Have You All Lost Your Minds?

[kiroquai]

Crash 2 and 3 are alright. Crash 1, however, was always going to be the clunkiest one of the three and it’s made infinitesimally worse by them shoehorning time trial into it in order to get 100%. On some levels it’s manageable, but on quite a few (the side-scrolling box-bouncing ones in particular) the developer might as well have paid to fly employees around the world to come knock on your door and tell you to fuck off instead.

 

Can totally understand the sales as it’s an iconic character from the original PSX days that’s been left doing nothing for a while. Problem is, going back to them kind of reminds you why that happened.

[Khrushchev]

10 hours ago, partious said:

I tried playing it a year or two ago and my main issue with Crash Bandicoot is absolutely everything.

Utterly charmless art style. Obnoxious sound effects.

Annoying, unsatisfying twitchy controls. Trial and error memory test gameplay.

 

Crappy annoying music. Allow me to post some (not) random examples of music from some percieved competitors on different platforms of the time to illustrate.

 

Mildly agitated at myself for sitting through those tracks. The supposed good ones just sound like real bottom of the barrel '80s\'90s Japanese instrumental prog rock. Most platformers of that era do though tbf. One of the worst periods\genre for video game music.

[DC Lemon]

They should have licenced this track to play over every stage, then it would be my GOTY.

 

 

It was made for Crash.

 

 

[Sprite Machine]

Say what you will about the gameplay, but this is one damn fine 'remake'. A labour of love to go to all this effort for fucking Crash Bandicoot!
 

 

[Kevvy Metal]

I literally just finished the last boss of CB1 during my lunch break and utterly loved the whole thing. I hadn't quite cleared that last challenge but now it's down and I found the whole thing to be a properly cathartic challenging and refreshing break to a lot of the mega-hour games that are out at the moment. I love a lofty and long adventure, but sometimes it's good to really get your teeth into something like this.  

[bradigor]

I liked Crash in the 90s and I am liking the remakes. 

 

But I also liked Knack and want Knack 2. 

 

I also liked Croc, Glover, Gex, Spyro, etc. So there!

[Down by Law]

You think Sega are looking at the sales of this and are realizing how badly they fucked up making Sonic Mania downloadable only? So much money left on the table it's scandalous.

 

Also shows with a pretty much complete retail sell-through digital only is a long, long way off 

 

 

[Calashnikov]

On 03/07/2017 at 15:49, K said:

I would hazard a guess that this is down to the gaming demographic getting older. Sony picked up a lot of customers in the late nineties by targeting their advertising at the young adults of around 18-25 who'd played games as kids, but had dropped out; maybe something similar is happening now, except publishers are targeting those same customers, now in their late thirties. Crash Bandicoot's going to appeal to people who played it as kids and want to reminisce, and whom also want their own kids to play it as a bonding thing.

 

Something similar happened with Wipeout, I suspect - the Omega Collection was the top of the charts a couple of weeks ago, and the most prominent print advert for that game was a shot of a suburban cul-de-sac full of identikit Barratt homes with depressed-looking dads washing Ford Focuses in the driveway, except for one guy who's cleaning one of the anti-gravity sleds from Wipeout. Compare that to how the original games were advertised twenty years ago; I don't think you'd make huge inroads in 2017 showing potential customers images of Sara Cox with implied drug-blood streaming from her nose, or giving them free promotional roach material. Better to show a tired middle-aged parent driving a Qirex racer to soft play, or listening to haemorrhage-inducing nursery rhyme youtube videos while hitting 600kph round Phenitia Park. I was thinking that they could have pushed this aspect even further and had a soundtrack of period house, rather than the anonymous dad-scaring selection they went with.

 

Maybe I'm just assuming that the world still revolves around me, but I do wonder if the nostalgic middle-aged parent is becoming a sizeable niche in the market for videogames.

 

 

 

Came across the Wipeout ad in question just the other day. Really fucking excellent. Poignant, funny and clever. I came back in here to pos K's post, but of course I'd already done it.

[MW_Jimmy]

Yep, that's ace.

 

[yashiro]

I get it when it comes to WipeOut, but not Crash Bandicoot.

[DC Lemon]

They might have conquered 2017 already but they're not done yet. Previously unreleased level added to the package for free.

 

 

 

[Lothar Hex]

Now coming to Xbox One, PC and Switch on 1st of July. Woo!

 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/crash-bandicoot-remaster-on-switch-xbox-one-and-pc/1100-6457271/