I’ve recently gained a platformer addiction over the past month, to be more specific, with PS1 platformers. I’ve played the Spyro & Crash remakes multiple times but I thought it might be worth playing through the originals, seeing how much they got right and what changes were made in the future re-releases. And beginning with the one that started it all, Crash Bandicoot is a fun time, but not a well polished one in terms of its collecting, difficulty & movement.

At its core, Crash is a very simple game. You go through the course, hit as many boxes as you can, finish the level, rinse & repeat until you get to the end. To mention the goods, I think the original has a lot more charm which you don’t really see in the remake; the limitations of the hardware works in its favour and environments have beautiful colours and vibrancy alongside a catchy soundtrack and crunchy sound effects (that live in my head rent free). I also enjoy how it tries to create some sort of journey between each level, rather than what the series became known for afterwards, the hub worlds, which feels more disjointed. I think the Jungle/Tech/Castle themes all fit really well and the designs of each of the characters are just as goofy as Crash!

Crash himself feels okay to control, though maybe having the option to play with joysticks on later controllers would’ve been a nice touch as sometimes on the harder courses the d-pad only movement makes it all the much worse. To coincide this, the lack of movement options does make him feel very rigid. Compared to 2 & 3, there's no slide kick, ground pound or unlockable powerups, just a simple walk, jump, hit & Aku-Aku for extra defence. This setup paired with some of the awkward depth perception issues results in stressful gameplay, especially if you’re trying to get all the boxes on say the bridge levels. I’d say the level design and environments themselves are great! But It’s that camera and movement that turns it into a nightmare for completionists.

Speaking of a nightmare, the difficulty spikes. The base game wasn’t too bad to get through, even with the problems with the perspective, but OH LORD trying to 100% this is an entirely new beast. So, not only do you have to hit all the boxes without dying (which is a big ask considering how long the harder levels are), but then some require a coloured gem to unlock secret paths which you get through specific bonus stages in levels. There's also extra levels you need to unlock by getting keys… and none of this is ever properly explained to you, you’re just meant to figure out where they are. It’s a fun challenge to add for replayability, but some levels can be downright grating to finish, and once you finally collect everything the secret ending doesn’t add much value, so it's not really worth it. I also found the boss stages to be easier than any of the platforming levels, even Cortex, so the balancing is really mismatched, you’ll never know when the next hardest challenge is.

This does start to show a general lack of polish throughout the game. It’s like how you can only save when you’ve completed a level for the first time or doing a bonus area in a level, but once you’ve used that bonus it doesn’t return so you have to find another to go to??... or how lives reset every time you boot the game back up… or how enemies can sometimes be hidden until the last second, ruining the principles of planning where you want to go (this was extremely noticeable in the ‘Fumbling In The Dark’ level). There's just a certain threshold it passes when it's more annoying than difficult.

I’d say that if you were to check out this game yourself, then probably just play the remake version as it does add more QoL improvements that make 100%ing the game much more enjoyable and the definitive way to play. The controls feel better, you can die in a stage and still get standard gems (just not coloured ones), you can save at any point & there's even a box counter so you can see how many you have left to get instead of having to guess and hope that you’ve gotten everything. There's also the addition of time relics too that weren't in the base game however, so take that how you will as me personally, im terrible at them.

I think the only things I’ve ended up preferring in the original is the style & music. Crash Bandicoot is still a good platformer, but it hasn’t aged as well as say Spyro. It shines best with its design, story & general silliness and less-so its controls and progression. Anyone CAN pick up and play it, but depending on how your experience goes with platformers you might just end up pulling your hair out trying to fully complete it if you don’t get along with it well.

Ah, Crash Bandicoot. One of the earliest pioneers in 3D Platforming Action, coming out the same year as the revolutionary Super Mario 64.

Unlike Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot decides to opt for a more traditional approach when it comes to level design.
While Super Mario 64 was very open and sandbox-like in its level design, Crash Bandicoot is like the 2D Platformers of old, where you go from point A to B, while trying your best not to lose all your lives.
It may be simple, but Crash Bandicoot succeeds in providing fun level design... but it can get quite challenging, even early on in the game.

Some levels are long, others are challenging, and then there are some that are both. Crash Bandicoot will challenge you, and it will challenge you even more if you're trying to go for 100%!

Probably one of the most well known things about the Crash series is the fact that you can jump and spin boxes you find throughout the levels.
That's all well and good, especially because the act of breaking boxes, and hearing that ricochet sound while you're spinning them, is ultra satisfying, but you'll need to break all of them if you want to get that stage's gem, which all of them will be required to 100% the game, and get the best (?) ending.

