Crash Bandicoot
An Introduction
Crash Bandicoot, not your typical game hero, but one of the best. Crash has featured in many games, for example, here are the ones I know: Crash Bandicoot, Crash bandicoot 2: cortex strikes back, Crash Bandicoot: Warped and Crash team racing, and Crash bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex.
For those one or two of you that have never heard of Crash (probably living somewhere in the Sahara desert), here is a list of typical characters and a short description of them for you:
A Character Description
Crash Bandicoot: Crash is, as you might have guessed from the name, a bandicoot, orange in colour, has a big cheesy grin, and wears blue jeans, fingerless gloves and red all-star trainers. His favourite hobbies are dancing and sleeping, but his arch enemy Cortex won’t give him time to do any of that.
Dr. Neo Cortex: Cortex is an evil genius who is always trying to take over the world (where have we heard that before?). Cortex’s overall image for some reason gives him the image of a little schoolboy with a moustache!
Coco Bandicoot: Coco is Crash’s sister and she is also a bandicoot with orange skin. However, she doesn’t take as big a role in the game as crash, because she’s always on the computer. Looking at her appearance, she seems to wear a blonde wig
Tiny: Tiny an extremely muscular tiger, with puny legs (?). He is on Cortex’s side, therefore is one of Crash Bandicoot’s enemy and acts as one of the boses in the game, though he usually fails to put up much of a fight despite his intimidating appearance.
Ripper Roo: Roo is another enemy of Crash. Roo appears to be a blue dog who is literally insane, so naturally, he likes play with TNT and nitros! Again Roo fails to present much of a challenge.
Pinstripe Potoroo: Pinstripe is one of those dodgy-used-car-salesman types of people, only he has a Tommy-gun! He dresses rather well for a rat, with his suit and all, but yet again this rodent is a problem for crash!
Aku Aku and Uka Uka: Aku Aku and Uka Uka are floating masks… ooo! Aku Aku helps Crash and his friends throughout the game trying to prevail over his evil brother mask Uka Uka, who helps the evil ones! (How can a mask have a brother? Surely masks can’t give birth!)
N-Gin: Cortex’s assistant, also an evil genius, there isn’t really much to say about N-gin, apart from his strange accent (where is he from? Sweden?) N-Gin looks like a grown up version of Dexter out of Dexter’s laboratory!
The Komodo brothers: The Komodo borthers provide rubbish circus stunts to attack Crash with, they look rather dashing in their purple gowns, but fail to proove much of an opponent!
Papu Papu: Not really on anyones side, but seriously overweight, he seems to be some sort of Native American with a skirt on. Papu Papu is just a blob and is fun to look at, watching his stomach wobble!
Dr. Nitrus Brio: Enemy in Crash Bandicoot 1, good guy in Crash Bandicoot 2 (?), Brio is a strange twitchy character, but a very good inventor. However, I never have worked out why his name is nitro cheek!
Nitrous Oxide: An evil alien, who will blow up the planet if nobody can beat him at go-carting (strange ransom, why not just ask for money?).
Background Information
Crash Bandicoot was created by a team called Naughty Dog (who also made Jak), Crash was released in America, August 1996 and in Europe in November that same year, sales shoot through the roof selling nearly 2 million in half a year! By then, Crash Bandicoot 2, was already under construction and by August 1997, which is released and is even more popular than Crash 1! So, naturally, the Naughty Dog team set to work on another game, which is released a year later and what do you know, it’s another hit! Another year goes by, and just when everybody is getting over the third Crash Bandicoot, and Naughty Dog release Crash Team Racing; a whole different set up to the other games, but proves to be just as popular. Could it get any better? Yep, Naughty Dog still continue to make Crash Bandicoot games, now for Sony’s Playstation 2, their most recent titles are Wrath of Cortex Twinsanity and Wrath of Cortex, and other games produced not only for Playstation, but Gameboy and X-box; Naughty Dog, must therefore now be extremely rich!
Reviews of what I think Are the best of the Series:
Game 1:
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes back
The game begins with Dr. Cortex falling to the ground at mach 3 into a cave with a levitating pink crystal (?), he then conducts a plan to use the crystals to power his ‘Cortex Vortex’ (in the space of one second). However, Cortex has no way to get the crystals, so he fiendishly gets Crash (who is lying on a beach snoozing) to do it for him!
Throughout the game, you have to direct Crash through 25 different levels, not only collecting crystals for Cortex, but also gems for Dr. Nitrus Brio, who uses the gems to destroy the Cortex Vortex.
