Playing every PS1 game - Crash Bandicoot 1, 2, 3, Crash Bash, Crash Team Racing

After slogging through some serious tripe recently, it’s a nice change to play something that I already know is actually good. Crash Bandicoot was one of the four games that came with my PlayStation back in 1999 (along with the sublime V-Rally, the opaque Premier Manager 98, and the tepid WWF Warzone). I never owned either of the sequels, but borrowed them at various points over the years until I discovered ePSXe.

It was probably Crash Bandicoot wot did it for the idea that consoles needed an easily identifiable ‘face’ character a la Mario or Sonic in order to be marketed properly. There was a bit of a mad scramble, but the best that Sony managed to come up with were Lara Croft and Crash himself; the former ending up transcending the platform rather than truly representing it, and the latter was - despite a lot of cope - never really more than a Great Marsupial Hope than a serious contender for threatening the Mario/Sonic duopoly. As it turned out, as the medium and market matured, people realised that you didn’t really need a cartoon character with a catchy name in order to sell machines. The Xbox came along and might claim that they would put forward Master Chief from Halo, but really that was more or less the end of it. Of course, these days every console (barring, I suppose, whatever Nintendo happen to be doing in a given moment) is exactly the same in terms of games, markets and even hardware. Really makes you think.

Crash Bandicoot

For a game released in 1996, it’s crazy just how much the visuals blow its contemporaries out of the water. Examples of the sort of stuff we were getting in the year where the Spice Girls happened and Gazza scored that goal are Adidas Power Soccer and the yet-to-be-reviewed-but-definitely-unattractive Die Hard Trilogy (There was also Tomb Raider, but…). Apparently a working title for this game was “Sonic’s Ass” - when moving from a world of 2D side scrollers to fully three-dimensional environments, the question of the player’s perspective was still not fully answered; developers were a little wary of the fact that you were spending the whole game looking at the back of your avatar’s head. There’s a really interesting write-up of the whole dev cycle out there to eat up a lunch hour.

Take advantage of the geometry by simply jumping on the rope and running along it.

This is a great game. Every single thing about it is tightly put together and every edge has been polished. The developers will have known this game was going to bang long before it was complete. The elements of pre-existing successful platformer formulae are there - the core of the game is really Super Mario but with the perspective rotated to sit behind the moustachioed plumber, and from Sonic the Hedgehog you have the levels being designed in such a way that you are encouraged to try and cannonball through them. And cannonball through you very much can; it would still be a while before the developers jumped on this concept and actually implemented a time trial mode, though.

Some of the bonus stages require some digital dexterity (and a bit of planning).

It’s easy for a platforming game to get a bit samey and crank the difficulty up by just throwing more enemies at you, or trick you with the level design (the platforming elements of Tomb Raider rely heavily on trial and error in order to continue). Crash Bandicoot sidesteps this by mixing and matching the combinations of obstacles, enemies and traps to slowly jack things up, rather than throw minibosses and sudden swings in difficulty at you. A concept will be introduced in one level (for example, one level’s hook is being on a very long rope bridge and having to be highly precise with your jumps between knackered slats), and then built upon in a later level which is much the same, but this time uses your pre-existing knowledge of how the level will work to make things more complicated (e.g. now you have to bounce yourself over longer distances while being chased by an enemy).

The famous get-chased-by-a-boulder level, which was re-used thoughout the other games.

It means you can then get a bit zany. What if this time these rolling barrels of death occasionally bounce over you? What if this time you have to bounce over three flame torches rather than one? What if this time we hide an extra life token next to a box of TNT, meaning if you spin an enemy into it, the 1up blows away? What if this time the only way to cross a chasm at all is to time your bounces over boxes of TNT? What if this time the platforms are rotating in circles? The combinations go off into the distance.

Boss battles are whacky but not very hard.

The game itself is pretty easy; there are only two levels which can get quite tricky and that is only really due to their length and limited number of checkpoints. The real difficulty lies with smashing every box in a level (without losing any lives) to collect a ‘gem’, which depending on the level can actually get shatteringly hard. Clearing the boxes in some levels rewards you with a coloured gem, which will open up secret paths in older levels, in turn allowing you to collect more gems. Pinch them all and you - rather funnily - get to skip the final boss entirely and get a secret ending where Crash simply climbs astride a giant bird and quite literally flies off into the sunset.

Actually managed to 100% the game for the first time.

There’s not much negative to say about Crash Bandicoot. Maybe some of the bonus levels are just a bit too punishing? Collecting some of the gems becomes a real war of attrition in a game where there is no ‘restart level’ option, and instead you must quit the game and return to the level select screen to try again. That’s it though really.

Kept my attention for: A few days
Did I finish it?: Yes
Overall: 8/10

Crash Bandicoot 2

I might be wrong, but Crash 2 I feel gets held up the most often as the best of the three ‘original’ PS1 entries, before the series lost its way immensely on the PS2 and never recovered (a little more on this genre’s demise here; I played Crash 4 on PS4 a few years ago and it was pretty decent, though).

The game tries to go with a more sophisticated plot now, and a (rather boring) sidekick is introduced.

I’m not sure. Maybe in 1997, after putting the original game aside and then salivating for 6 months about the next instalment, playing Crash 2 might feel like a next level experience. Playing it immediately after completing Crash 1 feels at best like just more of the same (but somehow not quite as quirky). Aside from a few additions, it’s the same thing.

There were two boulder-chasing levels in the original. There must be at least four now.

The original was great, so ‘the same thing’ isn’t actually bad, just a bit disappointing. You can count the new additions on one hand, and they’re not that inspiring: some new moves (higher jump, sliding, and monkey-bar-swinging), ‘nitro’ boxes which explode when you touch them, and a few levels with a gimmick vehicle. The rest of the differences are changes to the formula.

After every few levels you have to sit through a bit of low-rent exposition.

The game moves to a ‘hub room level select’ system, which persisted through to Crash 3 and I thought was always a bit of a lazy cop-out. The 3D island-hopping approach a la Super Mario World of Crash 1 may have been a bit of a pain to get from one end to another, but at least it looked nice and provided the player with a visual means of conveying the game’s loose narrative (the game itself is more or less dialogue-free) - you wash up on a beach, and work your way back to the Big Bad’s castle to save the girl. In comparison, the hub room system is just a ‘choose your randomly-themed level’ operator.

You can now swing on monkey bars. It’s not exactly a shattering evolution.

More on the way the narrative works (or doesn’t). Crash 1 had no dialogue, short loading screens, and you quickly bipped between levels on the level select screen. The game was fast - this was the point! Crash 2 is constantly throwing cut-scenes at you where the characters engage in Saturday-morning-cartoon dull repartee (or at least, monodirectional repartee, as Crash never says a word) that you have to sit through before you can continue. When you choose a level you have to watch a schwoop as you get sucked into the time-orb-whatever, and then when the level does load, you have to watch Crash phase into view like he’s been beamed down from the Starship Enterprise. It all looks nice visually, but it slows things down too much. Crash 1 had none of this stuff and yet was still narratively coherent.

Crash now pulls a silly face by default. This became the standard for the rest of the series (aside from the cover art of the first PS2 game, interestingly).

This is all a bit negative for what is still a good game, but I can’t help but view Crash 2 in the context of what of Crash 1 it is missing. The music, which was great in the first game, is dull and forgettable in the second. Crash 1’s gem collecting system was punishingly hard, but at least was clear - you smash every box on the level. In Crash 2 the splitting level paths and frequent requirement to backtrack to break boxes that are only made corporeal later on just makes it all too vexing.

There are a load more humourous contextual death animations, such as in this case where you get stung by a bee (and die).

There isn’t enough that’s different, and - aside from ‘nitro’ boxes, which are a fun addition - the things that are different either instil indifference or worse. It’s a mission pack for Crash 1, in effect. Or an expansion, or DLC, or whatever it gets called next when extra levels are added for a base game.

Kept my attention for: A few days
Did I finish it?: Yes
Overall: 6/10 if you’ve played Crash 1 otherwise 7/10

Crash Bandicoot 3

And if Crash 2 was a mission pack for Crash 1, then Crash 3 certainly isn’t. I have no way of knowing, but it feels a bit like the developers may have also felt that the sequel was a bit ‘safe’, and so took a ‘bollocks to it’ approach for the third entry and just started throwing in whatever whacky ideas came to mind. Of course, by this point, Crash Bandicoot was reaching Lara Croft levels of boundary-breaking in terms of garnering recognition beyond greasy haired shut-in videogame enthusiasts, so they had a bit of licence to go for it.

Arabian themed levels with magic carpets and turbanned enemies swishing scimitars. More stuff you simply wouldn’t get away with in this century.

