I was disgusted today to see that the remaster no one asked for, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, had sold out of pre-orders at some stores. As someone who played a lot of video games in the late 90’s, I can tell you that these three games are shit. Outside of Japan, there were precisely 20 days when Crash Bandicoot was relevant as a fun, 3D platforming game. But then Super Mario 64 came out and shat all over not just the original Crash Bandicoot but all future Crash Bandicoot games.If you’ve never played the original trilogy, consider yourself lucky. The titular hero Crash meanders down extremely narrow corridors collecting fruit by smashing open crates. Sometimes a bottomless pit might be in the way. It’s as entertaining as it sounds. Occasionally the game would turn into a 2D platformer by keeping the camera perspective constant by turning Crash 90°. These sections were the highlight because there were the only ones where you felt you had any real control over Crash’s jumping. And that’s the core of the game’s problem; the jumping never felt good, it was extremely difficult to change Crash’s trajectory once you’d left the ground. For a game where 50% of the gameplay is jumping, this is a critical error of design. One that in 3 games over three years, was never rectified.
To be fair, Crash Bandicoot 3 was a decent game because they threw in a lot more variety in the levels and adopted a hub world layout. The variety came in the form of motorbike levels, jetski levels and my favourite; riding a cute baby tiger along the Great Wall of China. This variety hid the appalling and boring level design and the hub layout meant you could avoid the disgracefully disgusting scuba diving levels.
I started writing this last night but the thought of the scuba diving levels made me nauseous so I went to sleep, only to be wracked by nightmares or Crash Bandicoot in a scuba suit. I think at the time it was some weird reference to a sexy Lara Croft render in scuba gear.
Anyway what was I getting to? Oh yeah, idiots with bad taste. I took to social media to gently inform people that these games are complete rubbish. You can follow that link but I’ll screencap it here.
We seem to have entered some sort of twilight zone where mere criticism (as shallow and blunt as my criticism was) is interpreted as some sort of authoritarian action against people’s ability to waste their time. I’m labeled the Fun Dictator, The Fun Police and it was suggested that I wasn’t letting people enjoy things or that I found it unfair. Also Jake accused me of sour grapes. I’m not stopping anyone from desperately trying to relive a time when they were too young to know better. I’m not barricading game stores to prevent people wasting their scarce government handouts on frustrating games. I’m merely letting people know that they have appalling taste. I might have to explore this elsewhere but people don’t seem to be able to disagree anymore, even over something as simple as tastes in games, instead critics are dismissed as oppressors.
The point stands though. People are only interested in the N.Sane trilogy remaster, because they’re between the ages of 25-30 and want to relive their carefree days as a kid. That’s fine, but anyone who claims that these games are still fun, or had any influence on the development of 3D platformers, other than illustrating what not to do, is deluding themselves. The original Crash trilogy only serves as a curio to show that even Naughty Dog, an acclaimed game studio of the highest pedigree, can have a few rough and raw games in their catalogue that they no doubt learned from. Naughty Dog’s executives made the best decision of their lives when they shed Crash and his baggage to develop new intellectual property. This decision set them on the path to their place of respect among game studios.
The reviews are coming in now and Crash is getting the same middling scores now that it got all those yearsago. I recommend a quick read of those. First they demonstrate how far professional game journalism has come and secondly, the Wired author correctly identifies that limited three dimension movement would’ve been a novelty in the 90s, which is pretty much exactly what the ancient Gamespot and IGN reviews say.
Now I’m going to slog my way through the broken and archaic mechanics of Pokémon Red to relive 1999.
Pietriots 
I noticed that, in the days leading up the announcement trailer for this, so many people on /v/ were hyping up a PlayStation exclusive crash.
In hindsight, this was obviously viral marketing as these same people completely vanished once the game was actually announced and no one actually cares. Now they’re doing the same thing with Ape Escape.
But the whole thing led me to buying the original Crash on PSN. And let me tell you… I was just as appalled as you were. THIS was a PlayStation classic?
I had just finished playing DKC2 some time before that, and the differences in quality were downright staggering. Crash is genuinely the worst of both worlds. It’s not an innovative 3D platformer that blazed the way forward for the genre, and it’s not a top notch 2D game from one of the greatest teams in the industry.
No, it was just a lazy half step. I’ve said this about Naughty Dog before, but anyone who feels these developers are on par with classic Rare, Nintendo, or even developers like Square or Konami are downright ignorant of what’s actually out there.
I would much rather play DKC2 again then buy Crash 2 or 3.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yep. I described the sidescrolling section as a “highlight” in this blog but that’s only compared to the rest of the game.
LikeLike
I recall that the 2D sections take up most of the game. They are ‘better’ but only because the pseudo 3D sections are so broken.
LikeLike
Please play something other than nintendo, thanks!
LikeLiked by 1 person
“turning Crash 90° degrees”
90 degrees degrees?
LikeLike
Lol good pickup. I don’t think I’ve written about geometry since high school.
LikeLike
You would be miserable too if you made the effort to go through the Crash games. Believe me, I tried to as well and they are absolute shit.
LikeLike
No
LikeLike
Oh you guys are so negative. Probably you’re all hate PlayStation. I don’t understand. Thats all your ideas. If you don’t like C.B. games don’t play. Why are you using that bad words like ‘Shit’
If you don’t like, Try to saying like that. I don’t love Crash Bandicoot Because Crash have a jumping problems.
So when you used that words you think you cool or something like that?
Because to me this is really ridiculous.
‘If you’ve never played the original trilogy, consider yourself lucky.’ What kind of sentence is this?!
Where do you know, When play Crash maybe I like or I don’t like.
Anyway I just want to say When you talking about something, try to use more normal words. Because it is really rude.
Thank you for your opinion anyway. I try to looking crash in a different (negative) way.
LikeLike
I’m not going to take style advice from someone clearly not fluent in English, thanks.
LikeLike
You fucking destroyed my brain cells with how shit this was, thanks. You even ended it off talking about how “far games journalism came. LOL. Bland level design? You are probably kidding, but holy shit. Hard to control? Maybe if this was with mario levels, but the controls and level design fit around each other. And yea. crash is influential, thats why his games were always so popular. The only reason you wrote this is because you wanted to suck mario off.
LikeLike
I would be surprised if Roland could say the same about the Spyro Trilogy, but Crash Bandicoot?
I remember having fun w/ a rented copy as a small child, but so far the Trilogy has left me EXTREMELY disappointed.
About to beat Crash 1, and there is very little good to say about the title.
The camera perspectives change so often that you almost have to relearn your movement speed and jump distances every single level, hazard’s telegraphing can be very hard to notice, the level designs feel like so much filler, and Crash’s hitbox feels simultaneously too big and too small at the same time (constantly missing platforms, yet they fall along with you; being hurt by enemies for being too close, yet not being able to spin kill them as they are turning around; death animation showing that you are a fair distance away from a repeated hazard, yet still dying).
Some games are intentionally hard and well designed: Celeste, Devil May Cry 3, and Armored Core.
Others are hard because they are poorly designed: Crash Bandicoot, or at least the first one; and Devil May Cry 1, dear god that camera; and Final Fantasy 3, the amount of grind they expect you to do in that game…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gotta be honest, the only thing I agree with is crash’s hitbox being weird at times, but that’s only in the n sane trilogy.
LikeLike
I have a lot more time for Spyro, a much better trilogy more deserving of it’s remaster.
LikeLike