The game gets progressively harder as you go through the levels and having to undergo side missions as well as smashing all the crates to get the gems adds to the difficulty. However, it doesn’t just stop there, after the completion of five levels, there will be a different boss to face each time: Ripper Roo, the Komodo Bros, Tiny, N-Gin and finally Cortex. This game is so fun, I think I might just go and play it again now!
Gameplay
Overall the gameplay is excellent: great plot, easy controls and amazing graphics (for a Playstation 1 game). The game is easy to catch on if you’ve never played it before and if you’re running low on lives either find another, collect one hundred Wumpa fruit or you can restart some of the earlier missions to catch up again!
Bad points
• Each level is repeated about three or four times, but with different layouts or added on bits, so it can get a bit repetitive
• On the game there are ‘secret warp pads’ within some levels that take you to another room, which you need to have found to complete the game. However, due to their invisibility, you can only come across by sheer luck, with a game guide, or by scanning each level completely thoroughly for several hours (why didn’t I just use the guide?). So it is virtually impossible.
Good Points
• Due to the simple controls, it’s easy to play.
• It has a crazy cast of characters, which are very amusing.
• It is progressively challenging, so you don’t get stuck on the first level and you don’t just fly through it.
• The graphics are great!
My Rating:
7.5/10
So next time you see this game in a second hand shop or a bargain bin, get it; you’ll get hours of fun for a low price!
Game 2:
Crash Team Racing (CTR)
This game, for me, is the best in the series (probably because it’s a racing game), even for people who don’t like racing games will enjoy this one! Like the other games, this one is easy to get used to and you’ll have no end of fun blowing your friends to bits using playable characters (Crash, Coco, DingoDile, N-gin, Cortex, Tiny, Polar Bear, Pura the tiger, Ripper Roo*, Papu Papu*, Komodo Joe*, Pinstripe*, Fake Crash*, N. Tropy* and Penta Penguin*)
*characters you need to unlock
What The Game Involves:
This game lets you decide on a character to use to race against seven others in a full action go-cart world championship, using whatever it takes to pass the finish line first and often it’s blowing the other cars into oblivion with rockets and bombs! The main aim of the game is to defeat Nitrous Oxide, to stop him destroying the planet. However, it isn’t quite that easy, not only do you first have win sixteen races, but you also have to collect relics from the tracks by winning time attack races and you have to defeat four bosses (Ripper Roo, Papu Papu, Komodo Joe and Pinstripe) before you can complete the game! However, when you have finished, your reward is great, you unlock all the bosses to race against your friends!
Gameplay:
As I mentioned before, this is a truly great game, not only has it got a fun racing element, but also weapons obtained in crates! The controls are learnt through progressing through the game from the masks Aku or Uka, depending which character you have gone for. It is both enjoyable and exciting; you won’t want to put it down!
Bad Points:
• As far as I know Oxide is impossible to unlock, even when completing everything!
Good Points:
• The game never gets boring; the adventure modes takes a while to complete and even after you have done that there are many other things to do!
• It’s a great 2 player game, having the ability to both race and smash each other up.
• There is great variety with not only a vast amount of race levels, but also levels to shoot the hell out of each other as well and a vast amount of characters to do it with! The variety isn’t just within the levels and characters either, the game provides a heck of a lot of weaponry found in crates: magical potions that rain on the other players, TNT, Nitro, speed boosts, Aku/Uka masks (for speed and battering rams!), missiles, homing electricity balls, slow down time, invisibility, super speed, bombs, other potions and force fields!
My Rating:
9/10
So if you ever get the chance to get this game, GET IT!
Definitions:
Cortex Vortex: Cortex Vortex is a ‘Vortex’ which ‘Cortex’ uses to make things evil, making himself the master of the world.
Crates: Sometimes blank sometimes with question marks, sometimes stripy, smashing crates gives you different things. So like it says in Pokemon: Gotta Smash Em All (or was it catch em all?).
Crystals: Large pink levitating things, which Cortex somehow uses to power his evil mechanisms. So if anyone wants a new source of energy give them a cubic-zirconia!
Gems: slightly smaller than crystals, come in many different colours, most commonly clear, also used to power things, so why does the world use fossil fuels?
Relics: No idea what these are for, what they are or what they do just get them!
Wumpa Fruit: look like apples, collect one hundred get another life and they can make go-carts go wow, if I could only get some of them!
