In 2014, researchers at Australia's Riversleigh World Heritage Area named an extinct Miocene marsupial Crash bandicoot. This episode traces how a character born during Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin's 1994 drive from Boston to Los Angeles became the unofficial face of the PlayStation. We cover Naughty Dog's deliberate strategy to fill Sony's mascot void, the rejected Willie the Wombat, the choice of an obscure Eastern barred bandicoot, and the designs of cartoonists Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson.

We explain why Naughty Dog built linear corridors while Super Mario 64 went open world, how the spin attack, Wumpa Fruit, Aku Aku masks, and TNT and nitro crates defined the original trilogy and Crash Team Racing, and why the studio walked away from a character it never owned. Then come the wilderness years of Twinsanity and Crash of the Titans, th ...