90s | Pop Culture | Video Games
20 Years Later, Here's 7 Things We Still Love About Crash Bandicoot
It's been a while since Crash first spun his way onto the scene back in 1996, but we still have great memories of running home after school, booting up our original PlayStations, and taking him through some amazing adventures (while often trying out some colorful new words we'd learned whenever we died).
The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is out on the PlayStation 4 this week, bringing back three amazing games starring our favorite marsupial for a new generation of gamers to experience for the first time. It's an exciting time for Crash fans, and here's a few things we love about this series.
1) Running from everything
Whether it's a giant boulder, an angry polar bear, or a stampeding triceratops, you pretty much always end up running away from something during a Crash Bandicoot game.
These levels are tough as nails but also thrilling. You only have a second or two to react to things showing up in your path to either outright kill you, or just slow you down and let the thing chasing you do the dirty work.
We may have gotten frustrated, but finally beating one of these levels was always SO satisfying.
2) Riding some cool vehicles
Crash and his sister Coco always seemed to find some of the coolest things to ride through the levels of each game. Sometimes it was a jet board.
Other times it was a motorcycle.
Jet skis were always fun.
And sometimes you even rode a live tiger!
3) Smashing boxes
Plenty of other platformers had you smashing things to get items (I mean, Mario practically invented it), but none of them leaned into it quite as hard as Crash Bandicoot.
Each level had dozens of boxes to smash that were filled with things like Wumpa Fruit (think Mario's coins), Aku-Aku Masks (he shields you from getting hurt), extra lives, or even explosives that would hurt you if you weren't careful!
Smashing these things wasn't just satisfying; it was necessary. You see, each level had a gem you could earn for destroying every box, and you needed all the gems to get the game's true ending!
Click to the next page for even more reasons Crash Bandicoot is still awesome!
4) The voices
Crash himself never talks (unless you count high-pitched yelps as conversation), but the other characters in his world had some pretty great voices (most of them done by one guy, Brendan O'Brien). Most notable is Clancy Brown, who voiced Crash's nemesis, Dr. Neo Cortex, in each game!
You might know him best as Captain Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption
Or, maybe you remember him as Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants.
5) The animations
To try to compete with mascots like Mario and Sonic, Naughty Dog had to give Crash a personality that people would remember. Nowhere does this come out more than in the bandicoot's animations.
Whether he's standing still...
Or dying...
...A lot
6) The music
Composer Josh Mancell created a recurring theme for the first Crash game that would not only go on to be remixed in the next few games, but will get completely stuck in your head VERY quickly.
The rest of the series' music is pretty solid too.
7) The commercials
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back had some of the funniest commercials that any game has ever received.
There were plenty of memorable commercials from when we were kids, but these definitely stuck out for their sheer weirdness. They even brought them back for the new collection!
We're super excited that Crash is back!