The problem with this original game is that, it doesn't matter if you broke a checkpoint box or not, if you die once, you will not be able to get that stage's gem, which means you have to get every box without losing a life.
And with how hard these levels can get... yeah, fuck doing that.

I personally didn't 100% the game during my most recent run, simply because it just turns from something that can be fun but challenging, to something very frustrating. And that's not even accounting the colored gems that you'll get later on in the game, that you'll need to use in previous levels to get just those few missing boxes that you couldn't get to before.
I salute those who have 100% this game!

But when you're not going for 100%, even with its difficulty, I'd say Crash Bandicoot is a good game. Crash himself is a bit heavy on his jumps, but you'll get used to it, and overall, I just had a good time going through the levels and beating the bosses.

Speaking of the bosses... they're ok. They have their own obstacles to avoid, and most of them have a sort-of gimmick, like with Ripper Roo where you defeat him with Big TNT crates, or in Pinstripe Potoroo's fight where you hide behind some objects to avoid his gunfire.
They're fine, but nothing too special.

Outside of that, this game looks great for an early PlayStation game! Crash's model is not as detailed as future games, but I think it looks fine for a 1st game, and the environments that Crash goes through are really nice looking!
I remember when I was a kid, and when I saw this game for the 1st time, even though I already had much more modern games to play, I still liked looking at Crash 1, in spite of being older.
It was probably the sunsets.

The music is fine. I think they decided to go for an atmospheric sound for a lot of the stages, and it works in the moment, but not a whole lot of it I find catchy. But the main theme is classic!

In conclusion, while it gets hard quite early in the game, and going for 100% is not worth your time, Crash Bandicoot can be a pretty fun 3D Platformer!

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.

I often think of Crash Bandicoot (both the character and the game) as being an important part of my formative years, I received its disc, together with the console, as a sort of inheritance from a cousin of mine after he bought himself a PS2. It is with such rose tinted glasses that I looked towards playing this game again, and that the text that follows was shaped by:

It's pretty good.
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I'm not the biggest platformhead around(at time of writing), so I can't throw comparisons that were shaped by a better execution of its core concepts, nor do I have a deep understanding of what "better" would really entail, but I think that given a similar ignorance of the medium or a possible understanding of its flaws that Crash Bandicoot is indeed "pretty good", it was (for me) often challenging but never frustratingly so and I liked the stage selection map being an overview of the islands, unfortunately I found the bosses (one of my favourite parts of gaming) to be very lacking, but I enjoyed the normal levels more so I had fun , just like in the good ol days before a fully developed frontal cor- huh.

Anyway, uh, I'd love to say Crash Bandicoot is my favourite game ever but after two levels I realised that my cousin had actually gifted me Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, which I have yet to replay, and I only played the first one for a bit when I got confused which disc was the second's. Also, Idk why I wrote this thing this way, what's up with that?

One of the reasons why Sony trounced the once indomitable Nintendo in the console wars from their first attempt is because the PlayStation did not alienate any prospective demographics. As dedicated to their seal of quality standard as Nintendo was and still is, they admittedly get slapped with the stigma of a kiddy company akin to Disney. Because the third dimension allowed video games to depict graphic violence beyond what pixels were ever capable of, Sony capitalized on this market for mature video games when Nintendo was forced to stick to their family-friendly brand. Between the outstanding success of new IPs aimed at adults like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid, however, Sony still had to drum up a few franchises that appealed to a younger audience because that vital demographic would’ve easily stuck with their Nintendo standby that offered that kind of accessible content in spades. Sony released a plethora of new age-appropriate IPs to cover their marketing blindspot, but it’s difficult to say if any of these charming, cartoonish characters ever served as their definitive mascot like Mario for Nintendo. Sony learned from Sega’s example not to bet all of their money on sending their finest soldier into battle with Nintendo, for Sonic stumbled and bled out contending with far more than just Mario in Nintendo’s battalion. Even though Sony wisely treated their library as a collective, the closest character that could technically constitute a mascot for the system was Crash Bandicoot: the first of the PlayStation’s properties that was cut from the same platformer cloth that Mario laid out. The Crash Bandicoot trilogy on Sony’s first home console is fondly remembered by the younger demographic of gamers at the time, so Sony must have succeeded in converting at least a sizable fraction of Nintendo’s child consumer base to their console. Still, similarly to Sonic, Crash Bandicoot alone couldn’t have sucked Nintendo dry and stolen the video game console industry for themselves because the first Crash Bandicoot exemplified the roughest qualities of the early 3D era.

