In a blog post addressing Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy’s handling, physics, and difficulty, developer Vicarious Visions said their goal for the trilogy “was to reduce any points of frustration while preserving the challenge of the originals, and we feel we?ve done that.”
Starting with Crash’s handling, Vicarious Visions said they made the decision to unify the design of each game “so that players could have a cohesive experience across all three games.” As a result, they chose the handling from Crash Bandicoot 3 as their starting point, because it represented the most improved and modern approach.
They added:
We went through rounds of internal testing, user testing, and iterations to get each game?s handling to just the right place. In the end, we ended up tuning jump differently for each game, so that the jump metrics are the same as the originals. However, there are a few subtle differences in Crash Bandicoot, chief among these being the fact that you fall more quickly upon release of the X button than you did in the original first game. Moving to collision and physics, Vicarious said the N. Sane Trilogy engine “features a different collision system than the original game, and combined with the addition of physics, certain jumps require more precision than the originals. Much like the handling, we iterated on collision and physics throughout development to make it fair to all players and as faithful to the original games...