Retronauts - 788: Crash Bandicoot: The Wilderness Years, Pt. 1

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Whoa! Journey into the darkest depths of the madcap marsupial Crash Bandicoot with host Stuart Gipp and guests Sean Seanson and Thomas Nickel!Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, a wampa, wampa, burn in love. Hello, I'm Stuart Jep. Welcome to Retronauts. That may be the worst joke I've ever done. And I don't mean just on a podcast, I mean ever. You know, get in touch, let me know if you think I've done a worse one, and I'll probably have to agree. Today, we are talking about Crash Bandicoot,

but not just normal Crash Bandicoot, not like super good Crash Bandicoot, though this isn't going to be like a bunch of rubbish. You'll see, you'll see. We're talking about Crash Bandicoot, the Wilderness Years, which I've been wanting to do for a long time. because we talked about Crash Bandicoot, me, Jeremy, and John Lunderman, I believe, back in episode 350,

when we covered the classics, the ones everyone knows, the PlayStation games. But I want to get into the weeds, because you know what I'm like? I like the games that are like, hmm, what's this? That's the stuff I'm into.

I couldn't think of a better way to describe that. But I'm just doing one of my usual rambling intros instead of, you know, getting around to introducing the guest today. So I think I'm going to do that. Brand new to Retronauts, but perhaps familiar to you, at home. Who's with us today? Howdy. It's me, Sean Johnson, aka generic Irish PlayStation Man,

and a big Retronauts fan and also a big Crash Banachut fan. So pretty fun for me to be here today, even if we're talking about the lesser Crash Baner Cook games. But you never know. There might be some good ones included, so we're about to find out. It's a mystery to even me. I like generic Irish PlayStation Man, but if you change it to like generic Irish PlayStation person, then it would be Jip, and that's my name. So that's amazing. Like, yeah, you go. It's acronyms. We're doing acronyms today.

And who is returning today to two retronauts? So, hello, everybody. I'm Thomas Nicol from Germany calling in. And I'm already pushing the polar right here. And let's see where we go with that. I thought I told you not to do that while we were recording. Sorry. Sorry, didn't listen.

There we go. We had less than three minutes in and I've already done the first joke about wanking. Surely not the last. So, yeah, where we're getting into here is well, Crash, we all know how Crash started. Nauty Dog, PlayStation, three amazing platformers, four, no, one amazing racing game, which was not, but it was the fourth game. This isn't going very well. And that's when Nauty Dog decided, they held up her hands and they just said, no, no more of this nonsense.

We want to work on something serious. So they started working on Jack and Daxter, you know, which is obviously completely different with the little furry fellow, breaking the, breaking the, Breaking the boxes. Three platformers and a good racing game. A very good racing game, yeah. But I think a good place to start, actually, Sean, would be, if I could ask you what your experience with Crash Bandicoot was in general. Where do you come from?

Are you a crash addict or have you crashed out? Oh, I would consider myself an ongoing and consistent crash addict over the years, which is a very, for a period of time, was a pretty dark place to be. There's a lot of suffering, especially from the, 2010 onwards, but we're back. We're back in the good places, I think. Crash for me was very much like, you know, to a lot of people, their big platforming mascot icons or Mario or maybe Sonic or maybe Dizzy Egg if you're from a certain part of the world or of a certain vintage. But my period of time, my youth was very heavily crash and spiral

focus. So they're kind of my boys, so to speak. You know, I've got Crash Banachu tattoos. I'm that serious. I'm, you know, hooked into it. Yeah, for real. Well, I got a little Aku Aku protecting me at all times, you know. That's really helpful. I can see that. If you've got three of them, you'd be invincible. That's true. I'd actually, I'd be able to walk through walls and hurt people, but I figure three is a bit of a, you know, that'll get me put on a list somewhere, some sort of like CIA watch list. So I try to avoid that. List of cool guys with red tattoos, you know. Yeah. But, but yeah, big, big crash fan. And, you know, from the beginning,

obviously when the games were at their peak is good, but naturally I also moved into the world of crash spinoffs and the ones that we're going to be talking about today. So I have a good bit of experience with these. And because of my love for crash, it meant that I'd be like, okay, we'll try a new one. Maybe it'll get better. Maybe it's going to come back.

And we'll find that out in due course, I expect. And, Thomas, it all sounds a little bit to me like that experience of the average sonic fan, doesn't it? Oh yeah, that's actually a pretty good point, yeah. It's actually, yeah, Sonic and Crash fans are kind of two sides of the same coin for a lot of it, you know. Highs and lows are plenty. Yeah, and of course Crash Bandicoot started off as the Sonic's ass game, as we all know, as we all famously know. But though the focus on ass did lessen as it went on and then came back in a big way for Crash Bandicoe 4, but that's not relevant to this conversation right now.

