 Before presenting Way of the Warrior to Mark Cerny of Universal Interactive Studios , Naughty Dog was signed on to the company for three additional games . In August 1994 , Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin began their move from Boston , Massachusetts to Los Angeles , California . Before leaving , Gavin and Rubin hired Dave Baggett , their first employee and a friend of Gavin 's from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ; Baggett would not start working full @-@ time until January 1995 . During the trip , Gavin and Rubin studied arcade games intensely and noticed that racing , fighting and shooting games had begun making a transition into full 3D rendering . Sensing opportunity , they turned to their favorite video game genre , the character @-@ based action @-@ platform game , and asked themselves what a three @-@ dimensional version of such a game would be like . Because the player would be forced to constantly look at the character 's rear , the hypothetical game was jokingly called " Sonic 's Ass Game " . The basic technology for the game and the Crash Bandicoot series as a whole was created somewhere near Gary , Indiana . The rough game theory was designed near Colorado . Soon afterward , Gavin and Rubin threw out their previous game design for Al O. Saurus and Dinestein , a side @-@ scrolling video game based on time travel and scientists genetically merged with dinosaurs . 
