My History With Naughty Dog​

Naughty Dog has been around long before I was born and has since been integrated into my life since I was a child somehow. They’ve been through a lot of transitions in those times, but I wanted to talk about their impact and history through my own life and start doing features on developers and publishers I enjoy. So! Here is My History With Naughty Dog!

Naughty Dog was founded by Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, both high schoolers who began Naughty Dog as JAM Software before becoming Naughty Dog in 1989. In 1994, after developing three games under the Naughty Dog name, they began developing a 3D action-platformer game which would become Crash Bandicoot.

Here is where we begin my own journey with Naughty Dog. Crash Bandicoot released in 1996, and I definitely did not play it at that point since I was a mere three years old. So, around the late ’90s and early 2000’s I played the Crash Bandicoot trilogy somehow with how difficult those games are. I Probably did not even come close to beating any of those games since I was not good at beating games as a child, but I did enjoy them a lot! Especially the personality of all three of those games.

After all those games, including the Crash Team Racing game made by Naughty Dog too, I got a PS2 sometime in 2002 and one of the first games I got was Jak & Daxter. I was not entirely sure why I got it. Maybe it was the cover with the wacky looking characters. Maybe it was just me wanting more than just a James Bond game.

However, when I started to play Jak & Daxter, I was laughing a lot and enjoyed all the adventures these two characters were going on. I never noticed though, that I was playing the next game Naughty Dog developed. Even with the opening Naughty Dog logo. Though I kept getting the next three Jak games, I was very surprised by the change from Jak & Daxter to Jak II but was definitely still enjoying myself. The change from the next one wouldn’t be as drastic, but definitely more vast and enjoyed the combat. As a child, I never beat these games, as usual. I didn’t end up beating these games until about a decade later when the collection came out on the PS3 and learned just how interesting the story was.

At the time of the Xbox 360 and the PS3, I chose to go with the 360 and back away from my PlayStation roots. This was probably because the 360 came out a year earlier. However, five years after at Christmas, I returned to my Playstation heritage and got a PS3 and the Uncharted games since I heard quite a few great things about these two games. That is when I noticed that I have been playing Naughty Dog games since I was a child. This is when I started to fall in love with certain developers.

The evolution throughout these three franchises was truly astounding to me thinking about it, but I still loved the Uncharted series a lot. The intrigue of the mysteries they were going on and the Indiana Jones aesthetic of big set piece action really captivated me. Also, the characters were really interesting in how they interacted and how they all met really intrigued me too. This time, I actually beat Naughty Dog games.

In 2011, Uncharted 3 was released and became the first Naughty Dog game I played on an opening weekend! This game’s cinematics were quite spectacular and the story was more interesting to me than the last two just since they tried more things like Drake being a child in a section.

In the opening sequences of Uncharted 3, there was a mysterious newspaper that states “Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus.” Previously, a game called The Last of Us had been getting teaser treatments of ants getting infected by fungi and the fungi growing eventually outside the ant. However, Naughty Dog is only a one-game studio, so it could not be them making The Last of Us. The next month proved me wrong when at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards Naughty Dog revealed The Last of Us. This was a crazy, crazy moment in gaming. I recall loving that whole moment so much. Naughty Dog was going to announce the game at E3. The developers of The Last of Us sought to have an easter egg, the newspaper, in Uncharted 3, which the developers of Uncharted 3 approved of. However, game development is weird at times, so the announcement got delayed, but The Last of Us developers forgot they approved the newspaper. The great and funny things in game development.

So, The Last of Us came out in 2013 and I was truly playing probably my favorite game in my entire life at that moment, until of course a few years after. The opening is fantastic and heart-wrenching. The gameplay is fantastic in the way you must manage your inventory and actually think about how many bullets you have. Before those games, I never had to truly think about managing my inventory in that way. A very sheltered gaming life I lived, due to myself of course. The story is magnificent and challenged myself in ways I was never challenged by a story before.

Now three years after on the PS4, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End came out and was the end of the Nathan Drake story. This was truly an emotionally draining experience sometimes, especially towards the end. The game had truly great moments in the story and in gameplay. The environments were beautiful too, following suit with all the Naughty Dog games that came before it. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was released a year after and I highly enjoyed myself by playing as Chloe and having Nadine from Uncharted 4 tag along. This was definitely a good little Uncharted story!

Now, Naughty Dog has somehow been in my life for a while and I did not even realize it originally. Now, I patiently wait for one of my favorite games of all time to get a sequel that looks just as emotionally taxing as the last one, The Last of Us Part II.

Thanks for reading and taking time out of your day to read this giant history lesson of mine!