Crash 3 as it happens tends to come in for criticism for being maybe the weakest of the three. I would guess this comes from the same people who think 2 is the superior game. The ‘big issue’ apparently is that there are too many ‘gimmick’ levels that don’t revolve around the tried and true box smashing formula. There is a point to be made about this - there are levels where you ride a motorbike, fly a plane, ride a speedboat, swim in scuba gear and maybe one or two others, and maybe they overcooked it a bit, but I think on the whole it’s less boring than Crash 2’s repetition.

The fruit bazooka really does ruin it a bit.

The ‘hub’ level select system remains, but isn’t as annoying. The soundtrack is better. The special moves are a bit more fun (who can say no to a game-breaking apple bazooka?). The sense of humour is back. I don’t know what people are complaining about. Actually I lie, I do - one of the new mechanics is the time trial mode, which has you blitzing through levels in order to pick up special tokens for barrelling through it without breaking stride. Getting the award for breaking the time trial records can be hard, and especially tedious to achieve on some of the gimmick levels, so my guess is that a lot of the hate comes from folk who obsess over 100% platinum trophy toss, which I’ve never cared about.

One of the gimmick levels. Also one of the weaker levels.

The time trials work because once again you are able to Sonic your way through the levels without breaking your sprint again, which wasn’t always possible in Crash 2, where too many obstacles had you sit around for a while until a trap sequence resets. It feels like a more deliberate effort in identifying things that were fun about the original game which got missed in the second. I think the game is great, but it loses a mark for still not being really that evolutionary.

Kept my attention for: A few days
Did I finish it?: Yes
Overall: 7/10

Crash Bash

Crash Bash is a party game, and given that I am doing this in meek solitude, I need to use my imagination a bit in order to gauge how the game might work if played in a ‘party’ environment. Truth be told, the closest I’ve come to playing a party game in an appropriate social setting would have been devising a Mario Kart 64 drinking game while half cut with some pals at university digs. It actually worked surprisingly well.

Hub level select again. Why do they persist?

You could probably turn Crash Bash into a drinking game, but it’s actually a decent enough single-player game in its own right (in which case I’d avoid the drinking bit). It being a party game, the idea is to load the game up and get into it without much marsupial-tinged exposition. There are about half a dozen different ‘games’, which all last a minute or two and then get mixed up a bit in repeated editions as you continue.

The square painting game was probably my favourite back in the day.

I played this a bit in my yoot with a mate and actually had a lot of laughs with it. It doesn’t really come off now, but I’m very much removed from both the target market and target playing context. If you take the Crash theming out, then the bones that remain still constitute a serviceable party game, with creative concepts for minigames and enough variety to get at least a few hours of mileage out of it.

This minigame has you tossing boxes of TNT at your competitors until you win.

If I was transported back to my university hovel again though I’d probably choose Bishi Bashi Special.

Kept my attention for: An hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 6/10

Crash Team Racing

When the topic of kart racing games comes up - or more specifically, when people talk about Mario Kart, I’ve always confidently (but also half-jokingly) claimed that the real kart racing GOAT is actually Crash Team Racing. The truth is that 90% of my experience with it in reality is actually from playing and replaying a demo of the game - featuring one track - over and over back in 1999 or so. I gave it a proper go years later on an emulator.

To this day it is impossible to create a kart racing game without it borrowing half the tracks from Mario Kart.

I was right, though. I still think this is the best kart racer I’ve played. There are mountains of tracks, the AI is competent (though maybe could be a bit more challenging), and the weapons are suitably flashy and ridiculous. There are layers to it. A normie player could get the job done just driving around the tracks and hitting the speed boosts and have a fine time, but the player is also invited to manipulate bunny-hopping over undulations in the track to get short speed boosts. Experts will also want to try timing powerslides just right in order to swing around corners and obtain another boost. It takes a bit of practice but is great when pulled off.

Tawna from Crash 1? Strangely her only appearance since the first game is waving an umbrella round in a spin-off.

Naughty Dog seemed to utterly obsess over ‘hub room’ gameplay and it makes yet another return in CTR in the shape of something more like a hub island, where you scoot around to choose your next level. I guess it is a bit more engaging than navigating simple menus, but it’s notable by its presence all the same. It transposes a few ideas from the mainline Crash games as well, such as gems and ‘relics’ (time trials). I didn’t work out the gem bit, but the time trails are self-explanatory, bringing over the concept of smashing numbered boxes in order to stop the clock from Crash 3. Works really well actually.

This is a racing game with boss fights.

CTR actually arrived a year before Crash Bash, but those were the last Crash games to appear on the PlayStation before the series segwayed off into an almost 20-year long period of irrelevance.

Kept my attention for: A day or so
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 7/10