Crash Bandicoot was for a long time the mascot for the PlayStation, and he was up there with Sonic and Mario. The developers who created him are Naughty Dog also the guys who make the excellent Uncharted and Last of Us series so it’s annoying to know that his downfall is simply because of who owns his copyright.
If Crash was still with Naughty Dog who created him, he’d surely still be giving the plumber a run for his money. Unfortunately Crash was created by Naughty Dog, but they didn’t fund the game and although Sony paid for him to be an exclusive for his first five games, they couldn’t keep him forever.
The crash for Crash came as soon as he left Naughty Dog Productions loving arms, although his demise was a slow and drawn out process. Each of his first three platforming games on the PSOne was a good game, and they got better with every sequel with Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped being a highlight in the PSOne platformer catalogue.
Then both Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash (though not developed by Naughty Dog) gave Mario Kart and Mario Party a run for their money. His return to the platforming world saw him head over to the GameCube and Xbox as well as the PS2, but the game wasn’t as good as any of his PSOne games and the load times are legendarily long.
Things stayed ok for a while with both Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Tag Team Racing being acceptable kart racers, but neither being as good as the original Crash Team Racing.
On the platforming front his games were likewise ok, with the best effort being Crash Twinsanity before the series just lost its momentum with Crash of the Titans and 2008’s Crash Mind Over Mutant. The games weren’t terrible, but just a big fat plate of meh.
There were also his Game Boy Advance adventures and strangely it was at this time that he started having direct cross overs with Spyro the Dragon. This made sense in that Spyro and Crash were the faces of PSOne and Sony platforming, but for these cross overs to happen on the Game Boy Advance felt weirdly out of place.
Crash did have great early success, still as a kart racer in the early days of the iPhone, but this was a bright moment in what was years of darkness for the franchise. It was crazy that Crash didn’t even manage to land a spot in the PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale fighting game.
Eventually Crash did return for a remake of his original trilogy on modern platforms. This was well received and led to a remake of Crash Team Racing, and eventually Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time…which was a fun title as the plot was about time travel, but it was about time for a new game from a fan perspective as well.
But the happy days were not to last, as the franchise, owned by Activision by this point would be purchased by Microsoft when they bought Activision. In some strange twist of fate, the Crash franchise which started life and the unofficial PlayStation mascot, has ended up belonging to Microsoft.
But alas, at the time of writing, the final Crash game made was Crash Team Rumble, which kinda is a full circle moment for the franchise. Whereas on the PlayStation One, Crash had found success with platformers, then moved onto kart racing an then a multiplayer party game, the same happened in the modern era of Crash with the release of Team Rumble.
A planned Crash Bandicoot 5 was cancelled, and it’ll just be a question of how much time before the Bandicoot comes back for more antics again.