Ass is always relevant. That's fair. What is your experience with Crash? Because I don't believe you've been on a Crash episode before, Thomas. You know what? I'm not sure at this point. I might have been. I might have not been, but, well, my experiences.

I don't even know what episodes I've done at this point. It's very original. I played the game on PlayStation back then. A friend of mine bought it. We read about it in, I think, American magazine. It might have been game fan, actually. So he bought the copy from the States, the import copy. We played it.

We were pretty happy with it. it. And though, of course, I stayed with the series. I played Crash 2, I played Crash 3. And then I slowly just faded out of Crash Fandom. Crashdom. But what does it call? I don't know. Yeah, the Crash addicts. I'm sticking with Crash addicts. Yeah. Crash addict is good, yeah. And a little bit later, I had some interesting experiences regarding Crash Bash, which I will, of course, soon talk about. Yeah, I mean, something I don't think I mentioned in the last episode, but there's no way I haven't mentioned it on episode with like Dave Bormor or something is that I was actually playing Crash Bandicoot in a tent at which point I was accosted by Noel Leibman's. But that's a story for another day as well.

That's actually true as well. Yeah, I know. It's a lovely man. Oh my God. That's like a nightmarish experience. Mr. Blubby was actually with him as well. This is completely true. I've probably told us before. I know. I'm just going to leave it out there. If I haven't told this story, I'll leave it out there so people can just speculate or about what. Speaking of which, by the way, if I may butt in very quickly and just your real, the Holy discussion already said early in the podcast. I recently introduced John Linneman to Mr. Blobby and he was...

Oh. Oh, his reaction was priceless, I would say. It was... Oh, goodness me. I would love to know exactly how that went down. Oh, dear. Do you think they share any qualities? John and Blob? I don't... I'm not saying they do.

I'm not making any assertions. I'm just curious if there was any kinship, if it was just... I wouldn't say so, no. They have very, very different hair. They have very... John doesn't have the spot that Mr. Blobby has.

No. Not in anything similar. But the fun thing, he sounds very much like him in real life. Okay. A microphone can distort your voice. They both have a stable frame, right?

Yeah, Mr. Blobby was very much of a 60 FPS guy back the day. He loved that. That's true. He's true. You can probably get Blobby on a digital foundry video

someday, maybe. I don't know. But irrelevant, but not really. I think we should talk about the games because, yeah. The games that ensued after Nauty Dog left behind Crash, because the IP owned by Universal Interactive Studios, as we all know from the beginning of the game,

it says, a Universal Interactive Studios production in that exact voice, which I just did falllessly. Yeah, it's really good. Thank you. I know, thank you. It's like I'm in the game right now. Evan Wells, who's like the former president or co-president of Nottie Dog,

has described the ensuing games in the first. following way, which I think is unpleasantly vivid, but I have to, in the interest of history, explain it. He says, it's a little bit like watching your daughter do porn. Oh, dear. Yeah. You know what does it make you think of? It's an unpleasant thing, isn't it? I mean, it's definitely negative, but also it suggests that you're watching rather than averting your eyes. Anyway, irrelevant, irrelevant, again. Crash Bash was the first non-naughty dog. Crash Bandico came. I would say the first

non-platformer, but it wasn't because we had Crash Team Racing, the excellent Crash Team Racing. But Crash Bash released in 2000 for the PlayStation. Crash still solidly a PlayStation franchise at this point. Eurocom and Sony games. That's Sony, C-E-R-N-Y as in Marks, not Sony. I know it's hard to tell. And this is a party game in the vein of Mario Party or Sonic Shuffle or, I don't know, Pac-Man FIFA or something. Hell yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's just trying to pack nine people reference. And it consists of 28 mini-games. Well, they say 28, but there's only actually seven types of game. There's just kind of a lot of variations of them. I think the best way to start would be just to say, Thomas, you've had some good times with Crash Bash, haven't you? I did, yeah. So this happened, as you said, back in 2000, and this was when I really just entered the game industry.

And I was working full-time at Sister Magazine to today's M-Games. that was all about covering the PlayStation, PlayStation 2 mainly. And for whatever reason, every evening when we were done with work, we just went over to the gaming space and played something like 30 to 60 minutes of just a crash bash and just one single mini-game, which was, as I already alluded to, polar push. I mean, that does seem like the standout to me from my time with it.

Probably, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's very simple, right? Should I just describe what it's about? Yeah, we should talk a little bit. about the mini-games, for sure. Let's do polar push. Yeah, that's only when I really

remember, that's the thing. So basically, the players for players, are sitting on this little ice bear cup on top of this ice, shelf of ice, right? Is it the word? Help me out here. Yeah, yeah.

