Crash Bandicoot (1996)

This PS1 title is a landmark platformer developed by Naughty Dog that helped define the original PlayStation era for this entire genre. Featuring vibrant 3D environments, tight level design, and a quirky protagonist, the game introduced players to challenging linear stages filled with hazards, collectibles, and enemies. While the controls could feel stiff at times and the difficulty could spike unexpectedly, its charm, colorful graphics, and catchy soundtrack made it a fan favorite. It laid the groundwork for a beloved franchise and solidified Crash as a PlayStation icon.

Particularly speaking, this is my least favorite one, simply because of it's insane difficulty in some levels, even though I love hard games, this one is especially hard. Though this is literally my only complain, the rest of the game is simply fantastic, even for today's standards, there are titles which are inspired by the first Crash entry, not to mention the unique soundtrack, which helps you don't get bored of dying a lot of times over and over. Another flaw I can think of is having fewer secrets and collectibles compared to the later entries, though understandable since this was the first gamble on this formula.

What still impresses me today is how the game manages to extract so much personality out of relatively simple mechanics. The island setting feels cohesive and memorable, from lush jungle paths to ancient temple corridors and slippery castle bridges, each world escalating the tension in creative ways. The boss fights, while straightforward, serve as satisfying milestones that break up the platforming intensity. Even with its strict save system and punishing trial-and-error design, there’s a constant sense of momentum that keeps you pushing forward.

Overall, this first entry may lack some of the refinements and extra content that later sequels perfected, but its focused design gives it a raw, almost arcade-like purity. It demands patience, precision, and memorization, rewarding mastery rather than casual play, that identity is part of what makes it so memorable. Even if I rank it below its successors, I deeply respect what it accomplished and how it set the stage for one of PlayStation’s most recognizable mascots.

I enjoyed this about as much as I expected. It's a fun and challenging 3d-ish platformer. I didn't bother 100%ing it, but played it through to the end over a couple days while taking a break from Final Fantasy 7. This game is often compared to Mario 64 which makes sense as it was released to compete with Nintendo's 3d platformer, but upon playing it, it's clear the game takes far more inspiration from Donkey Kong Country.

It does get challenging, but I feel most of the challenge is fair. There are issues where the 3d perspective makes the platforming unintuitive and you just sort have to guess where to jump.

My big gripe is that the way saving works punishes less experienced players, making progressing through the game as a whole harder. To save between main beats in the game, you have to beat bonus stages that can quite difficult, and you only have one shot at. I hope they changed this for the sequels.

Also, I worry that the depictions of Indigenous people in this game are kind of racist? That's not my area of expertise at all though.

Solid 7/10

This game is one of my childhood games that I absolutely Hated with every bone in my body. A game not only suffers from Design problems, but the controls feels very Slippery that you barely have any control over Crash.

this game without a Doubt, wouldn't have made it so far into a series without Sony pushing it down as a Mario/Sonic competitor.

Am still glad this game existed because without it, we wouldn't have gotten Cortex Strikes Back and Warped, but I wouldn't say that the first game deserves a Revisit outside of nostalgia.

Let me specify that I'm new to the franchise, and that I played the original, not the remake. I enjoyed it! I like how straightforward the gameplay is, and I like the wackiness of it all. It reminds me a lot of the Tex Avery cartoons I used to watch as a kid. Maybe I'm a little disappointed two-thirds of the levels are jungle or ruins-themed, but in terms of gameplay it never felt repetitive to me.

That being said, this game is SO hard, it's insane. I was not prepared. There are exactly two things that contribute to the difficulty: the controls, and the save system. The controls are bad mostly because the Playstation didn't have controllers with analog sticks back then. So yes, the first Crash is played with the D-pad only, and it feels so awkward sometimes, especially when you need to move diagonally. The physics are also at fault: Crash feels heavy, he either has a good momentum or none at all. It's practically impossible to make tiny adjustments to your trajectory, so mistakes are often fatal.

The save system is stupid even on paper. The game is very linear, each level needs to be completed to access the next. You cannot save at any time: to save your progress, you need to 1) find the three Tawna tokens in a level that features them (that pretty much implies completing the level), you'll then enter a bonus level, which you need to 2) complete without dying. When you're out of lives, desperate to save the difficult levels you did in your session, dying in a bonus level, it's just the worst.

