These Boxes Break Crash Bandicoot

Special Thanks:
To my proof reader onetabloid
To dass for fact checking, teaching me CrashEdit and creating the spreadsheet with me

My Info/Socials:

[ALtheBoi]

*“You’re listening to him right now”*
That was so fuckin tuff holy shit

[axktrick]

i believe the 'clicking sound' is probably the bounce sound effect being played at an incredibly high pitch/speed, as it gets higher and higher pitched the more you bounce on enemies/bounce boxes in a successive combo. you can see this effect easily in crash dash's bonus round with the crate bridge for example, as by the time you finish getting all those boxes the bounce sound effect is pretty high pitched

[DolanDarker]

How did Crash fit all those crystals inside him

[marisanya]

It's always cool when the speedrunning history/analysis is done by a key runner

[RabbitEarsCh]

I absolutely love watching these semi-detached history videos and then suddenly having the host go "so this is what I did". Getting that personal perspective from speedrunning is really special.

[GigaLem]

Thank you for filling the Playstation hole in what looks like the "all nintendo speed doc" side of youtube, all we need now is a World record progression on Crash Team Racing, if any Crash game has rich speedruning history, it's CTR dating all the way back to 2001 (or for full game runs I want to say 2010 since that's the earliest run I could find of it)

[The_D_ray]

Not gonna lie, I like these "speedrun analysis videos" not for the speedrun themselves, but because I LOVE seeing glitches being explained.
It's so freaking interesting.

[Hamentsios]

I love these speedrun "documentaries" I suck at speedruning and I couldn't care less about getting better as it's not my thing xD but I love watching it.

[kingkongsz]

Always a good day when ThaRixer posts.

[NickGoblin]

Lol I remember doing this as a kid wondering who would spend all the time to figure something like this out. Glad to know who it was all these years later. My childhood self thanks you. I was probably 10 years old when I first saw your run.

Edit: I know you didn't figure it out yourself necessarily but my point still stands

[ShadyWARcotix]

I just wanted to say that I found your channel by a video called "The man who broke Ratchet in half" and your videos are very interesting. I'm always interested in videos like that. Like how some game mechanics work and how players use them for their advantage in speedrunning etc. Your commentary is very relaxed and very informative. Thank you for your videos and take care!

[fluffcake]

When the speed runner makes himself known to the masses on a causal video it’s always a surprise, but a welcome one for sure.

[lexacutable]

missed opportunity to call it "these boxes crash bandicoot"

[NachozMan]

Love these videos, it's seems so rare comparably that a speedrunning channel covers people playing Sony's OG IP's like Crash, R&C, Jak trilogy, Sly cooper, ect. Compared to how many videos cover Nintendo game series speedrunning.

[francescobarrali]

Amazing. Simply amazing. And your taste for PSX OST's in the background is really something rare (WE2000/ISS2 music...)

[Saxdude]

"I'm bouncing!"

Oh the confidence of that still makes me smile.

[granite_planet]

It's funny. In modern indie game development any target platform has enough memory that you never need to even consider saving resources with something like sharing one list between bounce combo rewards and item pickups. It's an awkward design so I can't think of any other reason to do this than some memory optimization. Though it might be just an old-school way of modelling stuff – put various kinds of shit in huge arrays and play with indexes.

A big portion of old games' glitches come from manipulating some index to point to the wrong thing, and these kind of glitches are really fun because of how "mechanical" they are. Modern type safe coding practically renders bugs like this nonexistent :/

[HuskyObscura]

This “Well, it’s me” guy is a good speed runner. Thanks for the coverage, ThaRixer

[kaidentbio]

I'd like to assume that the explanation for getting crystals on the combo counter could actually be the opposite of yours, unless folk have already reverse-engineered it. As in, it's an item index in the game's code that they use in the combo counter mechanic. Crystals, gems and upgrades are naturally stored there, and combo counter wompa fruit rewards end up being "separate items" you get from the index.

The fact the combo counter doesn't get reset with the spin > crouch ritual is also quite interesting from a developer's standpoint. It means only Crash's default idle/walking states - the only states that Crash 2 shares with Crash 1 where the mechanic was first implemented (aside from spinning, though many other invulnerability/state delay exploits are tied to it) - reset the combo counter. When adding the new crouch state, Naughty Dog simply orgot to make it reset the combo counter as other states do, which is a neat little oversight.

[stealthz]

All of these videos are fascinating. I have never looked into any of these speedgames other than RaC, but you still book me for the entire video. Massive props and I hope you can move out soon.