HackerTube.dev

How Crash Bandicoot Hacked The Original Playstation | War Stories | Ars Technica

Ars Technica · 5.2M views · 2020-02-27 · 31:37

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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

Recommended by 13 HN people across 9 months · HN mentions 2020–2026

Topics

Game history & retro gamingGame programming & enginesSoftware performance & optimization
Search by tags
crash bandicootnaughty dogplaystationmemory optimizationgame history

What people said

mscdex · 2026-06 · Strong recommendation

If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend watching the "War Stories" video on the making of Prince of Persia: [LINK] On a related note, I also highly recommend the "War Stories" video for the making of Crash Bandicoot: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
zzanz · 2024-09 · Strong recommendation

I really do miss this old regime of utilizing the entire machine in games. There is a fantastic video of one of the original Naughty Dog developers talking about the optimizations they did for the original Crash Bandicoot ( [VIDEO] ), and some of the less conventional tricks they did to enable 3D gameplay on the PS1. I've always wondered what the true limit of performance optimizations is in games. Obviously modern systems have a lot more systems to compete and share memory between, but there have been obvious cases where performance has had low priority. Also under consideration is the constantly morphing landscape of PC hardware and software architecture. Given a fixed hardware, like the PS5 or Xbox, with the hardware of a high end gaming computer, what is the true limit a game could reach.

Read the original HN comment ↗
bmitc · 2022-01 · Strong recommendation

In the cause of Naughty Dog, it was Andy Gavin who introduced Lisp and GOAL and was one of the co-founders of Naughty Dog. He came from MIT and was a student of Rodney Brooks. [LINK] [LINK] If someone hasn't seen it, his episode on Ars Technica's War Stories was awesome. He seems to be a hacker's hacker. It's a fascinating story because it's not really how I personally work (internally), so it's fun hearing someone describe just diving in like that. [VIDEO] [LINK] It was my understanding that Racket wasn't in use anymore at Naughty Dog. It would be cool if there was an update or someone who knows (I know Dan is no longer at Naughty Dog), because unfortunately the tale of Lisps in companies is normally that it eventually gets replaced or set aside (where new stuff is built in something else).

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Ars Technica, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources