Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Nostalgia

     In the Playstation One era, Sony had one very clear poster boy, a character who broke onto the scene with a megaphone yelling outside of the Nintendo headquarters. That's right, I'm of course referring to Crash Bandicoot, the red marsupial from the Wumpa Islands. I was always more of a fan of Spyro the Dragon, Sony's other big mascot, but Crash's weird and challenging combination of 2D and 3D platforming was something that people seemingly couldn't get enough of. Naughty Dog had created an amazing character, an insane bandicoot who moved like Taz from Looney Toons and showed a whole lot of personality despite having to work with the constraints of the PS One's limited polygon count. Spyro also was a great character, though Insomniac Games focused more on exploration than difficult platforming, and Spyro was less animated than Crash, but he was able to talk in complete sentences, allowing for more in-depth storytelling. Both of these icons were great on the Playstation, but after that, something terrible happened. Naughty Dog and Insomniac both stepped away from their characters to create new things, and Crash and Spyro's licenses bounced around for years and years, it was immediately clear that the new owners either couldn't keep up with the pace and feel of the original games, or never cared as much about the characters as the original creators did.

Spyro's Magical Troubles

    All through the next two generations, Spyro and Crash would have some difficulties at their new studios. Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly was a far cry from the great game that was Spyro: Year of the Dragon, and is actually considered one of the worst games for PS2 by many people. I've never played it myself, so I can't say whether it was okay or not, but the general consensus is that the game is really bad, with gameplay, voice acting, and visuals all somehow worse than they were on Playstation One, an inferior console. Spyro: A Hero's Tail was the next in the series and brought back some of his old friends, Hunter, Sgt. Byrd, and Agent 9 (I think) as playable characters. I did actually play this game and I thought it was at least decent. The graphics were pretty good and the characters all were pretty fun to play as, but there was still definitely something missing. The game switched to a more open world feel, instead of individual worlds, there was just one big one with a bunch of teleportation spots, which is fine, but it didn't really fit the feel of Spyro overall. Gone were all of the challenges in finding that last hidden gem in a level to get completion, it was more of a linear adventure game. After this came... The Legend of Spyro. That sounds like a joke title, I'm well aware, but I assure you, it was an idea that actually took itself way too seriously. In the original Spyro games, they were lighthearted with lots of fun and magic everywhere, it was a simple story, but a lot of fun, and a good way to build up villains like Gnasty Gnorc, Ripto, and the Sorceress. The voice acting reflected that light hearted nature with Tom Kenny (you may know him as the voice of Spongebob or the Ice King from Adventure Time) as the voice of Spyro and Sparx was just a bunch of humming noises. The Legend of Spyro cast Elijah Wood (of Lord of the Rings fame) as Spyro, David Spade as Sparx, and Gary Oldman as one of Spyro's mentors. This first game was more chock full of star power than any other movie that came out that year, which was amazing, but it didn't really fit the tone of Spyro. They had turned the wacky and bright world of Spyro where a bear collected taxes and a rhinoceros in a shark-shaped submarine plundered Seashell Shore and turned it into a dark and brooding world reliant on Spyro to save it. The Legend of Spyro went on for three games and ended in 2008 during the Wii and PS3 era, though that was not the end of Spyro's post-Insomniac adventures.

Crash's N-sane issues

    Crash certainly didn't fare any better with his adventures within other companies. After Naughty Dog moved on from Crash to make Jak and Daxter, the company that obtained the rights to Crash put out Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. This was a Crash game that followed the same formula as the originals. The world is made up of a bunch of individual levels and over all, the game felt pretty much the same, although people really don't remember it fondly for the most part. It retreads a lot of the same territory as the other games though it introduces Crunch Bandicoot, a character that I'm pretty sure people didn't like just because it was clear that they wanted to make an anti-hero version of Crash. I never played much of that game, but the story is the same as the old ones pretty much, Cortex wants to kill Crash and Coco and take over the world, all in all, it's pretty okay. Crash Twinsanity was the next one after this and boy, did this game have trouble. According to popular rumor, This game didn't have an ending really planned out, so they just threw in Dr. Cortex's mutated parrots from when he was a child as the villains. The gameplay is pretty cool I think, though it is not as precise as some of the games in the franchise. This is an open world game, relying on one large world instead of the smaller platforming worlds that used to make up Crash games, which they did pretty okay with. It's an interesting idea to see Crash and Cortex team up, and the emphasis on humor is obvious in this game. Making Cortex a central character in the game also means that voice acting is much more obvious. I didn't play much of that one, since it didn't come out for Gamecube and that was all I had at the time, I didn't get a PS2 until much later. After Twinsanity, the genre completely changed with Crash of the Titans. One of Crash's new owners decided that all of the characters had been the same for too long, so they changed how basically all of the characters looked, even the two tiki masks. Along with the updated designs, Crash now had the power to control giant monsters and ride on them. This was a cool idea, and definitely an interesting change, but I don't understand what made this a Crash game, as it seemed like they could have slapped a new character on it and made it a new thing. Almost nothing about this game has anything to do with the original Crash games other than the characters, and the same went for Crash: Mind Over Mutant which was the sequel to this little mini-series. After this, Crash and Spyro were included in one of Activision's money making schemes for quite a few years.

