'round', and surround
the playing area. However, this sometimes leads to an odd effect in
areas that go up a long way, as Croc will end up standing high above
the sky depicted in the backgrounds, and able to look down at the
clouds and scenery.
58 (provided by Croc team Lead Designer, Nic Cusworth): We had a
little help from a Japanese designer, who Mitsui sent over, called Aoki
Kabuta. Aoki was the designer of 'PC Kid'/'BC Kid' and was an all round
top individual. I don't think he ever got a credit.
59 (provided by Croc team Lead Designer, Nic Cusworth): Swap Meet
Pete was named after our lead animator, Pete. Swap meets are like car
boot sales in the US. Cannon Boat Keith was named after our then
development manager. Flavio the thermal fish was named after the
project's server, which was named after the F1 guy... I could go on...
