Crash Bandicoot 1 (PS1) Review | Video Game Thoughts.

Hello and good day everyone! My name is Diana and today I'm here to examine Crash Bandicoot 1. Okay, so like many children who grew up with a PS1, the Crash Bandicoot original trilogy holds a special place in my heart. If Croc Legend of the Gobbos was the first video game I ever played, Crash Bandicoot 2 Cortex Strikes Back was the first video game I ever owned.

Crash 2 was the game I got with my PS1 and I know I played Crash 3 and Crash 1 at some point afterwards, I just have no clue whether I bought 3 before 1 or 1 before 3. Either way, I can say that Crash 1 is the game in the trilogy I played the least, down completely to a combination of my lack of skill and Crash 1's save system. That said, with regards to the entire Crash trilogy, I played it a ton but never beat any of the three, so for my videos on Crash I decided I would go back and play all three. Starting up this game and playing it today, it's wonderful. The gameplay is amazing and it makes sense the core gameplay was never significantly altered in 2 or 3. It might seem silly in 2016 when I'm writing this review, but having the character move toward the screen and away from the player, basically taking the 2D platformer and switching perspectives, is a pretty innovative idea and it works so well. It really is one of the all time classic series and returning to it is like coming back to the best kind of beloved childhood book or movie: I actually enjoy the game more today than as a child because as an adult I can understand how many games in this first era of 3D gaming just failed to get the camera done well or the controls done well, so to see a game that did just about everything so well is a joy. The first level also does a great job of introducing the main concepts of the game . And there are early levels like Boulders that do a good of job of testing what you've already learned, turning the game into something more fast paced and also testing your ability to react quickly to visual cues. There's always enough time to jump and dodge while staying ahead of the boulder if you're attentive to the cues on screen, no need to memorize the level. Another bit of nostalgia for me, I used to be terrified of the boulders levels. It's nice to go back and see how well the levels work. And also that I'm basically the same person, since I still died three times on Boulders. Later on the game brings in 2D levels as well. In some 2D levels like The Lost City you can effectively go into the background and then return to the foreground, a nice trick before 2.5D was a big thing.

The 3D levels also become increasingly challenging as the game plays with perspective, having you go forward into levels covered in shadow or into doorways that close and shut. There are also vehicle levels, pretty much, in the shape of the levels where you ride a wild hog. That adds a nice bit of variety to the game. Frankly I'm a big fan of the level design in the original Crash series, and Crash 1 is no exception. The levels aren't quite as varied as the levels in 2 and 3, but Crash 1 set an incredibly solid foundation of the basic sort of level design and core mechanics that the sequels would follow, and it deserves a lot of credit for that.

Crash 1 does not use the analog sticks like future installments, but the d-pad works great. There are a couple jumps made a bit harder by having to use the d-pad , but nothing major.

