Nintendo Hard: With tricky controls, respawning enemies and a coins-are-life system that would make Sonic the Hedgehog cry, this game was rather tough to new players.
The camera angles and bad turning controls emblematic of the Video Game 3D Leap are extremely frustrating, especially when you are trying to face a specific direction to jump or to run from a boss. Notably, neither game has camera rotation controls of any kind: it will try and turn to face the same direction Croc is, but will often get caught on the walls. Croc 2 remedied this somewhat with much larger spaces.
For that matter, for a lot of under-10s around when Croc came out, the PlayStation 1 was their first console, and Croc came packaged with it in some places...
The Saturn version of Croc 1 was considered this, mostly due to the size of Croc in relation to the rest of the game.
Whilst Croc 2 is mostly complete, the Inca world only has three standard levels and a single boss, compared to the usual five standard levels, two bosses and a vehicle level. It was supposed to have more, but the game was Christmas Rushed. The bonus levels with the Eggs highlight this trope: because there's only three Inca levels, there's not enough material to provide the challenges in the Twisted Levels, so there aren't any Twisted Inca levels at all. And unlike the first game, there is also no second confrontation with Baron Dante despite him stealing the Eggs in the first place: the game just cuts to credits again after you collect the third one.
Tropes of Croc: Legend of the Gobbos:
Breather Level: Level 4-2 "Hassle In The Castle" is considerably easier than the rest of the areas in the level.
Common Knowledge: The game is commonly derided as being a Super Mario 64 clone, but it predates Super Mario 64. The original tech demo, Yoshi Racing, was created two years before Super Mario 64 and the main Croc itself was developed alongside Super Mario 64.
Demonic Spiders: Whilst not spiders, Dantini Devils and Casters are literally and figuratively this trope. They are big, and shoot at you.
Porting Disaster: While a relatively minor example, the PC release of the first game had a bug that prevents the music from playing anywhere except the title screen. This is a shame as many of the first game's tracks would have delightful reprisals in the sequel. Fortunately, the PC version has an unofficial patch known as the "Definitive Edition" that improves the game for modern Computers and lets you choose different music tracks from the Demo, PC, and Playstation versions (all fixed).
So Okay, It's Average: The game is considered a decent but flawed platformer due to its control and camera issues, bland presentation, and sporadic difficulty.
That One Boss: Neptuna. A boss fight that takes place entirely underwater, AND he has the ability to shoot beams at you like the Dantini Devils.
Ghost-bonuses, the levels where you need to jump onto tiles to kill sheep/ghosts/whatever, and, oh God, the swimming levels.
Level 4-3, which consists almost entirely of a marathon of mini-games. If you're trying to go for all the Gobbos, and you mess up a single game, you MUST start all over.
Most of the level 4 areas qualify with "The Tower Of Power", "Ballistic Meg's Fairway", "Swipe Swiftly's Wild Ride", and especially the last level before the final boss "Panic At Platform Pete's Lair".
Tropes of Croc 2:
Contested Sequel: Whether Croc 2 is a better game or worse varies wildly from fan to fan. It manages to fix the flaws of its controls and camera, patched up the difficulty, and made more varied levels. However the game was also released incomplete with many side-quests being impossible to finish and having a large amount of glitches, many also feel the levels themselves got too big and tend to drag on.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: While still not an easy game after the first hub world, Croc 2 is much less demanding than its predecessor overall thanks to more forgiving level design that are less dense with obstacles, especially with how much wider they are.
"KABOOM!! It's Roger Red Ant!" is one big gauntlet and earned its reputation of the hardest level in Croc 2.
"Save 30 Baby Gobbos" is without a doubt the longest and most tedious level in a game already filled with long and tedious levels. You need to find the 30 Baby Gobbos in a large maze-like area and bring them to their cribs, and their hiding spots are hard to look for, but if you lose all your life in the middle of the level, you have to start all over again.
Tropes for the 2007 movie:
Homegrown Hero: The movie is set in Thailand but focuses primarily on an American expat and his family, although the Thai characters have a decent amount to do as well.
Special Effects Failure: In several scenes, the CGI crocodile makes the ones from the second Lake Placid movie look lifelike and realistic by comparison.
