When I took over the SCEE PlayStation Blog a month or two back, I promised you a few new regular features. Today, I’m happy to unveil the first of them: Behind The Classics. Every fortnight (well, that’s the plan at least), we’ll be talking to the creative force behind a vintage PS One or PlayStation 2 title. To kick things off, Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin was kind enough to lend us his time to discuss the making of seminal 2001 PS2 platformer Jak & Daxter.

We’ve got the next few entries in the series lined up, but please feel free to leave your suggestions for future interview subjects below. Manage your expectations – these people aren’t always easy to track down – but we’ll do our best.

Anyway, without further ado, over to Andy…

What was the original concept for the game? Was it a deliberate attempt to create a PlayStation 2 mascot to rival Crash Bandicoot?
Andy Gavin: Of course we wanted the franchise to be as big – or bigger – than Crash. And while this didn’t quite come to be, it was certainly our goal.

The formulation of new game ideas involves two aspects: genre and style. As to gameplay genre: on the PS One, good-looking, free roaming 3D seemed impossible. The machine lacked any hardware sorting or clipping, and had a relatively low polygon count. Plus, the AI challenge of creating a camera that didn’t leave players feeling queasy was extremely daunting. So we locked down the viewpoint to improve graphics and focus on traditional Donkey Kong Country-style gameplay.

But with Mario 64, Miyamoto showed that free roaming was possible, albeit on the N64 and with no small dose of camera frustration. By the time we began Jak & Daxter in January 1999 newer games like Banjo-Kajooie vastly improved the playability. Clearly, on the PS2, full 3D could be great.

Did you draw inspiration from anywhere in particular for the game’s look and feel?
Andy Gavin: With Crash we enjoyed enormous worldwide success in no small part due to our collaboration with Sony’s worldwide producers. So for Jak & Daxter we set out to create a character and environment that merged elements from worldwide cultures. You can see the result in Jak, who is a hybrid of Western cartoons and Eastern manga. We asked every Naughty Dog artist to spend a couple of days sketching concepts for the look of the game. We threw these on a giant table and picked elements we liked as a group.

It was an ambitious title for its time. What were the biggest challenges in realising your original vision?
Andy Gavin: Like every first-on-a-system Naughty Dog game, Jak had a rocky development. First of all, the PS2 was difficult to program, particularly in those early days when no workable examples or libraries existed. On top of that, I made the audacious choice to write the entire game in a programming language of my own design called GOAL, creating a brand new compiler and debugger from scratch. In addition, to realise the ambitious graphical goals, we invented a roster of brand new technologies: several different level of detail systems, perhaps 10 rendering engines, seamless loading from DVD, advanced runtime physics and joint animation systems to rival the offline tools. It was really, really crazy and basically took us about 20 months just on the engineering side before the engine was able to produce the kind of levels we wanted.

Can you tell me more about the mooted third character and why it was axed?
Andy Gavin: There never were any serious plans for a third character. But we had more ambitious plans for Daxter in the beginning. He was supposed to be able to hop off your shoulder and run around and do stuff. That didn’t happen until the second game. Same with the vehicle stuff. We squeezed the racer in, but barely, and we had much more aggressive plans for it.

How close to your original concept was the finished game?
Andy Gavin: Very close. We wanted to put you into this beautiful, fully-rendered fantasy world and yet allow full interactive exploration. We wanted no loading, elaborate storytelling, a camera you didn’t need to manually control, and both classic platform and vehicle gameplay.

Which element of the game are you most proud of?
Andy Gavin: I’m both most proud and most torn over GOAL, my custom language and development environment. This ended up being so much harder than I thought, and is certainly the most sophisticated programming I’ve done in my career. In the end it was pretty awesome, although not without its quirks. I’m also supremely proud of our completely load-free seamless-world. We were the first to do this – I even have a patent on it – and few have attempted it since. It was a lot of work!

And let’s not forget Jak’s control, which I personally programed. Jak has really good control, as good as any game ever. His animation is incredibly fluid, yet he is supremely responsive to both the player and the environment. Even basic elements of his control system were written and re-written a dozen times.

How would you like the first Jak & Daxter to be remembered? What did it bring to the video game medium?
Andy Gavin: The single most important thing that it brought to the medium – and there are countless smaller things – is its consistent and complete integration of the game and story elements. This comes to full fruition in Jak 2, and continues peerlessly today in newer Naughty Dog games like Uncharted. Jak has a detailed and involved story, but it’s never a semi-interactive movie, it’s a video game! The storytelling does not come at the expense of the gameplay.

Which of Naughty Dog’s PlayStation characters – Crash, Jak & Daxter, or Nathan Drake – is closest to your heart?
Andy Gavin: Crash and Neo Cortex are my favorites, and I also have a really big sweet spot for Daxter, who is such a hoot. The Uncharted characters are awesome too, but I can’t take any responsibility for them, so the connection isn’t as personal. And don’t get me wrong, I love all of my babies, even back to the forgotten ones like Keef the Thief, but really Crash’s wicked orange grin melts my heart, and Cortex is who I secretly wanted to be… If I were a cartoon :-)

More Behind the Classics

Click on the video above, which premiered on Attack of the Show and G4tv.com yesterday, to see Naughty Dog founders Jason Rubin and Andrew Gavin, myself, and other longtime Dogs share our experiences in creating this classic series.

Today the Jak and Daxter Collection launches exclusively on PS3. Now, over a decade since the Jak and Daxter series originally premiered on PS2, I’m so proud to see the legacy of Naughty Dog’s work brought together for the first time ever on one Blu-ray Disc.