During my initial playthrough, I just wanted to be done with the game. By the end though, there's a hint for something to unlock by collecting all the gems in the game. If you destroy all the boxes in a level and finish it without dying, you're rewarded with the gem for this level. I actually felt a bit curious about this when I got to the end. I was starting to find the controls manageable, and the save system was not a problem anymore. So I kept on playing, and I enjoyed the game more at this point. Redoing the first levels with better training felt really good.

In short, the first Crash Bandicoot is obviously flawed, and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. You'll have to be pretty masochistic (like me) to enjoy it. But it has a lot of personality, it's fun to watch, and it feels good to beat. And now I'm really excited to try the next ones, I heard they were much better.

The final levels and the two last boss fights reconciled me a little. But all in all the game was very repetitive and quiet annoying in its level design (much trial and error). In the end i had to force myself to complete it, that is never a good sine. I had the same feeling with Sonic 1 and 2. Quiet nice Design-choices but exhausting gameplay.

Donkey Kong > Super Mario > Sonig the Hedgehoc > Bandicoot

Competed on PSP.

I'm not exactly amazed after playing this for the first time in 2017. I think the camera is awful even for the year of release, and it's sad to notice that some levels are almost identical.

I also must mention that you need to collect 3 items and then complete a bonus stage, all of that just to save the game. Who thought this was a good idea?

Not a bad game overall, but I expected more given its reputation.

Games that kicked off successful franchises tend to be either overlooked or overrated. This one is the latter.

The game's two sequels prove that the playstation could do a lot more, but my biggest issue is with the difficulty: this game is really hard. That's usually not exactly a negative, but there is a good and a bad kind of hard, and this has a few elements that make the experience pretty stressful. The controls are not exactly pitch-perfect, which will mess up jumps and the boulder running levels; certain parts of the design cheat a little to kill you on your first go, the save feature must be "obtained" by clearing a bonus level (which gets increasingly hard). Also, the difficulty curve is all over the place. You'll find one level nearly impossible and, after dozens of triest and almost pulling your hair out, you'll be breezing through the next few stages.

This is definitely for hardcore platforming enthusiasts. I didn't find the challenge satisfying, even upon beating the game, and I'm glad the developers took care of that. I recommend it only if you're a real Crash Bandicoot fan and want to beat all the games, or if you have a masochistic taste for tough platformers.

Platform:

Playstation version.

Graphics/Sound:

It's low poly 3D which can nowadays always be a little hard on the eyes, but it aged relatively well. The texture work is great and a lot of work went into the animations, which still look fresh today. The soundtrack doesn't really sound professional at some parts, but I kind of like it, because it sounds so primitive and fits the jungle theme.

The gameplay here is pretty unique. It's a full 3D platformer, you can freely move in all 3 dimensions. The level design however is like that of 2D or 2.5D platformers, and the camera is fixed, which is interesting, because it kind of feels like a 2D game most of the time. I think it's a great idea, because on launch of the PS1 its controller wasn't really ready to support full 3d platforming with a free roaming camera. The levels vary between side scrolling and forward scrolling, which gives the whole game some variety. I like the amount of little gameplay details that's found here.

Difficulty:

I think this game is really difficult, and not always for the right reasons. At least you get loads of extra lives so even if you have to retry many many times there should be enough lives to be found. The worst part I think is the controls. First off Crash seems to have an extreme level of inertia. Kind of like Sonic, which is probably a game that this drew a lot of influence from. But it's at many parts really frustrating to do the precision jumping needed to advance, simply because the inertia lets Crash jump further than expected or not far enough. Also the levels are sometimes designed that you have to jump exactly from the edge of a platform, otherwise the jump wouldn't be far enough, and with the forward scrolling ones I sometimes had trouble seeing the distance I had to jump, but at least Crash casts a shadow to where he would land. The most frustrating levels I think were the bridge levels.

Conclusion:

It's a great game, which, playing this today, has a few flaws. I would still recommend it, simply because it shows the creativity that comes from the now legendary Naughty Dog studio.