It's an iceberg. An upside-down iceberg. Yeah, it's a... You know, it's moving around. It's a bit finicky, and all you have to do is just push the others down into the water. You can move, of course,

have all the ice physics. It's a bit slippery and you can do this charge move to push others in. And, well, what can I say? It's simple. It's fun. It works great. Yeah, it's, it reminded me of, I mean, this was obviously later, but this is such an obtuse thing to remind me of, but the tin pin slamer game in The World Ends with You or the minigame in Smash Brothers for DS that was similar. Oh, yeah. And I think Kirby has a minigame almost exactly like it as well. I mean, there's also one in Mario Party where everybody is balancing on that bar that became a meme with Luigi doing nothing and so winning. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I don't think you can win this game by doing nothing. Yeah. Sean, did you play this back in the day, or was it just for this, really? Oh, no, I was big on Crash Bash as well. It was a big, it was a game that was very popular with my friends and I. Like, we initially, the first time I bought a multitap was to play Crash Team Racing of all things. So it was quite apt that moving on from that, Crash Bash would come out.

And keep in mind, when this game came out, I was young enough to not really understand the concept of a new developer working on the game. So to me, it was new Crash Game, Universal Studios flashes up, the Eurocom logo flashes up, who were the developers of this game. I was like Eurocom, I know that. But I didn't think anything of it because it still looked like Crash Bandicoo. Yeah, the look is there for sure, yeah. It's still there for sure. And at this point, I had already played Mario Party, so I kind of had a gauge of, I like these mini-game, competitive mini-game collections of sorts. sports, you know? And effectively, this is the Mario Party equivalent minus the board game,

just mini games, effectively, you know, which... I mean, that's kind of better, right? That's like an improvement, isn't it? I mean... It depends. The thing is, like, the thing about Mario Party is that it has a huge variety of mini games, but the core amount of time that you're playing that game is on the board game, and that can be quite boring or pretty intense depending on how, you know, much you hurt your friends by stealing stars and all sorts of other shenanigans. Crash, on the other hand, is purely just mini-games and how good you are at the set minigames that are in there. And, you know, I think of all the ones similarly that we played, I think Polar Push is like one of the most straightforward, for sure.

It is quite simply just boop into each other and knock them off the iceberg alongside a few different power-ups and whatnot. But like, there's just something really pure and enjoyable about that. I think that's why all these minigame collections also share effectively. a variant of this style of minigame, which is just knock somebody off platform. Because it's fun to do, and it's fun to win. Yeah, they're in real life. It's amazing.

The roots of that must go all the way back to almost like joust or something. I mean, you're not knocking them off the platform, but it's a momentum-based kind of, I would say there's roots way back into arcade gaming with that. I will say real quick, the other games that are available are Pogo Pandemonium, which is like a Pogo sticking around, sort of painting an environment, your color,

I guess kind of like Cuber a bit, but your opponent can then take over your spaces. I'm not that familiar with that one because I just pointedly avoided it because it didn't seem that fun. I don't know if we have any Pogo Pandemonium stands here today. I'd play a game of it. You know, I'd enjoy it.

It wouldn't be one that we'd kind of go for. There are polar porches on the higher tier. I would say this one is, play a game of it, go, yeah, I can see what it is, but it's kind of a throwaway one in the panace. Antion, I think. Yeah.

There's another one called Craig Crush, which didn't seem entirely dissimilar to Poe Poe, which is a slightly obscure PS1 game where you throw things at people, but it's probably not, it's probably stiffer than that, I thought. But you've also got Tank Wars, you've got Crash Dash, which is sort of like your top, your single screen sort of racing game, like a super off-road, except there's no track. It's just a circle, basically. It's my memory of that one. And ballistics, which I do quite like, which is basically air hockey or pong, but you've

got characters on each side of the fore of like a box. So there are balls everywhere all the time, which is obviously wonderful for everyone. We all love that. It's sort of reminded me a little bit of rampart slightly. It's very rampart, yeah. Yeah. I had fun with that one. And I, okay, this is my unfortunate confession, which is that, and this is really bad for doing a podcast about it, but I have never played this game a multiplayer. It never had the opportunity to do so. I have friends, yes, some friends, but there was, this never came up, it was never, hey, what should we play? How about Crash Bash?

Mm-mm. Just didn't happen. You know, that is... Sorry, go on. I was wondering about this, actually, because PlayStation 4-player, I mean, yes, you had the adapter, but did that many people actually use that? Because, I mean, the adapter costs money, controllers cost money that could go into new

games. So I only played multiplayer on PlayStation 4, like, with 4 players, when I was working with these cyber media guys. I mean, I had a multitap for the PlayStation 2. I didn't actually have a PS1, which obviously would be an issue there. But I had one for the PS2 because Timesplitters too, for Christ's sake, you needed it.