Crash 1 is also a great looking game, particularly for its time, but even today I'd say the cartoon aesthetic really holds up. Upstream, especially the water, still looks great to me. The music is to me just as memorable as the Spyro music, with a big emphasis here on percussion instruments. The game starts out fairly easy, though by the second world or island the difficulty increases noticeably. Early on the game gives you extra lives everywhere. You can also collect 100 wumpa fruit to get one life, and wumpa fruit are everywhere. In fact since the game rewards you for breaking all the crates, all of which contain wumpa fruit except the ones that contain extra lives, you are actively encouraged to get as much wumpa fruit and thus as many lives as possible. Really the only exception to this are the explosive crates. So I would personally end up collecting around 30 or so lives, and even though around the level called The Lost City I lost upwards of 15 lives per level, I still kept replenishing my supply of lives pretty well, so that it was only about four levels later, on Sunset Vista, that I finally got a game over. I don't think this game needed a life system, and I think that the only reason it has one is because that's the way things were done back then. If the game were made today, it would probably just have checkpoints where you could restart an infinite amount of times. With lives being so abundant in this game, it practically is like that anyway, letting you try the challenges an infinite amount of times. Because of the way the save system works, I have never and probably will never beat this game. As a result, I'm also not fit to analyze the later parts of the game and its design, since I've never played it. Maybe what I'm saying would damage an important and significant part of the game design. I don't know and I can't say because I haven't played the full game. It's just a thought that the game would function as well or better without the lives system. About the save system. This is the sole reason I have never progressed in this game and probably never will finish the second half of Crash 1. The game only lets you save during bonus rounds that appear often, but not every level. And you need to survive until the end of the bonus round in order to save; if you don't pass the obstacles in the bonus round you don't get to save. If you try to get every crate in the bonus road, you probably will have a hard time. I didn't struggle so much because I realized I was not good enough to get every crate and so stopped trying and just tried to survive. I would prefer being able to save after every level, like in subsequent Crash games. I guess to a degree I've been spoiled by playing Crash 2 and possibly Crash 3 before Crash 1, so the idea of being able to save only once every so many levels makes me unwilling to finish the game. The levels are fantastic and replaying them isn't a chore. I would just rather not have the ability to save my game be restricted in this way. And it seems like the developers thought so too, since Crash 2 and 3 let you save in the hub areas whenever you wanted and kept the bonus areas as additional challenges. That did have the result of making Crash 2 and 3, in my opinion, easier than Crash 1, so if difficulty is really important to you, that might bother you. I enjoy difficulty in games, but I am also aware of my own level of skill, so I welcome this change in the later Crash games. Okay, so I've already talked about how the original Crash Bandicoot series is one of my favorite series of all time. But the story of the first game made no sense to me because of Tawna, Crash's girlfriend. The way she was used in the game made no sense. The game, or at least the manual, says that Crash is trying to stop Cortex and thereby rescue Tawna, who Cortex is holding captive. So it's a kidnap story, which I would have been okay with. Usually kidnap stories aren't done well in the sense that the person kidnapped doesn't do anything to try to escape and also no threat to the kidnapped person's immediate wellbeing is present. A threat would justify the kidnapped person's inaction as an attempt to survive. But without the threat, well, wouldn't someone try to escape? But, just because kidnap stories haventt been done well in past doesn't mean they couldn't be done well. I'd be open to see what a pure kidnap story in Crash Bandicoot could have looked like. That said, If Tawna is being held captive, how in the world is she ALSO at the bonus rounds to help Crash save the game? If she's in the bonus round, then she can't be kidnapped also. I just honestly think that the simple story here could have been done better. There are two types of stories that could have worked well. There's the kidnap story, which like I said could have worked well. They also could have made it where Tawna isn't captured but is helping Crash defeat Cortex in limited ways, like by helping Crash save the game. But with having a kidnap story and Tawna in the bonus rounds creates this weird in-between type of story where Tawna is supposed to be completely helpless, but at the same time she also helps Crash save the game, or at the very least is present when he saves the game, which means she can't be completely helpless and captured by Cortex, but there is no logical explanation for why she even can help Crash save the game if she is simultaneously also supposed to be captured. I wonder if ultimately the developers just wanted to put Tawna in some part of the game beyond cutscenes and so used the bonus rounds. That in some ways is even worse, because then Tawna is really reduced to being essentially a decoration and that's kind of messed up to have the only female character be essentially a stage prop. Again, the point is not that Tawna had to have a significant part in the game. It's that whatever part she had in the game, whether secondary or tertiary, no matter how minor her role, it should have been a well thought out minor role, rather than just using her character in ways that either make no sense or don't even treat her as a character and instead treat her like a decoration. Finally, I've touched on this before but I hate how stereotypically indigenous people are portrayed. In a game where the only other enemies are animals, this makes it look like indigenous people are interchangeable with animals. And it makes no sense that they would try to stop Crash. I mean, I can only assume that they wouldn't be fans of the crazy scientist doing all kinds of weird experiments near their homes. They'd probably want Crash to get Cortex out of there as much as Crash wants to defeat Cortex. It's one very tasteless, senseless, and painful part of the game.