Crash Bandicoot is a pretty good platformer, especially for it's time. In comparison to SM64, which takes a different approach where you have a freedom of control and sometimes even room for error, Crash is a lot more linear and precise, and it what makes it really enjoyable.

Most of the levels require some patience, where you need to take your time and get through stages in an exact fashion. In the beginning, you will mess up way too often, missing maybe a inch on one jump or a second before a plant eats you. It's a bit frustrating yes, but as you go across the levels you'll get better at it, and your skills will naturally improve. There is some gimmick levels sprinkled into the game (boulders and riding a hog) but they don't overstay their welcome. Even with these repetitions, each stage has a slight twist to it, or is amped up in its difficulty. Every way you can platform is introduced in a supposedly easy way, but testing it is where the true fun lines. For instance there are various "bridge" levels where you need to jump across the walkways on a bridge. The first level is fine at first, with a few platforms falling if you land on them. Then ice platforms and hogs start appearing, the hog in particular forcing you to start moving if he's nearby. In the next two levels, you need to use the back of turtles to make it precisely across the level, and need to also recognise when some falling platforms aren't the best to land on, along with the previous conditions. Once you finish the game and start collecting the gems for the true ending (which you need 100% for), the first few levels you struggled with will be a breeze, and it makes the gameplay satisfying. Replaying the third level, an introduction to the 2D-inclined stages, which took me 15 minutes to beat before, now takes maybe 3 minutes since I rarely get hit and the Aku-Aku (tokens that give you one more hit resistance) are given generously. If you understand the mechanics, you can beat that level being practically invincible the whole time. Essentially, Crash Bandicoot rewards patience and learning the mechanics to really master the game, and it is not that difficult if you go along with that.

The story is pretty bare-bones, but the variations in the environment hold up well, even at it's internal resolution. First you start off in the jungle, then you venture into ancient ruins, temples, bridges in the sky, abandoned castles, and industrial areas. The audio is nice also, with good ambient and some catchy tunes every few levels or so. The jungle levels have alot of fauna making noise, and some chirping. The industrial areas have music that is a bit more stark or robotic, while the boss fights have tunes that compliment their respective boss. It's less of the focus compared to the visuals, but it does add to them in a sometimes subtle, other times exaggerated way. The boss fights themselves are easy if you get the patterns, but their art direction and Looney Tunes-inspired look add some enjoyment to them even if they are a bit predictable.

However, the game does suffer from some QoL issues. Every time you die, the boxes you smashed in that level are reset, meaning you have to go back and collect the previous ones before your checkpoint, which may be impossible depending on the obstacles. Saving can only be done after a bonus round, or getting a gem, and sometimes only beating a boss. But a password system is in place if you want to avoid this. Also, the camera is not that great in some levels (mainly the ones in temple ruins) where it's difficult to know if you can make a jump or not. Hitboxes may also be a bit of an issue depending on the timing you make with your jump or spin. Also, Crash has some subtle ways of moving that is a hard to understand at first, like the spin attack making him slightly move or cancel the height on his jump. In those cases, you depend on his shadow to know where you will really land. But, the game does have generous Coyote time, so even if you do mess up, if your wits are good enough you can avoid it. Also, it doesn't really make the controls bad, in fact it is the opposite. Crash moves exactly how you make him, and that is due to the fact that the game does not support analog (at leas the original release doesn't).

The best way to remedy the biggest culprit (box reseting) is to emulate it IMO. Keeping a save state at each checkpoint and start of bonus round is good enough to retain an authentic experience without having to deal with unnecessary hassles like box reseting. If your a purist however, it can definitely turn you off from really beating the game, and the same can be true if you're coming back from Crash 2 or Crash 3. If you're not, i'd still recommend playing the original game, as the physics were changed in N. Sane trilogy and the colors and artstyle were a bit toned down, and the audio sounds a bit tinny comapred to the original. It's not hard to find either, depending on if you want to play the PSN Version, PS1 Disc, or emulate it (which is easy to run even on extreme budget hardware)

In general, Crash Bandicoot is a stellar platformer, but some minor inconvenience, and the occasional boss fight may prove to be an annoyance they do not sell the game short of being a fun time. Naughty Dog easily achieved their point of making a characteristic, approachable platformer that is tricky to master.