The Jak and Daxter Collection brings some of your favorite J&D adventures — Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II and Jak 3 — to life like never before. Mass Media has re-mastered each installment of the collection to feature 720p high definition visuals and stereoscopic 3D support. The Jak and Daxter Collection also features over 100 trophies (including 3 platinum) for you to hunt down while you play through all three titles.

In addition to picking up the Jak and Daxter Collection at your local game retailer, you’ll be able to download the title via PSN. Starting today, the Jak and Daxter Collection will be available on the PlayStation Store for $39.99. You can also choose to download any of the installments from the collection separately for $14.99.

Be sure to grab the Jak and Daxter Collection today for a chance to experience the full evolution of the franchise. You’re in for some funny and wild adventures — enjoy!

Each game has been fully remastered to feature 720p HD visuals and stereoscopic 3D functionality, and one of the coolest new additions to the titles in Jak and Daxter Collection is the introduction of Trophy support.

When the series debuted on PS2 over 10 years ago, we didn’t have Trophies. For our jump to PS3, Mass Media crafted custom Trophies for you to earn for all three titles in the collection. The team at Mass Media has created intricate Trophies, each featuring a unique variation on a design theme based around its mission type. There are over 100 to collect including three Platinum Trophies, so you completionists will have hours of Trophy-hunting fun to look forward to.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the Trophies that will be up for grabs:

Pedal to the Metal	Destroy Metal Kor at Nest	Gold
Purple Pain	Navigate the Purple Precursor Rings	Bronze
The Super Orberator	Collect 2000 Precursor Orbs	Gold
Testosterone	Pass the Tests of Manhood	Silver
Just the Artifacts Ma’am	Find 3 Artifacts in Mountain Temple	Bronze
What’s That Smell?	Escort Men Through Sewers	Bronze
The Beast Beater	Destroy Metal Head Beasts	Bronze
Gate Crasher Masher	Defend Spargus’ Front Gate	Bronze

Be sure to track them all down when Jak and Daxter Collection launches on PS3 this February 7th. Happy hunting!

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since Jak and Daxter found their way onto PlayStation 2 and into the gaming world. We are delighted at the place the franchise has found amongst the gaming community and the mark it has left on the platformer genre in particular. Given that we’re so close to the 10th anniversary, looking back at some of the work that went into making those awesome games seems to be in order. It’s amazing to recall just how the development of the Jak and Daxter franchise has progressed and just how far we’ve come.

With each outing in the Jak and Daxter series, we set out to create a game that offered the player a new experience that built on the previous game. As you go from Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy to Jak 3, the story will connect across the titles as the gameplay and technical aspects of the games and the tools used to create them evolved. From being on foot in Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy to the hoverboard and morph gun in Jak II to the dune buggies in Jak 3, new gameplay ideas were always in play and being fleshed out and amped up. On the technical side, for instance, Jak 3 featured a new terrain renderer that included bump-mapping, which is now a commonplace element in rendering terrain. Cloth dynamics and rag-doll physics, also standard features in many modern games, were new developments by the time that Jak 3 was released in 2004.

All in all, the evolution of the franchise was a long, fun and winding road, and we are delighted to be able to share it with the current console generation. With the Jak and Daxter Collection, we’re bringing the first three installments of the original PS2 series to PS3 on one Blu-ray disc. Mass Media has been working closely with our team at Naughty Dog to remaster Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II and Jak 3 for the collection. Each title will now offer refined 720p High Definition visuals, smoother gameplay animation, full stereoscopic 3D functionality and trophy support.

Looking back at the old code and comparing it to this newly minted code is pretty amazing. Our beloved Jak and Daxter franchise and its colorful cast of characters looks, and still plays, truly awesome. The technology and the development work that went into making The Jak and Daxter Collection is remarkable. We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and stories once you get your hands on the collection.

For those of you who are longtime fans, get ready to experience the Jak and Daxter you love in a fresh new light. If you’re new to the franchise, be ready to get hungry for more eco.

Greetings all, hopefully you’ve been getting to spend some quality time with UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception these past few weeks. We are grateful for all the positive fan feedback and thank you for the support! I’m not here today to talk about U3, though. We’ve been getting many, many requests asking about Jak and Daxter coming to PS3, and I’m happy to announce that the series will make its PS3 debut this February with the launch of the Jak and Daxter Collection.

The Jak and Daxter Collection features three of our favorite Jak and Daxter titles – Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, and Jak 3 – all remastered by Mass Media, working closely with our team at Naughty Dog. With the launch of Jak and Daxter Collection, you’ll be able to experience the adventures of Jak and his Daxter in 720p high definition with crisper visuals, smoother gameplay animation, and in full stereoscopic 3D. And, I’m sure all of you hardcore collectors will be happy to hear that each game in the trilogy features full PS3 trophy support.

The Jak and Daxter franchise set a benchmark for the platformer genre with its huge environments and gaming freedom. In fact, it holds seven world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008 including the First Seamless 3D World in a Console Game. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of love for the franchise here at Naughty Dog, and it has a very special place in our hearts. If you can believe it, the Jak and Daxter franchise will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year on December 4th and we’ll be checking in with you via the PlayStation.Blog to help us celebrate. In the meantime, let me know your favorite Jak and Daxter memories in the comments and be sure to stay tuned to the blog to for the latest Jak and Daxter Collection news.

To help build excitement for the November 3 launch, GamesTrailers.com has provided an exclusive first look at the new trailer for Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier. Check it out!

Developed by High Impact Games, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier takes the intrepid pair all the way to the edge of the world. There they must battle their way past air pirates and sinister creatures in their quest to find a cure for the world’s eco shortage. Keep an eye out for this title to be available later this year!