I don’t know anything about Crash Bandicoot. Well, that’s not true: this game had some great commercials. And yet, the one thing for certain from playing this game for half an hour is that Crash Bandicoot has not aged well at all.
You can say that all Playstation One-era games look dated by today’s standards, but that’s also not true: Darkstalkers 3 looks like the ink on its animated sprites had just dried yesterday, while Castlevania: Symphony of the Night looks fresh enough to be adapted into the latest teen dystopia movie (I call it: Dracula Teens: The New Class) .
Those games might have a competitive edge by belonging to an older genre, making it easier to be inducted into the hallowed “timeless” category, but Crash Bandicoot had a lot going for it as well: great animation and graphics, deft gameplay and controls. and a sensibility stemming its own self-awareness. This ain’t your daddy’s 2D side-scrolling jumper.
And yet, despite all this and its blast processing (maybe I’m getting the attitudes mixed up), Crash Bandicoot is the quintessential 90s video game, every last “extreme” part of it. This is a franchise of completely its time, and maker Naughty Dog was right to leave this franchise behind; it was the only way to move forward and develop their ground-breaking series about a guy who wears a T-shirt and jeans.
If abandoning its own mascot in its logo isn’t proof enough, just look at these graphics. Back when it came out, words like “state of the art” and “cutting edge” were likely used to describe Crash Bandicoot, but that’s all it was: indicative of its time. While this is by no means a way to harangue a great game, Crash Bandicoot still can’t be called awesome*.
While we’re awkwardly jumping over pits blocked by our protagonist’s own knees, the classic Super Mario World had us jumping across vast open worlds. While Crash weirdly appropriates the culture of its island world as a subtext you’re not sure you want to have explained for you, Street Fighter and Punch-Out had embraced international stereotypes to set up great fights (a phenomenon recently witnessed by the hype-himself, Connor McGregor)..
I want to really like Crash Bandicoot, I really do. But I missed its time, and its time was back in the 90s. Playing it now isn’t nostalgic or relevant, it just feels twenty years old.
* “Awesome” > “great” because we’re using 90s terminology here.
How far did I get in an hour: the Indiana Jones 5th level.
Would I play this again once this year is up: Yes, but it’s lower on my list.
Numbers of days so far in the Year of the Play-a-DayStation: 5
Play-a-Daystation 