It goes without saying that games that become representative of a console's library or even an entire genre usually have a good historical basis for being that way. Games like the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES, the first generation of Pokémon on the Game Boy, and even Grand Theft Auto III on the PS2 all rightfully earned their spot as library-defining games. They set many standards for gaming and still hold up in many ways today. Crash Bandicoot generally has a similar reputation as the original PlayStation's killer 3D platformer. As in, for many, this game is equivalent to what Super Mario 64 was doing at the same time for the Nintendo 64. It defined childhoods, and captured a sense of adventure many had never experienced before. And considering I didn't have much childhood nostalgia for SM64 nor Crash (and I absolutely love the former), I wanted to see if I could find the same enjoyment in Crash 1, against the advice of a good friend (and massive Crash fan) that suggested I skip straight to 2. Odd.

Now, I can absolutely see where people's appreciation for this game comes from, and its historical relevance. It came out when 3D platformers were still more or less non-existent, and the few that did get released beforehand made usage of tank controls (see Floating Runner and Alpha Waves as examples), which wasn't always the most satisfying way to play. This was primarily from a lack of fluidity this control scheme had for the genre. But, Crash 1 gives everyone simple controls that are much more intuitive, with a fun little character that has some decent weight to his motion, even going so far as to keep the levels linear enough to make it hard for people to be overwhelmed by the scope of any stages within. It was wise for Naughty Dog to go with this design approach, as it almost ensured that people that weren't big on gaming could enjoy it too.

However, by the same token, this game's ultimately a 2D platformer with a little more freedom of movement (and no, I don't mean it's a "2.5D" platformer). I say that more in the sense that it's barely a 3D platformer at all and hardly warrants being called one in my opinion. Though I'm not gonna be a wise guy about it and come up a genre name for a gameplay setup that's only shared with maybe Temple Run? Crash, while fine to control for the most part, has poor control in the air, so you really have to commit to any and all jumps. These work alright with how the game's levels are designed, but beyond that, the level design is fairly shallow, and doesn't really feel fun. Certainly not fun enough for me to take the challenge of getting 100% completion of the game. It just feels okay, and not anywhere near the massive reputation this series has for being the PlayStation's mascot platformer.

The game as a whole holds up rather well though. Or it would, if it weren't for the bogus save system the game uses. Even by 1996's standards, I have no idea why this game opted for such an outdated approach. Basically requiring the player to find three items with Crash's girlfriend, Tawna, on it. Then, beating a bonus stage afterwards to either get a password or save to your memory card. Failing to do either of these means you're SOL until the next stage with the Tawna items in it. This absolutely felt like a cheap way of raising the difficulty of the game, since it isn't particularly challenging otherwise.

As for the aesthetics. These are fine, like the rest of the game, I wasn't overly enamored with the soundtrack, though it got the job done. Very minimal and ambient, which could be really cool, as is the case with another well-known jungle-themed platformer, but here it was rather forgettable. The sound effects and visuals were possibly my favorite part however, I liked the untextured look of all of the enemies, and the weird vertex manipulation going on with Crash's model made him contort in a lot of goofy ways that was fun to watch. The stage select's rather bland and ugly though, but it's not a game changer. Other than that, it's got some soul to it, so I'm intrigued to see what the developers did with the 2nd game. Maybe it'll win me over as the console's big platformer for real.

Acho que o meu primeiro contato com videogames foi quando cheguei na casa do meu primo e ele tava jogando esse Crash, de cara meus olhos ja brilharam e eu me apaixonei por tudo nesse jogo, mesmo sendo muito dificil pra mim quando criança eu consegui zerar com meu primo, e agora mais de 10 anos depois eu termino o jogo novamente mas sem dar gameover nenhuma vez. Desde o primeiro contato até o dia de hoje eu venho evoluindo na arte gamer e digo muito obrigado a esse jogo porque ele com certeza mudou muito a trajetoria da minha vida. Raposa doida é o pico da ficção. @Jonlel vai ter que sentar pros cria

I felt like I had to eventually play this, seeing as I've played 2 and 3 and it feels awkward to just not round out the trilogy. It's definitely rough to come back to this after its sequels, seeing as the jump and weight in general were vastly improved in the sequel. It's not something I couldn't adjust to, but it was a lot of instances of "well, I probably would have made that jump in the next game". Hitboxes are also kind of weird, a lot of instances of not being able to tell how I was hit or from where, which I feel like is a problem that also exists in the later games but not to this extent.

