Crash is back!
After more than a decade, we have a new Crash Bandicoot game. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time is out this week, and it is a perfect throwback to the classic Crash games of the late 1990s.
While he has never quite had the mainstream recognition of Super Mario or Sonic The Hedgehog (seriously, how has there never been a Crash Bandicoot animated series!?), Crash is an icon of platform video games.
While sidescrolling platformers were a staple of the 16-bit era of games, the genre had trouble adjusting to the third dimension. Many games tried to give you big worlds to explore, but Crash Bandicoot kept it simple. Instead of overcomplicating things, it just had you run into, or sometimes towards, the screen. But that meant that the game could focus on tight, exciting jumping and platforming, everything that made the genre so much fun.
The first three Crash Bandicoot games on the PlayStation 1 are bonafide classics, so much so that when they remastered for the N-Sane Trilogy a few years ago, they didn’t have to change much apart from the graphics. And like any good cartoon animal video game star, Crash got spin-offs as well, including a series of kart racers and a party game.
Sadly though, once we moved onto the Xbox/PS2 generations, things did not go so well for the marsupial, with a series of disappointing Crash Bandicoot games sullying the franchise. But now, with the success of the remasters of the original games leading to the new instalment, Crash is definitely back.
So, if you are an original Crash Bandicoot fan from back in the day, or if you only got into the series with the remasters, here is a quiz to see how much you know about everyone’s favourite bandicoot.
(If there are any other famous bandicoots, please let us know).
