 One of the main reasons Naughty Dog chose to develop Crash Bandicoot ( at the time jokingly codenamed " Sonic 's Ass Game " ) for the Sony PlayStation was Sony 's lack of an existing mascot character that could compete with Sega 's Sonic the Hedgehog and Nintendo 's Mario . Naughty Dog desired to do what Sega and Warner Bros. did with the hedgehog ( Sonic ) and the Tasmanian devil ( Taz ) respectively and incorporate an animal that was " cute , real , and no one really knew about " . The team purchased a field guide on Tasmanian mammals and selected the wombat , potoroo and bandicoot as options . Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin went with " Willie the Wombat " as a temporary name for the starring character of the game . The name was never meant to be final , due both to the name sounding " too dorky " and to the existence of a non @-@ video game property of the same name . The character was effectively a bandicoot by October 1994 , but was still referred to as " Willie the Wombat " because a final name had not been formulated yet . Wanting their mascot game to be multi @-@ dimensional in character depth as well as gameplay , Gavin and Rubin chose not to base Willie around one attribute such as " fast " or " cute " . The team felt that Willie should be " goofy and fun @-@ loving , and never talk " ; the character 's muteness was based on the theory that voices for video game characters were always " lame , negative , and distracted from identification with them . " 
