Croc Legend of the Gobbos review — Taking off the nostalgia goggles

If there was ever a game from my childhood I thought would never see the light of day again, it’s Croc Legend of the Gobbos. It seemed only the most staunch platformer fanatics even remembered the game, much less played it, but to my surprise it actually sold pretty well, with over 3 million copies sold just on PlayStation. I also adored the sequel as a kid, but, even more shocking, the series actually continued with three mobile titles all the way through 2006 - some of which are even on the Switch. Those are cheap feeling 2D platformers, however, and I’ve always preferred their 3D counterparts. When a remaster of the original Croc Legend of the Gobbos was announced (er, leaked by Argonaut Software founder, Jez San), I was ecstatic. I played the game to death as a kid, both on PS1 and PC as the former’s disc wore out. I was also afraid the game wouldn’t hold up, or that the remaster would change too much. As best as I’m able to take off my rose tinted glasses, I think the game is very rough, but still delightful.

Croc doesn’t have much of a story, there wouldn’t be dialogue of any kind until the sequel, but the adorable opening cutscene gives you the premise. An infant Croc was found by the Gobbo king floating down a river in a basket, the king raises Croc, then the evil Baron Dante kidnaps all the Gobbos - go save them. Each level, save for boss stages, across the game’s four main worlds has six Gobbos to rescue. Some are just standing out in the open, some are in crates you need to break, some are locked in cages, and others are rewards for completing minigames. The sixth Gobbo is always hidden behind a gem door at the end of a stage, opened by collecting five colored gems hidden throughout the level. Some of these gems appear as regular gems, with their true nature being revealed only upon collecting them. 

Finding all the Gobbos in every stage in a section of a world will open up a puzzle piece bonus level, and collecting all the puzzle pieces will open up the final fifth world and the true final boss. It’s not hard to find everything on your first pass through a level, though there were a few times I needed to replay a stage because I had accidentally locked myself out of backtracking by breaking the wrong crate or jumping down a cliff too early. It’s a pretty brisk run to 100%, but a bit longer than you’d think initially and fun almost the entire way through.

I say almost because the game starts to get very hard around the midpoint of world 3, with parts near the end of world 4 feeling straight up unfair. It’s less designed to be difficult, and more designed to screw you over in every way possible, with a few sections with flipping spike platforms being by far the worst offender. Even if you get the timing right here, it’s a coin flip on whether you’ll properly land on the next platform or slip off because they rotate too slowly. 

The overall game has been made significantly easier, however, through the new control scheme. The original game utilized tank controls, and while those are still available on the D-Pad you now have traditional 3D controls on the left stick and full camera control on the right. This kinda trivializes the early game, with you jumping, ground pounding, and tail attacking with grace through levels that expect a bit more methodical planning. Now I never beat the game in one playthrough as a kid, I used cheats to get to later levels, but I’m genuinely not sure how anyone could beat this game with tank controls, at least without memorizing every single hazard. It felt like I was just barely getting by near the end of the game, and I was using the new control scheme.

While adding those new controls, and keeping the old ones too for those that want them, is already above and beyond for most remasters, this version of Croc clearly had a lot of love poured into it. If you’re not too keen on the new visuals, you can swap back to the original’s with the press of a button, or mix and match in the settings menu. You could choose the retro, low-poly models with the new textures, turn on and off the enhanced lighting, and even add a CRT or VGA filter to the screen. You can’t make the game 4:3 again, at least on PS5, but it’s a great suite of options. I mostly stuck with the retro visual preset, the remastered visuals look a lot like the pre-renders which I find a bit uncanny in motion, though I did swap back frequently just to see the difference. The remastered style is a lot smoother and has more contrast, with brighter colors appearing even brighter. The new lighting also makes the game as a whole brighter, you can literally see more in dark areas, which can make certain things easier. 

The only real problem with the new visuals other than personal taste is the smoother geometry. Some platforms that were square shaped in the original are now perfect circles, but the remaster doesn’t actually change any of the game’s collision meaning you can clip through certain parts of platforms even though it looks solid. I doubt anyone will run into this naturally, as I only found out by deliberately testing this, but it’s worth noting. 

Legend of the Gobbos remastered also includes a ton of extra goodies, including interviews with the game’s original creators, publishers, people who reviewed the game, and staff who worked on this remaster, the game’s entire soundtrack as well as the beta soundtrack, concept art, animation tests, press materials, merchandise, brand new remixes of the main theme by The Living Tombstone, Inverse Phase, and Nocturnalplant, the game’s Japanese guidebook and commercial, photos of the development staff back in the day, and, to top it all off, a full guide to making your own crochet Croc. (Which I will absolutely be doing when I get materials!) That was a long list, but there’s still more I didn’t mention, and they even sent me the original 1997 reviewers guide for this review. I love Croc, but clearly the developers of this remaster, Titanium Studios and Big Boat Interactive, somehow have even more love in their hearts for this little guy. I was impressed with how much the Tomba! remaster, another childhood favorite, from last year included, but the amount on offer here makes this a must play for not just fans of the original, but anyone interested in game design or history.