Since Crash Bandicoot was devised as a direct competitor with Mario and Sonic, let us examine his mascot material as thoroughly as a judge at a dog show. Upon lifting up and inspecting Crash Bandicoot’s proverbial undercarriage, I find that he’s as exemplary of a mascot breed as his older, iconic adversaries. For those of you who are neither zoologists or are native to Australia, a bandicoot is not a fictional animal like an Ewok or a mogwai. A bandicoot is a real strand of marsupial located down under the equator, even if this particular one was created in a laboratory by a mad scientist. Hence, why Crash has an unnaturally orange skin complexion like a clementine. Bandicoots are also not known to stand upright wearing jeans or sneakers either, but any additional human trinkets applied to Crash’s anthropomorphism aid his mascot stature. Actually, if there is one credit to Crash’s effectiveness as a mascot, it’s that he seems far more human than the representatives for Nintendo and Sega. Obviously, Mario is technically the only human in this equation, but I mean human in the sense of player-character relatability. If Mario is the charming, cherubically whimsical tramp of Chaplin, Sonic the daring thrill-seeker of Keaton, Crash is the blue-collar, exceptionally unexceptional everyman of Harold Lloyd, the uniformly third-place contender among the three comedy legends of the silent film era. Essentially, Crash better embodies the awkward and infallible personhood of a human being. If the fact that Crash doesn’t wear a shirt in his would-be-snappy combination of clothes is any indication, he isn’t afraid of conducting himself in an undignified manner. Once an enemy slights Crash on the field, he dramatically commits to the role by spinning around and uttering his trademark, high-pitched “whoa!” like the fun uncle after being “shot” by their nieces and nephews with a toy gun. Whenever Crash is flattened, eaten, burned, or electrocuted, the humiliation of the death animations is far more lively and detailed than what the exalted Mario and Sonic would allow. Crash blowing himself to bits upon hitting a TNT barrel and seeing nothing but his shoes and eyeballs rain down from the wreckage always tickles me. The whacky, silly tone emanating from Crash Bandicoot’s protagonist and overall presentation will also remind players that Crash Bandicoot, unlike Mario and Sonic, is distinctly American. Santa Monica-based developer Naughty Dog most likely grew up with Warner Bros. iconic Looney Tunes properties and implemented their cartoonish hijinks into their creation to give it a Western flavor of childish lightheartedness. Also, Crash’s spin move where he flails his body like a cyclone is too similar to the idiosyncratic swirling vortex of another Australian animal of the Looney Tunes canon to be a coincidence.

Beyond the tonal influences and the strive to compete with the big boys representing other companies, Crash Bandicoot practically functions as a 3D adaptation of Donkey Kong Country. No, really, the similarities between Crash Bandicoot and Rare’s rendering of another one of Nintendo’s finest platformer series is so uncanny that I’m convinced that Sony sent an undercover spy to the Rare offices to gather information on the development of Donkey Kong 64’s beta testing. For starters, Crash gains extra lives by gathering a hundred of his favorite kinds of fruit, the fictional apple and tangerine hybrid “wumpa fruit” in this instance instead of bananas. Crash’s movement in the overworld map is strictly limited to the narrow trajectory paved for him after completing a level, and the entirety of Crash’s journey takes place across three separate islands. As Crash diverts further from the shores of N. Sanity Beach and the wild, unkempt jungles that surrounded it and the other areas situated on the starting island, the settings will progressively become more tailored towards resembling human civilization. Ancient ruins in the jungle catacombs are one thing, but the areas of the third island encompass the quasi-gothic architecture of Cortex’s laboratory castle at the same pace as when the first DKC gradually became industrialized. Crash even has a disturbingly buxom bandicoot girlfriend that could substitute for Pamela Anderson in a furry version of Baywatch. Unlike her DKC counterpart Candy Kong, she’s the typical damsel in distress instead of a supportive checkpoint aid. Crash Bandicoot is evidently more man than animal compared to Nintendo’s burly, tie-wearing ape, and would probably trade all the wumpa fruit in the world for another knock at Tawna’s boots.

