Twenty-seven years after a plucky green crocodile first fumbled across a PlayStation disc, Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos has its second chance. Argonaut Games announced that a full remaster of the beloved — and by its own designer's admission, imperfect — 1999 sequel is in development, targeting a Q4 2026 release across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and GOG. Wishlist pages are live now on all announced storefronts except Switch.

The development confirms what Argonaut co-CEO Mike Arkin has called an explicit commercial contract with its audience: if the first Croc remaster sold, the sequel would follow. It sold.

Croc Made Money. That Is Why Croc 2 Exists

Argonaut's revived studio — the British-founded developer that co-created the Super FX chip and Star Fox with Nintendo in 1993 before closing in 2004 and relaunching in 2024 — has built its return entirely around a single strategic bet. Remaster the franchise in commercial sequence. Only greenlight the next project when the previous one proves the audience exists.

By that measure, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, released April 2, 2025, cleared the bar. Critical reception was divided — the PS5 version landed around 69 on Metacritic, with some critics calling it a faithful preservation of gaming history and others arguing it demonstrated precisely why the original never kept pace with Crash Bandicoot or Spyro — but audience reception was warm, and sales were strong enough to matter. Argonaut followed up with the Croc: Legend of the Gobbos Platinum Edition in October 2025, a free update adding PlayStation Platinum Trophy support and expanded Crocipedia content, a move that signaled active community management rather than a one-and-done port.

Arkin did not equivocate in today's announcement. "We've made no secret of the fact that if Croc did well in the market, the obvious next project would be to remaster Croc 2," he said. "Croc's successful return exceeded what we hoped for, and that made the decision easy."

Jez San OBE, Argonaut's founder and the engineer whose pitch to Nintendo — "let me design hardware to make the SNES better at 3D" — birthed the Super FX chip, called the sequel "always the plan" once the first remaster proved its audience.

Different Engine, New Challenges

The remaster is not a simple repeat of the first job. Croc: Legend of the Gobbos (1997) ran on BRender, Argonaut's own proprietary 3D rendering engine — the same toolkit that powered Carmageddon and several other 1990s titles, released as open-source software under the MIT License in 2022. When Argonaut's team began work on the remaster, they were working with their own code heritage.

Croc 2 was built on a completely different engine, one Argonaut did not originally write. That distinction matters for remastering: porting a game to modern hardware involves digging into source-level rendering code, asset pipelines, and physics implementations that assume the original platform's capabilities. A different engine means a different set of assumptions, different failure modes, and a different validation path.

Arkin acknowledged this directly: "Croc 2 was originally built on a totally different engine to Croc, posing its own set of remastering challenges, but the early work we did to validate our approach paid off." The phrasing is careful — it confirms a validation phase was completed before today's announcement, not that development is finished.

There is commercial context worth noting here. The original Croc: Legend of the Gobbos sold over 3 million copies on PlayStation alone. Croc 2, despite a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that printed Croc's face on 6.5 million Nabisco Gummi Savers candy wrappers, sold approximately 500,000 PS1 copies by May 2000. The sequel was the lesser commercial performer, which is part of why its remaster is a more interesting creative problem than a simple franchise continuation. Argonaut's engine-validation step addresses the question that question implicitly raises: is this sequel technically feasible to restore to a playable standard?

The answer, according to the studio, is yes.

What the Remaster Will Fix (and What It Won't)

The original Croc 2 arrived with better controls than its predecessor — the sequel shipped with full analog DualShock support in 1999, freeing players from the tank-movement that defined the first game's feel. But it carried a camera system that critics at IGN, GameSpot, and AllGame consistently flagged as a primary flaw. The Forbes assessment of the remaster project specifically notes it will be crucially addressing the original's difficult camera.

Lead designer Nic Cusworth, who built both the original games and is involved in the remaster work, has previously described Croc 2 as a "flawed favorite" — a game with genuine ambition that fell short of its potential. The remaster is framed as the version that fulfills what the 1999 release was reaching toward.

