A remaster of Saturn 3D platformer Croc is in the works, according to an announcement Wednesday from the original game’s now-revived developer, Argonaut.
“I’m thrilled to see the Argonaut name back after 20 years away,” said Argonaut’s original founder, Jez San, in a press release on the company’s barebones website. “Argonaut was always about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in gaming. I’m excited to see how the relaunched Argonaut Games builds on that legacy, starting with the Croc Legend of the Gobbos remaster.”
The announcement was first teased last year when San tweeted that “Croc HD” had started early development, as SHIRO! reported at the time.
Croc’s remaster is set to release sometime later this year on current-generation consoles and PC.
The press release touts that the remaster will feature enhanced HD graphics and updated modern control mechanics as well as a “Crocipedia,” which it says is an extensive and meticulously curated digital museum containing long-lost development assets such as game design documents, concept art, animation tests, team member interviews and more.
The announcement was accompanied by a teaser trailer that showed off some of the remastered visuals.
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos hit the Saturn fairly late in the console’s life, releasing in October 1997 in Europe, November 1997 in North America and March 1998 in Japan. It originally came out on the PlayStation in September 1997 and also got a PC port in November that year.
The franchise was short-lived. It went on to get a single mainline sequel in 1999 for the PlayStation that was ported to PC the following year. 2D reimaginings of the first and second games came out on the GameBoy Color in 2000 and 2001, followed by three cell phone spin-offs in 2005 and 2006. The Croc franchise hasn’t been seen since then.
Croc’s Sega iteration notoriously shipped in the West with a bug in which nontextured polygons — including Croc’s own head — would not appear on screen. According to Sega Retro, North American copies were recalled, while European ones came with a slip of paper telling players to work around the bug by turning on the Saturn without the game inserted, then putting the disc in the tray and launching the game from the multiplayer menu. The problem allegedly was fixed in the Japanese version and did not plague the PlayStation and PC versions.
Despite that problem, Croc remains remembered fondly for being one of the few Saturn platformers that allows movement in any direction, even making use of the 3D analog controller.
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