Gaming in the 90s was awesome, especially if like me, you did most of your growing up in that decade. It was a time when the industry was still relatively young and in a massive growth phase. This was, of course, long before the idea of a “game industry” was in anyone’s head. Back in those good ol’ days, we just said “game companies.” After all, they did just make games way back when. And those games were serious business; they still are, but it’s a lot less innocent fun. Look, here’s the deal: Back then, we had game characters. And as far as I’m concerned, we have game characters now. But the big difference is that back then, even our game characters had game characters, with the whole industry building some big-deal universe that can be replicated over and over with interminable sequels. You might say, “Well, Jacob, that sure sounds like it should be a pretty profitable industry.” And I’d agree.
The first time I saw Crash Bandicoot in action is a vivid memory. It was the mid-90s, and the PlayStation was still something of an upstart. A buddy had gotten the console and a pristine copy of the first Crash Bandicoot not long after their release. I was over at his place, and we were crowded around a tiny TV in a bygone era, back when Sony itself was redefining what gaming could be, with the brilliant colors and malleable mascots populating the screen. I was hooked. We spent a whole weekend there in his living room, taking turns through the original Crash Bandicoot, trying to conquer its levels and beat whatever our previous bests were.
An Icon Ascends
The transformation of Crash Bandicoot from basic idea to beloved video game hero is an enthralling tale. Conceived by the inventive developers at Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, the very first Crash Bandicoot game would be a critical test for Sony in trying to establish the PlayStation as not just another also-ran in the highly competitive gaming market. At that time, the character of Mario was already serving with distinction as the rival to the player’s character in the classic games produced by the developers at Sega.
The men behind Naughty Dog, Andy Gavin, and Jason Rubin, conjured up a game that could really show what the 3D function of the PlayStation could do. They wanted a game that was unique, which offered an experience to the player like no other game had before. Crash Bandicoot was to be this game. Andy and Jason envisioned a character that was zany and appealing, yet with an easily recognized design. Crash stands out with his zany whirligig of red hair and above a madly grinning face, and whatever else may be said about him, it may be said that he most certainly does NOT look like Indiana Jones.
The game was both a throwback and a emblematic leap forward. It was a well-loved gameplay style wedded to a brand new technology. The character was born of the same kind of animation that brought Donkey Kong to life in the brilliant Donkey Kong Country on the Super NES in the very immediate pre-Polygonal era. Crash Bandicoot emerged at just the right moment, I think, in the history of video games. He offered familiar play to the Donkey Kong Country audience, but the action took place in the kind of 3D space that Super Mario 64′s “camera” allowed. His snazziness was new, as it was for all the aforementioned games.
It is with fondness that I recall my time playing Crash Bandicoot, specifically the level “The High Road.” It drives me crazy! The higher levels become excessively hard; the bridges get narrower, the jumps get longer and more evasive, and perfection comes at no cost to time—a horror when the concept of “lives” doesn’t exist in this universe. And yet, for some reason, achieving “all boxes” on this level or finally clearing it after being stuck ever so slightly past the halfway point for many seasons…never ceasing to deepen the wrinkling memory folds now gathering here in the valley of the past…it’s nothing short of exhilarating!
How the “Series” Has Evolved
The series of Crash Bandicoot games grew in fame right alongside the character himself. Naughty Dog didn’t stop with one; oh, no, they rode that Crash wave, making immediate sequels that actually managed to top the original speedrunning-smorgasbord with new content and even more unforgettable level design. After the original Crash Bandicoot game debuted in 1996, Naughty Dog made two more games that are considered some of the best top-down platformer titles in gaming.
Cortex Strikes Back improved upon the first Crash Bandicoot in myriad ways. For the first game, as great as it was, the scope of it was somewhat limited, as was its vision. But as the series went on, its hub world (much like the hub worlds of many Mario games) became much larger and much more open. And this wasn’t just for show — the game’s levels, as that world still operated within invisible walls. The new abilities for Crash, like the slide and the body slam, made the gameplay even more varied and dynamic. They not only allowed the protagonist to do more stuff, but they also did something for the level design.
The first time I played through Cortex Strikes Back, one memory was more fun and crazy than any other. I loved the polar bear moments in Crash Bandicoot 2. Racing atop a bear through frosty vistas, you guide Crash in almost an out-of-body experience. Each of these “back the main character into a corner” moments throughout the game is designed to elicit from the player a sense of being in Crash’s loony world.
