Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - Crash Bandicoot 1

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – Warped! – 4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2)

Yeeaaahhhh... I was not a fan. In fact, after playing today's
games, I might like Crash Purple even less.

I don’t know if anyone else reading this knows what the first game ever reviewed on this blog was, way back on July 19th, 2013. Well, it was actually a duet of games for the Game Boy Advance: Crash Purple: Ripto's Revenge, and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy. This not-very-ambitious crossover had Crash and Spyro square against each other due to the machinations of their respective villains. The games, developed by Vicarious Visions were… shall we say… not that great. At best, they were tolerable 2D platformers that put much bigger focus on playing mini-games, of all things. Anybody that’s accustomed to Crash’s usual extra-tough 2.5D platforming or Spyro’s 3D platforming likely didn’t get their money’s worth.

Run! Ruuuuuuun!

I bring this up because I haven’t touched either franchise since. That review was 13 years ago. And even on Steam, when I got my hands on the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, it took me forever to even think of playing them. Well! I’m crossing one of these two off the bucket list for this year’s anniversary review. Maybe the other one next year? Who knows.

I also have Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time among the games I want to cover this year, and I have a little rule for myself: If I want to cover a game that isn’t the first in a series, but I own any that came before in that series, then I will want to cover those previous ones too if it matters. Might as well get this show on the road. I can call it a… Crash course across the franchise.

Also developed by Vicarious Visions, and published by Activision, the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was released first to PlayStation 4 on June 30th, 2017, and to Steam a year later. It is comprised of remastered/remade versions of the franchise’s first three games, all of which were PlayStation games originally developed by Naughty Dog:

• Crash Bandicoot, released on September 9th, 1996;
• Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, on November 6th, 1997;
• And Crash Bandicoot: Warped, on November 3rd, 1998. This would be the last proper entry for these platformers for about 22 years.

One game per year? Crash is a regular! …Well, not to this blog he isn’t! But I’m looking forward to correcting that. We’re starting this collection of games NOW!

Crash Bandicoot 1

Experiment failed - subject is too stupid.

Just in case we needed a reminder that these scientists
are Hella evil, and we are in a hurry to save Tawna.

The diminutive Dr. Neo Cortex and his assistant, Dr. Nitrus Brio, have set up the most devilish of plans for world domination! They kidnapped animals from the nearby Wumpa Islands and, within the confines of their castle laboratory, are subjecting them to two nasty machines. The first is a ray that can evolve animals to become physically strong and much smarter. The second is the Cortex Vortex, which will brainwash these same animals into following Cortex’s orders. Our heroic bandicoot, Crash, was the first the Evolvo-Ray was tested on, so he isn’t quite at the level of the animals tested afterwards. However, the Vortex fell on Crash instead of properly working on him. The hero freed himself and fled… But as a result, he left behind Tawna, his girlfriend and another enhanced bandicoot, who becomes the scientists’ backup plan.

No other way but forwards.

He crash-lands (heh) on N. Sanity Beach, and we are immediately introduced to this novel type of platformer. Or, well, it WAS novel at the time. Other franchises have gone that route since, but I feel like Crash Bandicoot was the first 3D platformer of its kind. Most stages are straight lines forward, so you don’t have the freedom of movement of other 3D platformers (like Mario 64 or Sonic Adventure). You have no control over the camera; it stays behind Crash, and that perspective entirely changes both how levels are constructed and how a player approaches them. You can’t rely on a side-view to see how far you’re going while jumping; thus, your best bet to guess whether you’re going to land on a platform after a jump is to watch Crash’s shadow. Despite that, levels are still partly designed as if they were 2D, with stages featuring loads of bottomless pits and similar hazards.

Burned, skewered, fell to his death, really, there are so
many options on Crash's road to meeting his maker.

In all fairness, this game isn’t exclusively made of linear 3D platform levels. Some levels, as well as all bonus areas, are 2D side-scrolling levels instead. These come with a twist; there is still a depth to the scene. This allows such levels to have alcoves or side-paths in the background, which Crash can explore. Similarly, they can include hazards that push your character off the stage, since the space between the level and the camera is an bottomless pit. Or maybe it’s water that Crash will drown in, because he, too, skipped swimming lessons.

As a bonus, the boulder will destroy all the crates for you!
An easy Gem, for once!