Comparing this game to what came after it, it definitely comes off as kind of a rough start, but there are some neat aspects here that I think this game has over the other two Crash PS1 games. The way the levels progress in theming and location as you go deeper into the world map is really cool, and something that's not present in the next games. The music is more sparse and atmospheric for the most part, and I actually really like that choice. I also kind of like the slower, more careful style of platforming present in these levels, once I got a hold of the weird-feeling jump. I always appreciated the way Crash brings 2D precision platforming into 3D, and there's some good instances of that here. I'm the kind of freak who plays the bridge levels and goes "damn, these are some of my favorite levels in the game". Also, looks crazy good for an early PS1 game.

The biggest detriment to this game is how it handles gems and saving. The only way to get a gem from a stage is by breaking all the crates without losing a single life, and the only way to save is by getting a gem or completing one of the bonus stages. There are some levels to where not dying and completing the whole thing feels fairly reasonable, like the hog riding levels and some other levels, but there are also so many that feel way too long to feel "worth it". The reward for getting all the gems is basically nothing, so the only reason you would get them all is if it was fun to do so, and it doesn't sound fun to me at all. I praised the levels to some extent, but they are also full of some brutal stuff, and that combined with some of their length just makes me go "oh, well I'm not fucking doing that". The worst of it is the bonus stages, which you only get one shot at. Many times they're the kind of stages that you need to look at and get a couple tries at before really knowing what to do, so it feels especially cruel to demand the player just do the whole level again in order to finally learn it enough times.

The later games are also pretty brutal, but being able to try as many times as you like makes it so much more encouraging. The death routes in 2 and 3 basically feel like an actually well thought out version of what this game was getting at. I wish I liked this game enough to want to get all the gems, because I honestly just gave up on getting all the boxes.

I mentioned the saving before, but the really dumb thing about it is it doesn't even work the way you expect it to! So if you got a gem at the end of a level, you expect the game to save you beating that level and collecting the gem, right? But no, this game saves you collecting the gem, but not beating the level! You have to beat the level again if you load that save! I'm using exclamation points because I don't understand why you would do this! Even if you complete a level, go back to an earlier level, and get that level's gem, the game won't save you beating the level, it's absolutely fucked.

I may have gone a little too long about the gem situation with this game, but its honestly something that kind of ruined part of it for me. It's just very discouraging, because this game does really cool stuff, and playing through it without collecting anything is fine enough, but its very frustrating to my sensibilities. I feel like this game would easily be a 7 (it might still be honestly, the more I think about some of the levels the more it grows on me a little) with that one thing changed. I might play the N. Sane Trilogy version since it does exactly what I'm asking, but it also looks kind of doo-doo art wise, so probably not. At that point I might as well play Crash 4, which I will get to, some day in the far off future.

In the year of our lord 2023 and at 23 years old I have finally played the first game in one of my favourite platforming series. And I have to say I fucking loved it. Let's talk about the save and death system a bit though since those basically make up the entirety of this game's shortcomings.

I played this game with save states… but not a lot of them. I used them mostly as a normal save, once mid-level (Usually around when you’d get the bonus round on your first go-around), and after bosses. I actually feel like this game is pretty well-balanced for the most part and it was rare I made a save state as a precaution just in the middle of a level, but these concessions I made for myself I think were pretty crucial.

This game is by far the hardest and most precise of the entries in the series. More than any other game the level design itself will test your patience and set up obstacles that are deliberately meant to trip you up if you’re not paying attention. What this results in is a rare delight for the series: A Crash game that actually pushes you a bit.
This feeling was actually helped by the death stipulation for all the crates too. I was on the edge of my seat trying to clear a segment before getting to safety and realizing I had been holding my breath. It’s great as an optional challenge and it’s a lot different than a time trial as well which you could argue has some similarities of demanding sustained perfection and not wanting you to die.
I would’ve loved it to be a thing in the rest of the series, especially since the others are so easy.

