The Return of Crash Bandicoot Is Great for the PlayStation Brand

Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis. Super Mario on the SNES. Crash Bandicoot on the Sony PlayStation. All of these games (and consoles) are the ones that meant the most to me growing up in my love for gaming. Sonic started it all, Mario (and Donkey Kong too honestly) came in right after Sonic and lived alongside him and the Genesis. Then after a few years Crash Bandicoot came in with the PlayStation. All great platform games, all a lot of fun, and all game changers (hehe) to me growing up. But something changed in the last few years since I first played all of those guys: Sonic went up and down, leaving his own hardware in 2001 when the Dream ended for Sega. He went on to play on other consoles, including Nintendo and Sony ones. His games were either hit or miss (Hit: Sonic Colors, Generations, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Sonic CD. Miss: Sonic 06 shudder, Sonic Boom shudder more, Sonic Unleashed, etc.). He has hope in the upcoming Mania game but he has been all over the place.Mario has been consistently a great game, no matter the console, year, anything. Mario even is on smartphones now! He’s on the Apple devices and soon will join the Android rat race. He’s the top selling non smartphone game series for all time for a reason; Nintendo always does him justice. I mean really, what bad Mario game is there? Does one even exist? I don’t think so, not really. So that covers them to a small extent and the things they’ve been up to since the 90s. But what about Crash? Well he had an interesting history. He had an incredible strong start for Sony (back then he was a PlayStation exclusive), standing up to the likes of Sonic and Mario, giving Sony a strong mascot for the console. Crash 1 to 3 were massive hits for developer Naughty Dog and brought in millions of sales (and naturally that cash money) for everybody involved. That continued with Crash Team Racing, the last game Naughty Dog was behind, and a rival to Mario Kart. (It’s quite a fun game too!).

Things went on fairly with a party game, Crash Bash, and then it just….got worse. Crash started appearing on other consoles, so he wasn’t a Sony exclusive anymore. He started appearing in games that used monsters and it just got silly. Granted Crash Twinsanity was incredible, a true gem of the Crash series, but outside of that and the original PSOne games (and the GameBoy games) he just wasn’t him anymore. Then he wasn’t anything anymore. 2008 was the last year to have a Crash game until he came back in 2016 in Skylanders and in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4 (in Uncharted 4 he appeared twice in the main game, in an in game event, and it was so awesome. Loved seeing Crash back with Naughty Dog even for only a small part). It was great to see Crash return, in both games, because it had been way too long! Sonic and Mario never stopped appearing on varying consoles and on smartphone but Crash just died, and it was sad.

But his rebirth didn’t stop with his appearances in Skylanders and Uncharted 4. Even those appearances would have been good enough, something is better than nothing and we hadn’t seen Crash in so long! But it gets even better: Activision made it clear that in 2017 Crash would be appearing again in a huge way “first” on PlayStation 4. He’ll be in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, which is a HD remaster of the first 3 games, Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Can you say hype!? Those are the best 3 Crash games sans Twinsanity and although we’d all love to see CTR get a rebirth on PS4 this is incredible! And if you’ve seen the gameplay trailers or screenshots you can tell that not only does the game have the spirit of the originals but it also looks like a brand new PS4 game. That’s the key: keep it as similar in tone and feel to the original trilogy as possible while making it glow on the new hardware. And it really looks like that’s going to be the case here.

So what’s next for the orange marsupial? We don’t know, and do we need to know right now? No, we don’t. I mean we got a Crash level in Skylanders. At least a piece of Crash’s return not only had him back at Naughty Dog but is tied exclusively to the PS4 since Uncharted has always been a console exclusive. And then we get the massive remaster. We could get nothing for another near decade and I’d personally be content, because it seems that everything Crash has been a part of in his rebirth has been great, well received and exciting. I’d take that over him being in terrible or unenjoyable games. Looking at you Sonic 06 and Sonic Boom!! Crash, like his one time rivals Sonic and Mario, is back and he appears to be back for good, and that’s a great thing for gamers of the 90s. Or anybody! More Crash is a great thing, we need platform games to gain some steam, and a gaming icon bringing it back in this incredible remaster is something the gaming world needs to see and have!