Crash Bandicoot Lost Treasures DLC - Secret Levels and Trophies

As many speculated, the N Sane Trilogy for Crash Bandicoot on the PS4 does in fact contain secret levels that never made it into the original PS1 game. As a testament to their inclusion, Vicarious Visions have added a set of trophies related to the Lost Treasures DLC, challenging players to earn relics and gems from these hidden levels.

In a rather clever ploy to avoid early leaks, the N Sane Trilogy has a Day 1 patch that includes downloadable content, referred to as "Lost Treasures". This DLC unlocks the secret levels that Naughty Dog hinted at during their E3 panel in LA. These secret levels include the well known classic, "Stormy Ascent", that was only playable through hacking the original game.

At the time of the original game's release, the Cliff, Waterfall, Cave and other levels were cut from Crash Bandicoot 1, simply because the developers ran out of time or they were deemed inappropriate. As many fans will know CB1 barely made it to release anyway - it was only thanks to last minute bug fixes and physically flying over copies of the game disc that the game even released on time in the first place!

With the return of Crash Bandicoot, the remastered version now includes a number of gameplay additions such as auto save, box counters and smoother jump mechanics, but also includes features from the later games in the series, such as relic challenges. With a new set of trophies specifically designed for the secret levels, you can be sure that the requirements will include beating the platinum relic challenges on these levels and collecting the new gems.

The new trophies for the secret levels can be seen below. They appear under their own Trophics section for the DLC.

Lost Treasures Trophies

The Crown Jewel (Silver)
"Seek and destroy".

An Ancient Antiquity (Gold)
"Do hard time".

Secret Levels

In total we know there are five hidden levels which never made it into Crash Bandicoot 1. These date back to the game's Beta and prototype development stages when the Naughty Dog team was experimenting with new ideas for the final game.

Let's take a look at those levels…

Astound the Skunk - also known as the "Cliff Level".
Flowing Waters - the infamous "Waterfall Level" where crash had to climb an insurmountable waterfall with death defying heights.
Acid Rain - the "Cave Level" was a very early level that was cut during initial development. It was incomplete but already textured.
Test Level - also known as the "minigame" this level was used by developers to test various enemy mechanics without the overhead of a full level design.
Stormy Ascent - a fully playable level that dates back to the Beta. It was cut either because the developers ran out of time or because it was deemed too difficult.
Lava Cave - it should have originally been similar to the Koala Kong stage but was removed because of glitches on the PS1 caused by rendering the magma.

Updates

Stormy Ascent

During Comic-Con, Vicarious Visions announced that the "Stormy Ascent" level is now available for the N Sane Trilogy, free for 30 days from the Playstation store (until Aug 19th approx).

Stormy Ascent level now available

When I have more details regarding the new levels and any gameplay, I'll post details here.