Part of what makes this game work though—and what also causes most of its major problems-- is that this game is straight up jank to control; It’s not just the level design that makes this game harder, the same fucking platforms and challenges with either Crash 2 or 3’s physics would be astronomically easier by-default. The jump arc is stiffer than any other in the series and Crash has that classic need to slow-down after you stop moving him forward which is common for a lot of first entries in highly acclaimed platformers (Usually this is a negative, but it ain't all bad depending on execution).
This makes the need to aim the jump, to control how long you hold the button and whether or not you adjust the jump backwards a bit all much more difficult endeavours than you ever thought they’d be. You get the hang of it the farther you go, but this game will be one you death-grip the controller with a lot. (And don’t even think of using the analog stick if you’re playing on emulator—It’s not worth it at all. It will absolutely get you killed.)
Honestly, like I said, the physics actually make the game fun in its own way too, but there’s absolutely no denying that the vast majority of frustration comes from it. It’s very difficult to count on yourself doing things right every single time, and it’s not like, say, Mario 64 where usually there’s no large threat from messing up an execution—Usually just a failure to get where you need to go.
This is why the save states are such a god-send. Half the time in gem-runs of levels there was at least one part I regarded as a bit too unfair or a gem path that was going to make everything that much harder and make you start all over again if you mess up.
I already grew a bit tired and frustrated with my conservative use of the save-states, so if I had to wait through load-screens or always have restart from the beginning late in a difficult stage from one slip up (gem-route especially) ALL the time, I’d have been livid.
The game’s still fun and I did do some actual perfect runs, but the control's just not consistent enough. It’s no wonder they made the checkpoints how they are in the later games, holy hell. Maybe they swung too hard in the other direction, but shifting the focus and being better safe than sorry was probably the right choice
And I aid I’d like a collectible related to no-deaths but coupling it to crate collection was just too much-- especially for this game. (Maybe Time Trial was indeed the right answer once Crash 3 came around. Not sure.)

Some simple fixes that would have immediately helped the game but preserve some of its feel:

Mid-Level checkpoints and/or Checkpoints after Bonus Rounds
Free deaths for Bonus Rounds
Communication that full crate collection for Tawna levels is not mandatory
Save Points after bosses (Seriously though, it’d be better if you just got to save whenever though. The way saves work is weird as fuck)

And really: Better physics would make a world of difference. I keep thinking that Crash 2 and 3 with a no-death challenge would work way better. It’s just hard to say whether you’d make the game worse overall by making that different, or if it’s nice that it is jank how it is for good and for ill.
And on that note: When you use things like save states—even conservatively—It’s hard to say how much something actually brings down a game. Not to mention how much you should let it off because of age or not. And that's how I kind of feel about the game. It could fall in a broad range of quality, but it's undeniably flawed.

To wrap things up though, let me say a bit about the rest of the game
It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but that more panicked looney-tunes creature going on a long adventure in treacherous environments feel really gives this game something special compared to the others. Though at the same time the almost complete lack of story and characterization, and the lack of Coco hurts the game.
The sound-track is actually great but as you know it’s a lot less melodical than either of the other entries. And the environments are the same, but just like with the soundtrack… They pale in comparison to how much 2 ups the ante, and even if some of 3’s elements are a bit cliche and boring to me 1 doesn’t do much to inject flavour. It reuses elements quite a bit even in the very endgame.
The bosses I would say are relatively clever or fun. The trick with them is more about figuring out how you damage them. After that they sort of become a joke. I like most of them more than N.Tropy in Crash 3 at least, which is the worst boss between 2 and 3.

This game very well could’ve been better than 3 for my money. It IS better if you’re mostly focused on the casual experience instead of the 100 %. And I like how this game doesn't expect you to make large leaps in logic for its coloured gems like 2 and 3 do, if I'm going to compliment the 100 %, and it's not like I didn't have any fun doing it. But it’s impossible to deny the variety and fun that Crash 3 brings, especially with the wealth of content it has when you start doing the time trials.

I’d like to give the game an 8. Maybe it deserves it, especially if I do consider that I could’ve went even harder with the save-states, and think to myself that this is the “right” way to play the game nowadays anyway.
But I just can’t. It wouldn’t feel right. So what can you do? The game’s a 7 even though its brothers are pretty much 10s, and even though this game has plenty to edge over them.