Crash Bandicoot: Warped upped the ante by making time travel its central theme and providing an even greater variety of levels and settings. Ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, futuristic cities, underwater ruins. And not only did they stick Crash in a plane for one memorable, die-that-oh-so-many-times level, furthermore he could be found riding various animals (a tiger, a double-hump camel, a baby dinosaur), and (this time) being in command of a motorcycle. Vehicle levels added an additional type of high-speed thrill to the experience.
One other wonderful feature of Warped was what they referred to as time trials. This was something else again that worked to make the player want to go back in and plot out the most perfect path through a level in order to bring the already short time down to an even shorter one. Naturally, this was something that I didn’t usually do the first time through a game. But “Warped” was well designed, and one could see the makings of a much-better-rounded and overall more fun-filled game the second, third, or fourth time around!
The Effects on PlayStation and in the Future
The triumph of Crash Bandicoot resonated strongly with the PlayStation label and assisted in setting it up as a heavyweight in the gaming industry. The very character of Crash started to become a figurehead for PlayStation; it was almost as if he was the brand’s mascot. The poor animal was certainly as close as anyone could get to being a lovable icon for the then-fledgling Sony PlayStation, with his edgy attitude and cutely rendered 3D image. Beyond that, what makes the whole Crash thing so impressive, from our vantage point today, is that his success with the game-playing public (in the Bandicoot trilogy or otherwise) happened despite that system not really having a 3D analog stick on it.
Crash Bandicoot was more than just a beloved game from my childhood. The time and effort I invested in it resulted in an overwhelming return of satisfaction and joy because I engaged with it on a level far beyond just playing for fun. But what sparked my overall obsession with gaming was the pure fun and excitement that I got from playing this PlayStation classic. The memories attached to these games will forever be some of my fondest, for those were the uncomplicated times of my life when my love for gaming was at its purest and most intense.
The thing you have to remember, and one of the things many of us as PlayStation fans look back on with fondness, is the role Crash played in our world back then. I don’t think I’m overstating the case in any way when I say that PlayStation gamers took real pride in Crash. This was back when Crash really was Sony’s or our answer to Mario and Sonic. This was console gaming still very much in the era when the “mascots” of those rebelling against the 16-bit order seemed to make any real claim to our hearts or minds. They were just awesome, and there was an awesome rivalry between the three of them!
The effect of Crash Bandicoot stretched well past the PlayStation console. The successful franchise carved the way for a string of spinoffs and adaptations, notably the cherished Crash Team Racing. The 1999 release of CTR was, in effect, Naughty Dog’s homage to the kart-racing genre, pioneered by Super Mario Kart seven years prior on a rival console. CTR offered the same familiar-yet-fresh power-up-fueled racing experience. Naughty Dog had done its damned best to polish the campaign and gameplay to a Halloween mask sheen: good griffins! With its memorable characters and racetracks derived from the console trilogy, Crash Team Racing quickly took up the house next door to my Mario-favoring friends and me as a thrilling way to pass an afternoon in the Halifax garage.
Crash Bandicoot’s legacy also laid the groundwork for some of the most iconic franchises in PlayStation history. The far-reaching influence of this seemingly silly series is most obviously reflected in the emergence (or re-emergence, in some cases) of the 3D platformer genre it made famous in the late ’90s, particularly on Sony’s console. The impact of the Crash series can also be found in the visual design, mechanics, and character building of 3D platformers like Spyro the Dragon and Jak and Daxter and, more recently, in the engaging, over-the-top 3D action/puzzle hybrid Ape Escape.
The Renaissance and Remembrance
Following a lull, the Crash Bandicoot series seems to be undergoing a renaissance right now, with all the common and garden-variety enthusiasm of fans new and old. The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, which was released in 2017, but is again being re-released in 2018, is really just the first of a number of titles in the series that are all currently under development, with the remastered originals really demonstrating the power of their experience, faithfully recreating not just the original PlayStation classic gameplay model, but their gorgeous (if a little low-res on the PlayStation 4) graphics and art style with the considerable increases in both calculations-per-second performance and the quantity and sharpness of pixels that go into a 4K display.