Skylanders-Ho!

    Remember the "Toys-to-Life" craze? The period of time where every developer was coming up with an idea for a toy that could let you play a video game? That all started with Skylanders, which began as a weird spin off for Spyro, but quickly left the purple dragon in the dust for the likes of other characters that were original to this series. I never played any of these games, though I did cash in pretty hard on the Toys-to-life concept considering I have Disney Infinity, Lego Dimensions, and two Amiibos. From the concept alone, it seemed pretty clear at the time that they weren't really interested in keeping Spyro's legacy going anymore, he was doomed to be the poster child for this new series where he was treated as an equal to characters such as... (looks up Skylander names) Boomer and Dino-Rang. Cynder also came over from the Legend of Spyro series, but she's also treated as a new character I'm pretty sure. It wasn't until E3 2016 that we saw anything resembling old Crash and Spyro. The president of Sony, Shawn Layden took the stage as it suddenly became themed like Wumpa Island to announce that the first three Crash games were going to be remastered in the N Sane Trilogy. People were so excited to hear this, that they completely missed the second part of the announcement, which was that Crash was going to be included in the next Skylanders game, and again, we were all worried that this would be the end of Crash's platforming legacy. Crash's character in Skylanders came with a new level which actually did a good job of emulating some of the platforming goodness that Crash Bandicoot was synonomous with (at least at his beginnings), so people were hopeful for the next idea, and especially they were waiting for the N-Sane Trilogy.

Something Old!

    Crash Bandicoot: The N-Sane Trilogy was a smash hit. People were yearning for the games that they had played about 20 years before, and I was right there with them. My roommate and I went out right after the game came out and picked it up, that was pretty much all we played for the next several days. That first game was really tough, and a lot of reviewers docked some points from the game for the original game's pacing and lack of depth, though it felt exactly like the original game, and that goes for the second and third entries as well. The characters and backgrounds are so good that it's amazing that they took so much time to remake all of these different assets from scratch. It looks amazing, and it's always satisfying to beat a new level because of the challenge involved. Like I said before though, I've always been more of a Spyro fan, but the renewed interest in Crash by Activision made me hopeful that Spyro would get the same treatment, and thankfully, I got my wish in 2018. The Spyro Reignited Trilogy was made up of the original three Spyro games from PS1, completely remastered with the same amount of love and care that Crash had received the year before. I don't remember the last time that I completed a game this fast. I'm still so excited by the fact that I can now go back and play some of the best games from my childhood all over again, and have them look and sound a lot better than I remember. I was really happy with this resurgence in nostalgic characters and familiar games, including the remake of Crash Team Racing which came out shortly after Spyro Reignited (which I haven't played), but I couldn't help wondering... is there something new in the works? Are we going to get a new game entirely?

Something New!

    Crash 4: It's About Time was announced during the Summer of 2020 as a direct sequel to Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. By calling it Crash 4, it meant that they were purposefully ignoring all of the other games that had been made after the third one, and as the trailer shows, they're actively poking fun at the public opinion that those games weren't great. This is a big step for Activision as a company, considering that most of those games were created by their subsidiaries, and they normally take themselves really seriously. I have played the game now, and I have to say, this was a welcome return to form. I've been playing a lot of the first three games on the N-Sane Trilogy, and this game is really good, even by the classic games in fresh memory. Some people on Youtube actually have called it the best Crash game yet, and I'm not against that idea. They really did a great job of keeping the classic difficult platforming from the classic games while also adding in some tweaks and interesting gameplay mechanics on top of that. Toys For Bob did a great job with this new game, and I hope that it will be seen as successful enough for Activision to greenlight more of these new games, and hopefully we can see Spyro getting the same treatment soon. My greatest hope is just that new gamers and kids that weren't around when the first Crash and Spyro games came out will find something new to love. I hope that Crash and Spyro will stick around for a long time to come.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, I hope that you got something out of it! Let me know what you think of the games in the different series. Are you more of a Crash fan or is Spyro more your speed? Thanks again, everyone! I hope you stay safe and healthy, and I hope you have a good day.