Even though I grew up playing this game, I can't necessarily say it was great. I certainly love the atmosphere this game has, the lack of much dialogue and the environments reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country are some of my favorite parts. Unfortunately, it's aged a bit poorly. The controls and physics of the game do not at all align with future entries and saving is somewhat of a nightmare, relying more on a code system. Most people complain about having get through an entire level without dying in order to get a level's gem, which I can agree with being tedious as well. It's not the worst game ever, but you're much better off playing the N-Sane Trilogy version if you're not interested in nostalgia.

So, here I finally am. Face-to-face with THE childhood game, the one that I have so much nostalgia for, it should speak enough to how completely skeeved this review could turn out to be. As much as I did always wish to get my hands on a copy of Crash 2 or 3 as a kid, at the time I could only ever experience those games at a friend's house, or via a short-lived rental. My game collection as a whole, was poor and miserable compared to my friends. I had approximately 20 games I could not give a single shit about, a copy of Final Fantasy 8 that froze on the CG opening, Spyro 2 & Rayman 2 were fun until they mysteriously disappeared from my house, Crash Bash was a thing until I tried putting it into my pocket and effectively crumpled the disc... oh, and one day, I got super excited to find a copy of Tekken 3 hiding behind one of the drawers! Only to be underwhelmed when I found out it was just the demo. Also, no memory card for any of this. At least I still had my PS2- oops, my sibling gave it to a friend who then literally ran off with it and never gave it back. Hm, I guess that only leaves Rayman 1... and this game as the two remaining things I could play for months upon months. Hey, at least those had the password system.

So, I've been thinking about who do I actually want to write this review for, and from what sort of perspective. I mean, just because I've amassed triple digits worth of playthroughs on Crash Bandicoot 1, that doesn't mean I wanna blindly defend it as the best platformer ever made, or whatever the fuck. Even with my bias, I wanna try looking at this from an objective viewpoint. And for most newcomers, the objective viewpoint of Crash 1 is gonna likely be "the Super Mario 64 competitor that is nowhere near as impressive." Despite this criticism, the PS1 trilogy of Crash games still ended up being highly profitable. They were a major cornerstone of the console, and even deemed to be the unofficial mascot of PlayStation for its 64-bit tenure. Why? What do people see in this basic run-of-the-mill platformer that goes beyond just blind nostalgia goggles? Let's figure this out first.

Personally, the first Crash was put in a rather unfair position by its own marketing team, and to a certain extent, by its own creators. Which might not've felt like it at the time, but it certainly feels more poorly aged now. Crash Bandicoot strolling up to Nintendo's HQ with a megaphone, cementing himself as "the moustache man's worst nightmare," also cemented himself as a revolutionary. With the PlayStation succesfully swooping in and establishing a lucrative playerbase, the internet was pining for a war. The elusive Mario killer, the people's craving for a 3D PlayStation platformer properly satisfied, and one that would give them a reason to shittalk Nintendo fans for "still playing those baby Mario games." The burden of all that fell to Crash.

But the matter of the fact is, Crash was never going to live up to those expectations. Naughty Dog was a team of like 8 to 9 people, the main leaders of which have never even created a 2D platformer before. By '94, Nintendo have exhausted everything they wanted to do with the 2D Mario formula. They had the experience, and were ready to design a wholly new type of game. Naughty Dog meanwhile, had to stay behind, and play catch-up on what even makes a platformer fun at all. Whereas Nintendo was ready to ask themselves "How do we design a 3D platformer," Naughty Dog was over there figuring out how to design a 2D one. And then they simply adapted that design into a 3D space. The ambitions were there, but they were more humble. Yet, they were needlessly blown out of proportion to be on the same level as fuckin' Mario, I mean, come on. It's no wonder newcomers expect more out of Crash than what they actually get.