If all of the contextual evidence here doesn’t blast Donkey Kong Country in your face like stepping on a rake, then you obviously have never even glanced at the series from a distance much less played it. Rare probably had to scrap the production of Donkey Kong 64 upon seeing Crash Bandicoot and were forced to reshape it as the collectathon 3D platformer that we all know and harbor mixed feelings towards. Besides Crash existing as another animal outside of the primate family, the game offers plenty of admirably distinctive attributes that keep Nintendo from imposing on the rightful grounds of suing Sony’s asses off. Health in Donkey Kong Country was displayed abstractly using either Donkey Kong or Diddy Kong as a meat shield depending on who was stationed in front, losing the line leader Kong as a penalty for taking damage until the player came across a barrel with the grazed Kong freshly intact. Crash doesn’t tag team with a buddy that shares an equal precedence in terms of gameplay, but a series secondary character still shows up to block the barrage of blows from enemies. When Crash cracks open a crate with the image of a mystical, yet strangely friendly-looking mask on it, the crude illustration comes to life and bursts out of its confinement to levitate above Crash’s shoulder. Aku-Aku, the trust-worthy witch doctor mask, will not only save Crash’s bacon if he mistakenly brushes up too close to an enemy without executing the proper offensive maneuvers but breaking open other crates with Aku-Aku still hovering overhead will stack the number of defensive capabilities. By the third chain of Aku-Aku collecting, Crash will wear Aku-Aku on his face and storm the level with a hyperdrive state of invulnerability for around twenty seconds. Aku-Aku’s implementation is admittedly a variation on a health system that DKC already established, but the gratification of earning the invincibility streak as a reward for skillfully dodging obstacles is something that DKC never provided. Ultimately, other instances of Crash Bandicoot’s innovation on its influences lie in its design in the third dimension. With this polygonal advancement, branching paths seen in “N. Sanity Beach” and “Cortex Power” are visibly defined and are more lucidly chosen by the player as opposed to Sonic’s wonky rollercoaster levels. There’s a reason why Crash sprinting away from a boulder in an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark in “Boulder Dash” is the most indelible image associated with the series, for the perspective of the action running towards the screen as Crash anticipates where to jump and evade at the first reflex, is truly a milestone for the 3D platformer genre.

Another familiar reminder of DKC conjured up in Crash Bandicoot is the brutally swift and consistent difficulty curve. Throughout the game, the player will be wishing for the loud whistle blow of a referee to call in their favor for the same fatal, recurring errors that befall anyone who has played a DKC game. However, all the mismatched mistakes suffered in DKC occur even more frequently in Crash Bandicoot because of the injection of the third dimension into the gameplay. I’d be dead if I decided to make a drinking game revolving around how many times one of Crash’s jumps reverted him off to the side of a platform because of that extra spatial dimension. Euclidean range is not your friend in Crash Bandicoot, but the player is forced to work around it and press their luck because the levels seen from Crash’s side view are more commonplace than proper 3D levels where the camera is pointed at his backside. It doesn’t help matters that Crash seems to execute his jumps stiffly because of the controls, feeling as if his bones are brittle on top of lacking a sense of confidence in his platforming abilities. Which level in the game draws out the most fury and contempt from players? Is it the lack of friction in the rainy tower ascent of the aptly named “Slippery Climb?” Perhaps the endurance test of Sunset Vista, or the array of scorchingly hot pipes in “Heavy Machinery?” For my money, it’s the rickety, broken bridge of “The High Road” that tested my patience the most with the exacting precision found in the game. But really, the worst aspect of continual death in Crash Bandicoot is that the game’s method of accommodating it is equally persnickety. The only way to save the game and plant a firm checkpoint on one’s progress is to complete a minigame unlocked by collecting three tokens with a character’s face on them found in each level. The issue with this stipulation is that it isn't guaranteed that the player will succeed in getting to the end of these sections, especially since a narrow bar of steel boxes suspended in the air is the only ground Crash has to walk upon. If the player fails to meet this standard, exhausting every life will drop them all the way back to the beginning of the game. Making the player earn what should be a requisite feature through a challenge outside of the primary objective isn’t any less cruel than simply not offering any continues in the first place.

Again, the DKC connections grow starker regarding Crash Bandicoot’s boss battles. If there is any aspect to the first DKC game that is brazenly half-assed, it’s a collective of tepid and uninspired boss battles that should’ve served as mighty climaxes to their slew of levels preceding them. Conquering Crash Bandicoot’s baddies proves to be just as effortless, but I’d be hard-pressed to label them as uninspired. Occasionally situated between the platforming levels on the map are the boss encounters to alternate the pace of gameplay. Like all of Bugs Bunny’s opponents in his disproportionate battle of wits, Crash’s enemies are an eclectic batch of animals with distinguished personalities. There’s the portly tribesman Papu Papu, the vain, steroid-freak Koala Kong, Tommy Gun-toting, Al Capone wannabe Pinstripe Potoroo, and the straight jacket-detained Ripper Roo who is as insane in the membrane as B-Real after twenty hits from the bong. Of course, the personality of all these foes stems solely from their designs, as they never utter a word and will take maybe a minute to overcome. The scientific duo of Dr. Cortex and his assistant N. Brio does not pose much of a threat either, not even when N. Brio drinks a chemical concoction that turns him into The Hulk as a last-ditch effort to crush Crash. The bosses in Crash Bandicoot are at least memorable and varied unlike those from the first DKC game, but that bar is sunk to the fucking sea level.

