2 out of 5

Appreciably and handsomely compiled, but ultimately disappointing and – nail in the coffin – misleading.

Willy the Wombat is what would evolve into Crash Bandicoot, Naughty Dog’s first real identity-defining hit.  This hardcover, a reproduction of the ‘developer’s bible’ for the game, is definitely cool from a process perspective, for those of us who like seeing how things are stitched together behind the scenes, but it’s also woefully incomplete, and in no way looks into “How Willy the Wombat Sparked Marsupial Mania” as per the subtitle, unless it’s completely on the reader to jump from blank pages to what Crash came to be.  If anything, it does the opposite, as the state of the game that’s preserved here is much, much closer to a Mario clone than the more attitude-d, original, jump-n-bop Bandicoot we got.  This is even somewhat attested to in the foreword by Naughty Doggers Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, admitting that “the level layouts and game play mechanics documented in this volume were almost always drawn after the creation process settled down to playable levels (and is) … certainly not indicative of the entire process.”

Which, as you flip through these frankly lacking pages, makes one question: Why?  Why was this compiled?  That’s not to say there isn’t some cool stuff in here, but it’s really limited, and there are rather humorously several “faithfully reproduced” blank pages (e.g. the “Sound” pages).  We get some character bios, and pages and pages of level sketches, but by far the most gamer bibley stuff here are the character mechanics which are hatched out, which are, again, from the Willy the Wombat stage of things.  And that’s cool, because we get to see what we progressed from!  …But it would have been cooler to maybe append in pages from when this evolved into Crash, otherwise this is taking the documenting-for-posterity thing very literally, and asking Crash fans to dole out cash for something that reads like leftovers.

Dark Horse did an excellent job with the book, of course: it’s over-sized, handsome, and these 20+ year old pages are clean as heck in their scans.  If you’re expecting what I described above, then perhaps you’ll be more satisfied with the final output.  But I feel like the book’s marketing pitches it as something it’s not, which definitely affected my appreciation of what there is.  Add to that a lack of provided context (i.e. where things went from here; we’re reading about Willy the Wombat and not Crash Bandicoot) and some definite gaps regarding what the Naughty Dog team chose to retain, and… yeah, it’s hard to justify that $30 price tag.