Now, the thing is, Crash 1 did not have the open-endedness of Mario 64, nor did it have the huge moveset. The most that could be argued is that Crash looked pretty damn good for its age, and looks appealing even today thanks to prioritizing cartoonism over realism. So, is that it, then? Did people only like Crash just because it "looked" good? Just a bunch of style over substance? And here's where my defense comes in: It's worth noting that I did not grow up with Crash Bandicoot 1 back in 1996. I didn't exist back then. Really, my era of playing video games came around 2007 or 2008. And our family was ALWAYS several console generations behind. My cool friend with the sweetest, kindest mother you could imagine, he owned an Xbox 360 and GTA4. I pictured him as the god of the neighbourhood, because me and the rest were stuck with consoles like the NES, the Gameboy, and the PS1. I had the comparison point, so I was firmly aware that Crash 1 was not the pinnacle of graphical prowess, nor innovation by the time I started playing it. So then, if I wasn't impressed by its sheer novelty, then what was it actually about Crash 1 that stuck with me to this day? And, it's really not that complicated: It's not about nostalgia. The game is simply fun.

Sometimes, you don't need a game to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, what you want is something familiar, something that has been done before, something simple that you can figure out how to play within 20 seconds. Leading industry publishers keep trying to tell me how linearity is an antiquated concept that nobody wants anymore, and I think that's genuinely insulting and ignorant to say. Sure, I like squeezing in an open world into my docket every now and then, but I can't deal with that sort of scope ALL the god damn time, it's an exhausting commitment. There is still room for 5-hour hallway platformers out there. These are my palette cleansers between longer titles, this is my comfort food. There was room for this sort of platformer even back then. Have you seen how people played that Mario 64 beta booth? They were utterly befuzzled by the game, because half the challenge was learning a new, daunting control scheme, a new type of analog controller, all within a completely new and unfamiliar dimension. Crash 1 was criticized for a lack of innovation, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a place back in 1996. Because Crash 1 was capable of offering comfort and familiarity, that in turn gave it something that Mario 64 did not have. The ability to ease into this new era of 3D gaming.

The only condition left is that the game has to flow. And, I don't know about everybody else, but to me? Crash 1 absolutely flows. A big mistake that many failed attempts at mascot platformers committed at the time, often fell to the level designers having next to no grasp of what makes a platformer flow. Their solution was to either make everything a maze, to create a needless amount of open space, make their levels three or four times as long than they needed to be, or, worst case scenario: Copy and paste. It's a relief then to say that Crash 1 avoids just about every single one of these trappings, albeit I can think of at least two levels that go on for maybe twice as long as they should. Yes, hello, I see you, Sunset Vista. Aside from this, I do think that the highly streamlined nature of each level allowed Naughty Dog to gain a solid grasp on how to escalate the challenge, starting off from the first stage that takes you through a simple and cozy variety of setpieces, before slowly ramping up the precision required from you over the course of time. The game is notorious for getting pretty difficult in its 2nd half. Unfair, though? Not at all. Everything comes together with practice. Part of what helps make this practice possible is that that extra lifes are extremely abundant throughout. So abundant, that part of the fun of Crash 1 is seeing just how quickly I can get up to 99 lifes, which generally, I max out about 40% through the game.

In the end, all you're doing is walking, jumping, and spin attacking enemies and crates alike. It's a horrendously basic gameplay loop, but it's made engaging through the skill and reaction timing it demands out of you. There is no such thing as going through the motions here. The stages are constantly testing you to stop and think about the right positioning and timing. This is coupled with a strong amount of level variety - far stronger than games like Crash 2 or 3 even - where level themes are at most repeated only once, but as you start getting closer to the end of the game, plenty of stages start introducing level themes that are unique to themselves, and never repeated anywhere else. Each level theme introduces you to a new set of obstacles, enemies, and at times changes the camera perspective to shake things up. Some levels are 3D only, some are 2.5D, one's a top-down exploratory stage, and of couse there's the iconic boulder chase stages. Though graphics may not be everything, visual variety is important to keep aspects of the gameplay fresh, and considering Crash 1's simplicity, these are highly important additions to retain engagement in what sort of challenge awaits you next.

Alright, now let's balance things out here. The criticisms. Crash 1 sports two stages themed around riding a hog. A neat way to keep in line with the goal of variety, but the hitboxes on these seriously needed another pass. You know the fucking bit I'm talking about if you've played Crash 1, the obstacle with the rotating pole thing? The one where everytime you jump over it, you clench your ass over the 50% chance that it might just kill you no matter how precisely you timed your jump? Yeah, that, and the one part where you gotta zig-zag left and right to break open all the crates, but god is just begging for you to somehow miss one of them so that way he finds us too amusing to be deemed a mistake. The silver lining is that though these sequences were spiritually brought back in Crash 2, they were vastly improved on.

