Naughty Dog, Sony look back on filming the infamous Crash Bandicoot yelling at Nintendo commercial

Coming from a Polygon interview with various Naughty Dog and Sony employees...

Jason Rubin (co-founder, Naughty Dog)

Ami Blaire, who did our marketing, came up with the yelling at Nintendo. [She was] incredibly important.

Erik Moe (copywriter, TBWA\Chiat\Day)

So [Graves] and I were working on Twisted Metal 2 and Crash Bandicoot and something else. I remember that Crash, the whole point was to challenge Mario and challenge Nintendo, who, you know, had a huge portion of the market at the time. They had this new game and they came to us and said, you know, "What can we do about this? We're this kind of challenger brand, and how do we take on this behemoth called Nintendo?" ...

So Chris and I had this thought that maybe this game is so amazing that it inspires this crazed fan to make this outfit of his favorite character and drive up to Nintendo and sort of harass them and challenge Mario.

So we went up to Seattle, we shot a bunch of little 10- to 15-second pieces that were sort of like this crazed fan's journey to Nintendo, intended as teasers. So people would see this and people would see him on this road trip and wonder where he was going. For the 30 [second commercial] where he's in the parking lot, that would be, like, the big showdown moment. So that's what we did. We shot a few little teasers. I can't remember if that was the actual Nintendo parking lot or if we faked it, to tell you the truth. I don't recall.

Ami Blaire (Crash Bandicoot marketing manager, SCEA)

[It] was the building next door. It was a Nintendo building, but it wasn't their main headquarters. ... But it also aligned with the fun of the campaign. This guy was so crazy, he would do pretty much anything and he kind of was a very spur of the moment kind of guy. So it would totally make sense that this guy hadn't had done his homework and [had] mistakenly gone to the wrong building.

from GoNintendo