E3 2017: How Coco Bandicoot found her way into the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

(Edit: The original version of this article noted that Crash and Coco utilize the same moves. In fact, Coco uses does a double leg drop instead of Crash’s belly flop, as well a pirouetted spin attack.)

The wait is almost over for the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Activision has shown off elements of all three games across various conventions, so as the game hits E3 2017, it's hard to imagine what could be left to show off.

Shacknews found out very quickly that there were still a few major items to learn, as it was time to try out the remastered trilogy one last time.

The first thing to note is that while the trilogy centers around playing as Crash, developer Vicarious Visions are offering a special treat to fans of Crash's kid sister, Coco. For those unfamiliar with the Crash world, Coco Bandicoot is Crash's bright, tech-minded sister, who first showed up in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back as a supporting character. She was briefly playable in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, but the folks at Activision remained fans over the decades since the trilogy first released.

In fact, Activision developers have expressed their affinity for Coco through internal game jams, where they made Coco a playable character. These prototypes struck such a chord with Vicarious Visions that the developer decided to go a step further and make Coco fully playable across all three Crash games.

Playing as Crash or Coco is a matter of preference, as neither character have any gameplay differences. Coco utilizes the same moves as her brother and she comes with the same hitboxes. The differences are in their personalities, as all the same amount of work went into designing Coco as Crash. When Shacknews went hands-on with Warped, it was established that Crash would have over one hundred distinct animations, idle poses, and deaths. Coco will have that same number of unique animations, giving players plenty of animations to explore.

To hammer home Coco's welcome into the Crash playable universe, Shacknews got a chance to relive the classic Crash Crush stage from the original game, where it was now Coco that was tasked with outrunning boulders.

Once the time trial was over, Vicarious Visions confirmed the existence of online leaderboards, where players can compete over their best times across all stages. The game will also keep track of how many crates players collect, with special endings for those that can get 100 percent across all three games.

Players will be able to select between Crash and Coco Bandicoot when the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy arrives on PlayStation 4 on June 30.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?