Speaking of "breaking open the crates" and "mistakes", let's get into Crash 1's biggest mistake, the one that pertains to completionists. So, there are all these crates scattered across every stage. You bounce or you break them open so you can get the wumpa fruit, you collect 100 wumpa fruit, you earn a life. The act of breaking the crates is pretty satisfying in itself, but get this: if you break ALL the crates in a stage (not counting the ones found in the bonus levels), you get a gem at the end of it. Get all gems in every stage, you unlock an alternate ending. Ooh, it's a collect-a-thon now! How fun! What's more, there are certain stages you won't be able to immediately do a 100% crate run on... but there are these special Colored Gems, which unlock new paths in previous stages. Sometimes it's just these very small rooms that contain the remaining crates you need, but other times they're total extensions of the level, about 1-3 more minutes of platforming that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise. In the end, the game is still pretty short in spite of these additions, so this all sounds like a pretty nice way to appeal to collectible fans, right?

Okay, now imagine if they fucking hated you though, and made it so aside from having to obtain all crates in a level, you also have to perform a no-death run. Die once in a stage, and all those crates you collected won't mean anything, the game will simply not grant you the gem. Why????? Well, I know why. It was to prevent rentals. This sort of needless artificial difficulty was the justification to pad out game length. If you're just playing the game casually without worrying about the gems, you will objectively have a better time! Otherwise however, going for the gems effectively means that you will be abolishing all checkpoints. Every death will be followed by the two loading screens required to restart each stage. I have gotten good enough at Crash Bandicoot 1 to be perfectly capable of clearing a 100% run. I do not expect many people will have the patience to do the same. The no-death requirement makes this a stupidly stressful ordeal.

Which is why... I'm tempted to recommend that newcomers should play the remake version of Crash 1, found in the N.Sane Trilogy. They've done some very commendable things to streamline the 100%ing of the first game, primarily by removing the no-death requirement almost completely. The only exception is that you still have to do a no-death run for the 6 levels that contain the Colored Gems, but that's a way more reasonable compromise over having to do a no-death run over the whole goddamn game. There's just one catch... the remake is infamously known for its questionable hitboxes, which make certain levels that demand precision far harder to beat than they are in the original. I've gotten used to these physics myself personally, but far too many horror tales are told about the bridge level.

This all leads to the following conundrum: There is no definitive way to play Crash Bandicoot 1. The original is tight and precise to play, but its 100% requirements are awful. The remake makes these 100% requirements much better, but the gameplay loses the tightness and precision in the process. As a long-time fan, my personal recommendation is that you should do a casual run of the original Crash 1. But that's only if you're really interested in a chronological look in the series. If you're willing to go out of order, then I wholeheartedly recommend the original Crash 2. If you thought Crash 1 was too simple for your tastes, Crash 2 expands on the moveset in some very fun ways, makes its difficulty more accessible, and its 100% requirements considerably more doable. Worst case scenario if you can't emulate, the remake is generally fine for what it does, though it does require some adjusting.

Regardless, I have a lot of thoughts about the other games, but... I think this is where I'll wrap it up for now. Crash 1 is not incredible. I was so swept up in writing the rest of this review, I didn't even mention the native american stereotyping going on here, which yeah, I could certainly fuckin' do without. It is not the Mario killer and it sure as shit ain't gonna get anywhere close to the level of Mario 64. But it doesn't need to. It never, ever needed to. It is the simplicity of Crash 1 that I adore. That total confidence in delivering a platformer that everybody just gets instantly, was Crash 1's biggest strength in an era where companies tried to deliver unfamiliar experiences all the time. A lot of it must've been really overwhelming to people who had a harder time adapting. And it's thanks to Crash that there was still some speck of appreciation for the older era of gaming to be found. Innovation is a great thing. But there are times when I just wanna go backwards, to see that 3 hours is all I need to feel completely satisfied with a game.

Just as long as, y'know, you price it accordingly.