In the extensive laundry list of comparisons to DKC, Crash Bandicoot also features a few secrets hidden under its sleeves that will unlock the full extent of its content. However, the way in which Crash Bandicoot conducts the methods of uncovering all of its extraneous rewards is entirely its own. I’m sure the player will come across a screen after completing a level that sees Crash being reprimanded for missing a number of boxes, pummeling him with the literal weight of his failures to the point of total humiliation. A supplementary completionist task that Crash Bandicoot presents is breaking every single crate in every level, rewarding Crash with a white gem instead of punishing him with a throttling. Diligently searching every hidden corner of a level is a trying escapade in of itself. Furthermore, a disheartening caveat to some of these completionist tasks is that Crash must destroy every crate and trek to the end of the level without dying. Not depleting at least five lives between the checkpoints in the later levels is hard enough. If the player manages to master Crash Bandicoot to its acme point, the player can engage with the vestibule before fighting Cortex called “The Great Hall.” Here, the fruits (or gems) of Crash’s meticulous labor will serve as platforms that will lead him to the true ending where Crash accomplishes his mission of saving Tawna as well as defeating Cortex, and Tawna shows her gratitude by grabbing up her half-pint boyfriend and planting a passionate smooch on his cheek. Unfortunately, the true ending does not reveal an additional phase to Cortex’s pitiful fight. Considering the herculean efforts needed to unlock something so miniscule, I’d rather save myself the trouble by telling Crash to forget about her and promise him that there are more fish in the sea.

Essentially, Crash Bandicoot is exactly what everyone’s preconceived expectations were for the platformer genre going forward into the third dimension. Crash Bandicoot technically doesn’t predate Super Mario 64 in terms of its international release, but Crash Bandicoot was obviously in development before Nintendo made the golden template for the 3D platformer generation. A loyal and literal translation of the 2D platformer seen in Crash Bandicoot still proves to be exhilarating, with moments of pure platforming brilliance intermingled in that will win over any Nintendo fanboy. However, what Nintendo foresaw for Super Mario 64 that Naughty Dog didn’t was the glaringly rudimentary buffs and scratches involved with the shift of a 2D genre, especially as early as the first year of the Playstation’s lifespan. This is why scrapping the linearity of a traditional 2D Mario game in favor of the open-level design newly granted to the plumber via 3D advancements proved to be far more accommodating for the dimension. Crash Bandicoot, an already grueling and difficult game, is pushed to the limits of sadistic injustice with how many deaths are due to the developer’s inexperience and naivete instead of the player’s genuine platforming skill. Still, one can’t help but be charmed by this goofy Frankenstein creation story filled to the brim with energy and character. With all its faults, Crash Bandicoot is still one of the more interesting of Mario’s (and Donkey Kong in this case) many disciples.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Crash bandicoot e o primeiro da trilogia classica e certamente um dos melhores ja que ele parece ser unico em muitos aspectos, algo que eu amo nesse jogo são as fases pois elas começam faceis e quanto mais você avança nelas mais dificil vai ficando e faz com que voce tenha que jogar na cautela para não morrer, para mim as fases mais memoraveis e a fase inicial e a fase aonde esta tudo escuro e você precisa pegar a mascara do akuaku para iluminar o caminho, e falando em fases vamos falar dos chefes do jogo que são ate que muito bons já que no inicio parece que todos vao ser extremamente iguais porem cada chefe e unico e deixa bem caracteristico cada batalha contra eles, tem chefe aonde voce precisa ativar caixas TNT no tempo certo para elas atingirem o chefe e outros chefes aonde voce espera o time para lançar pedras em sua direção enquanto desvia das TNTs e o melhor e que em cada jogo os chefes vão melhorando então se você gostou das batalhas desse primeiro jogo então certamente vai gostar das proximas batalhas que iram vir nos jogos futuros, agora vamos falar das musicas que são explendidas serio mesmo as musicas são gostosinhas de ouvir fazendo você curti e relaxar dependendo da musica que esta tocando, algo que eu gosto das musicas de crash e que elas passam uma vibe praiana e por fim vamos falar do possivel unico problema de crash na minha opnião que e a questão do salvamento do jogo que so pode ser obtido se voce acessou os estagios especiais e obvio que na grande maioria da pra acessar tranquilamente porem tem como voce perder o estagio e simplismente ficar sem salvar o jogo e isso pode ser prejudicial ou não dependendo do ponto de vista mas para mim não e um grande problema

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