Each “world” has a special level, which I call a “Boulder outrun”. Also a level type I have seldom seem anywhere else (and the few I HAVE seen all feel like homages to Crash’s version). This time, Crash is forced to run towards the camera, and you have to adapt in a second to the hazards and pits coming towards him. I was prepares to dislike these, since it would be so easy to mess up an idea like this, but… I kinda like them, actually. You are given enough time to react and maneuver around bothersome blockades. Yet others stages have Crash jump on the back of a warthog and go on a joyride, either dodging or jumping over anything in his way. For both level types, speed is the name of the game.

Excuse me Mr. Warthog, just gotta... run all the way through
this road. All good? Good. I'll try to keep you alive, promise.

Hunting for Gems

What Aku Aku says when you get him: "Ooga Booga!"
What Aku Aku says when you get hit: ... .... ....???????

After landing on the beach, Crash befriends the island spirit, a floating mask named Aku Aku, who enlists the bandicoot as a makeshift cleanup crew. Cortex’s operations have left a lot of garbage everywhere in the form of crates. Your task isn’t just to rescue Tawna and give the scientist a beating, but also to get rid of all the wooden boxes. Aku Aku is a benevolent entity; if you find him in a crate, you’ll have an extra hit point. Find another and you can withstand two hits! However, if you find another Aku Aku crate while your floating mask is at max strength, instead Crash will gain temporary invincibility that won’t make him run faster or jump further, but it will make him impervious to enemies and hazards.

Enemy head, meet the full weight of a person.

Like Mario, Crash can jump on enemies to defeat them. His other move has him spinning around. Some enemies are impervious to one or the other. Both methods can also be used to destroy crates. On the path and in crates, Crash can find Wumpa fruit; he can collect 100 to gain an extra life. Some crate types give greater quantities of fruits, like those with question marks or those that look like cages packed with them. The latter can also serve as trampolines – and so can other crates with an upwards arrow on them, though those cannot be destroyed with a jump. The most notable crates here are the TNT ones, which will explode three seconds after you've jumped on them; spinning makes them asplode instantly, so be careful. Don’t stay nearby either.

Gerez, how many crates did Cortex leave behind?
Did he really need that bleeping many?

What’s your reward for breaking every crate in a level? A Gem. What are Gems for? Well, if you collect 20 (of the 27 you can find), you unlock a bonus ending. However, there’s a catch. In more than half of all the regular stages, there are crates hidden in areas you cannot access unless you own a gem of a special color. There are six of those, and one can only be earned by smashing all the crates in its level and reaching the end… without dying at all. Thankfully, the bit of road before the first checkpoint doesn’t count in that limit, and neither do any deaths during bonus rounds.

I do love a game that reminds me after every level just
how much I've failed to attain a secondary goal.
Especially if you cannot finish it on the first go-through.

WHEEEEEEEEEE

Oh! Right! Bonus rounds! During a level, while breaking crates, you can find an emblem of either Tawna, N. Brio, or Cortex. Gathering three will open a portal that takes Crash to a 2D bonus area where you’ll find plenty more crates to break, as well as more fruits and lives. These crates count towards the stage’s total, but if you die in them, you’ll respawn next to the bonus round teleporter with no life lost. Emblems are found within the base stage, and never behind special gem requirements. Cortex emblems only appear in two stages, and successfully clearing those bonus rounds grants Crash a key that unlocks an extra level. Bonus stage crates did not count for the level total in the original game; but also, if you failed a bonus round, it shut down and you could only retry it by re-entering and replaying the entire level.

Adorable, yet she can open just as big a can of whoop-ass
as her brother.

Early on the first island, this version of the game has a path to a time machine revealing Coco Bandicoot, Crash’s genius younger sister, who decided to lend a hand. Coco began appearing in Crash 2, and wasn’t playable until Crash 3, but the N. Sane Trilogy makes her playable in all three. Her hitboxes are identical to Crash’s, so she plays the same. She’s a cosmetic character swap, with two caveat; first, she cannot fight bosses or do stages that involve riding a wild boar. The other difference is that her spin is a pirouette, which reaches higher than Crash; so if two crates are stacked, Crash’s spin will hit the bottom one, and Coco's will hit the top one, which can cause an issue where TNT is involved. Speaking of, er “selfie” idle animation can make TNTs explode.

The other extra expanded from Crash 3 to all the games in this product is the Time Trial relics. When entering a stage that’s been completed, you can pick up a chronometer near the entrance. This will transform several crates into Time Stoppers, which will stop the timer by the number of seconds indicated on them. You can earn Sapphire, Gold or Platinum relics this way in all levels except bosses.

I Would Hate the Original Crash Bandicoot 1

Doesn't matter what you are; if your top is not protected,
you are a prime target for these biiig shoes.