Hearing about the N. Sane Trilogy really excited me, and I just couldn’t wait to get back into the adventures that had defined my younger years. Playing through all the levels in the remakes was a bit echoing to me. They felt at once entirely familiar, yet almost new, too, because of all the ways in which they’ve just been improved on. Familiar enough to stoke the same nostalgia I have for the first two games but with enough novelty in all the right places (e.g. improved visuals and controls).
The N. Sane Trilogy’s success opened the door for Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time to be launched in 2020. This fresh series addition carried on the narrative and broke new ground in gameplay. It brought in completely original game mechanics like the Quantum Masks, which took the in-game strategy to a whole new level, never seen before in the series and made the challenge even more fun. For any fan of the bygone days when Crash was a PlayStation 1 icon, essence and essential nostalgia were rife in this love-letter-from-Activision sequel. But the N. Sane Trilogy was also a vehicle for moving the series forward.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About time is a fresh and familiar experience. Activision has found a way to send gamers back in time, all the while yanking the franchise forward. Can a title doing double duty accomplish that incredible feat? Leaping into Crash Bandicoot 4, the beloved original PlayStation character seemed tailor-made for this moment: Whether he was jumping, spinning, or laughing maniacally, Crash had not changed a bit. But the game half platformer, half outright comedy had.
The return of Crash Bandicoot brought with it a renewed interest in classic platformers. The N. Sane Trilogy proved there was still a market for these types of games, and it became so much more satisfying once the sales number came in and showed that the public wasn’t just rallying for a social media cause. Crash 4 was even more successful due to its genuinely new and innovative take on the classic formula, and it also helped that it wasn’t as hard as past entries. I can’t really think of a classic Crash game that was easy, to be honest.
In conclusion, Crash Bandicoot’s long-standing legacy is what makes him such an appealing character. His lasting presence and the sequels that invariably bore his name have provided a considerable source of nostalgia for those who grew up playing video games in the ’90s. The Crash Bandicoot series harkened back to the simple days of gaming and seemingly was always at the forefront of technological progress and platform game design. Now, this generation of gamers that have grown up and likely have considerable disposable income have seen the original games remastered, providing current gamers and past gamers who’ve likely never played these titles a… seemingly new experience.
From his beginnings as a ’90s platforming mascot to his current modern gaming icon status, Crash Bandicoot remains a figure of almost talismanic significance for millions of players and industry-watchers the world over. Never fading from the chambers of gaming memory, the moments of the original trilogy command a downright reverence among the certain nostalgic demographic that grew up during the era of the PlayStation. Even during the seemingly fallow years between the conclusion of the original series and the franchise’s N. Sane Trilogy revival, the development of new Crash games has rarely proceeded without the watchful eyes of fans tracking and scrutinizing the series’ every potential move with the almost-cloying devotion of people who have but one franchise they can truly call their own.
To me, Crash Bandicoot is much more than a titular marsupial and a sequence of much-loved games. He represents an epoch in my life, and for many others who grew up alongside me in the ’90s, when gaming was a blisteringly hot new thing to do in making personal discoveries in play and adventures with friends. For one of the first times in my life, aside from maybe when my grandpa taught me to play checkers, I felt like I could celebrate each and every personal victory much more than I could in most sports I’d tried and maybe that’s just because the games were always there, in my hands or on a shelf, while sources of potential concussions always seemed to be nearby.
The Crash Bandicoot series stands for innovation, creativity, and fun. And no wonder, because it was the brainchild of developers Naughty Dog, who have a pretty good track record of supplying all three. The original trilogy has held up well over time because it’s based on a clear idea — a super-fast platformer with wacky characters — and because the games are just so well put-together. Seriously, when I tell people these are some of my all-time favorite games, they often raise an eyebrow, maybe even both. I may as well be telling them I’m a six-year-old with basic motor function.
Here’s to Crash Bandicoot, the favorite PlayStation showstopper, who has unfailingly served us players from years 1995 – 2007. And to the mascot’s introduction of his “Golden Era” during the ’90s. The C.B. audience communicates with mostly fond memories and exudes pure adoration for our protagonist. We remember a time and the kind of excitement he provided almost as if it was yesterday. I am too a part of his childhood audience that fondly remembers venturing out into asking my parents for PlayStation money.