On the movement side, the sequel will restore Croc 2's full original moveset — including the triple jump and flip jump that were already present in 1999 but will be new to players who know only the first game. Go-kart sections, speedboat races, hang-gliding, and a wooden-airplane flight sequence are all part of the sequel's more varied structure, and all are expected to be preserved across more than 40 levels.

Croc2pedia: The Archive Returns

The most distinctive feature of the first remaster was not the updated visuals — it was the Crocipedia, an in-game digital museum that took Argonaut over a year to assemble with the cooperation of original team members, gathering concept art, game design documents, animation tests, pre-release soundtrack mixes, and documentary interviews.

Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos brings back this feature as the Croc2pedia, assembled on the same archival model. Argonaut says the museum will include never-before-seen development materials, full game design documentation, marketing assets, promotional merchandise, animation test videos, and 3D model galleries of characters, levels, and cut items. Developer interviews will cover both the original 1999 Argonaut team and the current remaster team, tracing the game's creative arc from earliest concepts through its commercial release — all confirmed in the July 2026 announcement.

The NintendoLife review of the first remaster's Crocipedia concluded it was "a meaningful contribution to the ongoing struggle of video game preservation" — not a bonus feature, but a substantive reason to own the game.

What Players Can Expect

Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos follows the events of the first game by several months. Professor Gobbo witnesses the Dantinis resurrecting Baron Dante and is captured for the offense. Croc, playing on a beach, finds a message in a bottle indicating that his biological parents are searching for him. He sets off for the mainland — and finds Baron Dante waiting for him with a score to settle.

The journey takes Croc through four distinct villages — Sailor Village, Cossack Village, Caveman Village, and a mountain community — each with its own biome, Gobbo culture, and Guardian boss. Soveena the Squid (whose documented obsession with Ginger Soda makes her a recurring menace in Sailor Village), Cannon Boat Keith, and Flavio the Thermal Fish are among the opponents players will face.

What Platforms Will Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos Be On?

Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos is targeting Q4 2026 release on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and GOG. A specific release date has not been announced. Argonaut has indicated that further details on release timing and physical editions will be shared later this year.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos come out?

Argonaut Games has announced a Q4 2026 target for Croc 2: Kingdom of the Gobbos, which puts the release window between October and December 2026. No specific date has been confirmed. The studio has said further details on release timing and physical editions will follow later this year.

What is the Croc2pedia?

The Croc2pedia is an in-game digital museum included in the remaster — similar to the Crocipedia in the 2025 Croc: Legend of the Gobbos remaster. It contains archival development materials that Argonaut tracked down with the cooperation of original team members: design documents, marketing assets, animation tests, 3D model galleries, cut content, and documentary interviews with both the 1999 development team and the current remaster team — all confirmed in the July 2026 announcement. Think of it as a game-historical documentary packaged inside the game itself.

Is Croc 2 a harder remaster job than the first Croc game?

Yes, by Argonaut's own account. Croc: Legend of the Gobbos (1997) ran on BRender, Argonaut's own 3D engine — meaning the remaster team was working with code the studio originally wrote. Croc 2 (1999) was built on an entirely different engine, creating a fresh set of technical challenges confirmed by co-CEO Mike Arkin. Arkin confirmed the team completed an early validation phase to confirm their approach works before greenlighting the full project. The original sequel also sold significantly fewer copies than its predecessor — roughly 500,000 PS1 units by mid-2000, compared to over 3 million for Croc 1 — making the remaster a bet on the game's quality ceiling rather than its prior commercial momentum.

Does Croc 2 have new moves in the remaster?

The remaster restores Croc 2's original 1999 moveset, which was already more expansive than the first game — including a triple jump and flip jump for reaching higher ledges, a ground pound, and full analog-stick support. These moves will be new to players who only know Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, but they were present in the 1999 original. The remaster also specifically addresses the sequel's notoriously difficult camera system, which critics flagged as the game's primary mechanical flaw at launch.