I think this statement is going to make some diehard Crash fans mad; I think I largely prefer the version we have in this collection, because the more I read about the original PS1 game, the more I am convinced that it was designed by sadists. As if going through the levels as they exist wasn’t tough enough already! The trilogy package adds quality-of-life enhancements that I can’t believe weren’t in the original. So many of these feel like basic, obvious stuff to have in a hard game.

Imagine if you were only allowed to save when you fulfilled
a secondary requirement, which you could only truly
fulfill roughly 40% of the time until you got some very
specific items found later in the game... And you could only
get them by not dying at all in these levels! Christ!

Like, say, the ability to save after every stage. In the original Crash 1, you could only save in two situations: Either you cleared a Tawna bonus round, or you gathered a Gem. Like I said, if you failed a bonus round back then, you could not replay it unless you restarted the whole level. And Gems are hard to get, so you could only save by going out of your way to fulfill requirements that would not be mandatory to reach the end. The N. Sane Trilogy autosaves after every level, and you can even save manually.

The original wouldn’t remember how many lives you had collected. You got your hands on that Gem, you saved with 27 lives in stock, and you left the game? When you returned, your lives total was back to 4. Screw that! The remaster remembers how many lives you’ve got at any point. These games are generous with extra lives; their high difficulty will quickly take those away from you anyway. Besides, there is a catch; when a crate with a life is destroyed and its life is collected, if you die later in that level, that crate, if broken again, will contain Wumpa fruits instead. Likely a measure to ensure players don't collect a hundred lives easily, since you will often find multiple extra lives in one spot.

And don't forget about the very precise platforming that's
requested of you! One mistake, and it's back to the last
checkpoint!

Hell, in the original, if you died even once in a level, your crate total was reset. The only way to get a Gem was to clear the level, and smash every box, without dying at all! The remaster limits this to the special gems, which are still a pain to obtain.

Not being able to trust that Wumpa cage crates will break at
the exact number of hits... that's not great. Thankfully, that
was in the original, and the remaster doesn't do that crap.

Other things the remaster does to help a player and mitigate the original’s sadism: Loading screens include a hint for the current level, so you can find secrets more easily. In side-scrolling areas and bonus rounds, although there still is depth, Crash’s movement is better limited to moving left and right, so you have less of a chance to fall off just because you moved wrong. Bouncy Wumpa cages always take five bounces to be broken; previously, they required ten bounces, but sometimes they would break after just nine! Randomness in my platform game? Blasphemous! The PS1 version wouldn’t show which special gems you had, and it would keep the total number of crates in a level completely secret; here, you see the number of boxes at the end of a bonus stage, and when reaching the level goal.

Yeah, I am far happier with what I’ve got right now. It’s crazy what some basic quality-of-life upgrades can do.

Oh, and before I forget: The N. Sane Trilogy version of this game includes Stormy Ascent, a level previously cut from the original Crash Bandicoot for being too hard. Imagine that! And yes, for the record, it IS pretty damn hard.

Stormy Ascent is, as we say in the jargon, brutal.

Final words

You can never tell in advance what the next level will have
in store. This one? It has 4 branching paths. Good luck if
you want to backtrack to get all the crates.

After this one, I’ll be jumping into Crash 2, but for now, I think this was the best, TRUE introduction to the franchise that I could have gotten. The linear 3D levels; the bonus challenge of smashing every crate… and the ball-busting difficulty. The first few stages lull you into a sense of false comfort; things get tough fast. Merely getting through each level for the first time is one Hell of an adventure. Thankfully, by the time you finish one, you probably know it well enough that the next run-through, for its Gem, is much easier.

This Gem is within my grasp - just gotta carefully destroy
those last three TNT crates, and not blow Crash up...

I openly welcome the quality-of-life upgrades brought forward by this “remaster plus” (as the N. Sane Trilogy’s studio calls it), as well as the addition of Coco as a playable option. And while I am unlikely to do them, I appreciate the presence of time trials, with relics that are quite tricky to hunt down. People better acquainted with the original game and its exploits might bemoan that some speedrunning tricks weren’t brought back (though Vicarious Visions tried to recreate most of them), but that’s a world outside of my perspective. The story doesn’t matter that much, it’s about as simple as it gets, though it sets the tone for the remainder of the series.

A running theme in these games; the bosses are kinda tough,
but never as tough as the levels. You'll see.

Good game! Frustrating in places, but overall good. Tune in next time for a full review of the sequel!