But, I mean, thinking about the PlayStation 1, and the same being really ignorant, I mean, there were a fair number of four-player games, but this must have been one of the main ones. Like, this must have been one of the sort of killer apps outside of something like Bomberman, but that was a thing on the Super Nintendo and the Mega Drive and everything. Yeah. Yeah, I never considered the PlayStation 1 for player console. I mean, this game does have a single-player. adventure mode where you move through

what we're in as much like Crash 2 really It's amazing Is it? Do you think? Because it seemed like not amazing to me A matter of opinion Obviously but it seems like it's very much a multiplayer Can you play the adventure mode in multiplayer? You can play

You can play the adventure mode with up to one other person in a co-op style Which is quite interesting It's fun yeah as a co-op game it's actually quite enjoyable I think I'm of the opinion that the game kind of falls apart in the single player because you effectively have to move through these warp rooms and play all the different variants of the mini-games,

which as you mentioned, there's quite a large number of variants, but only seven-core different games. And my big issue with this game is that to actually unlock everything in the game, so all of the different mini-games, you have to play through the adventure mode first. I don't recall there's a cheat to unlock it, but I actually don't know if there is or not outside of like a game Shark. So you have to play through single player or co-op with a friend. And it's not the easiest thing in the world. Some of these mini games, especially like the Pogo ones, they can be quite difficult to get

true as the game goes on. Yeah, especially with the variant, like the gems and things, if you're wanting to 100% it. I've heard it's extraordinarily difficult to 100% this game, like really punishing. It is quite tough. So I, you know, I was lucky to have a multi-tap. I'd have friends who could come over, bring their own controllers, you know. And like I said, we were big into Crash T-TOP. Team racing. For a lot of us, that was our Mario car around my area. So we had the look to play Crash Bash in its purest peak form, I think. But even to access that, you have to invest a good bit of time into the worst part of the game to unlock that, which is just kind of an unfortunate thing.

That is one of my most dislike things when they make you play the single player to unlock the multiplayer, which is better. I'm going to think of two examples. One, Star Wars, Episode 3 on the PS2, his versus women to finish the goddamn game. First. Two, boom blocks bash party, which I'm still angry about. And I'll never forgive them ever, because the first boom blocks didn't do any of that. The second one, it's like, oh no, you have to play boom blocks on single player, because that's fun, honestly. I'm upset now. However, there is a cheat code in this game, which is to unlock a demo of Spiro, you're of the dragon, which, no offense to Crash Bash, probably the best thing in the game. A much better game.

Bit of Spiro 3, yeah. So Crash Bash, I think, is one with hindsight. It hasn't really been the, you know, super kind to it, but it seems like at the time it did deliver, you know. I mean, I think the ballistics mini-game, the bat and ball one is really fun, and polar push is fun as well. I liked that very much. The racing game I enjoy, but the rest of them, I could probably

take or leave, but, you know, you can just jump in and you can just play those games. I'd probably have fun, I'd have thought. I mean, do you guys remember how much it was when it was released? Was it a budget game, or? I seem to recall it at least wasn't as expensive.

See, no, I don't know that I know there was some sort of budget games back in the day and that is ringing a bell but no, and I didn't have it and I didn't have a PS1 yet oddly I do have the Prima guide for this game. I don't know Primer Prima, I never had to say that out loud before.

I always say Prima but I could be wrong I say things incorrect all the time anyway it doesn't matter. I'm going to say Prima because of like Lima you know. Somebody will get mad at you either way yeah they're probably get mad at me about some of the stupid stuff I've already said The first joke you said at the beginning of this, that's going to get you in trouble immediately.

That was pretty bad. Yeah, it's probably going to get me fired. But I always think it's kind of odd to have like a strategy guide for this because it really doesn't seem like there's anything it could do to help you. You're going to have to get good if you want to clear this game 100%. Unfortunately, there's no shortcuts. But then again, it was a whisper of a guide. It was about 60 pages long, which is really weird for a prima guide. So anyway, yeah, that's my review of the prima guide for CrashBer. Very important.

Very good. And at this point in the Crash lineage, sorry, I made myself laugh. Universal Studios made a deal with Konami, which I didn't know this. I only fill a list today, which is how Crash win. Very quickly, before you carry on,

I would like to add one very important bit about Crash Bash. Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Very important. It's called Crash Bandicoat Carnival in Japan. Oh, that is really good. Yes. I thought he's got big eyebrows as well. Yeah.

I bought it for a whopping 50 yen last year when I was there. Oh, right. I don't know what yen sort of currency is. It should be about 30 British P. Wow. Very little. It should have a... Carnival should have lovely box art.

A lot of the Japanese boxar for Crash. He looks very pleasant in Japan. You could get Crash Bash for less than a Fredo. That's amazing. Oh, that's true. The Fredo economy is in Shambles. Now, I'm understanding, and I'm hoping I'm not wrong about this, because I couldn't find any sort of definitive proof on this outside of, like, wikis,

and I don't really trust them very much. I'm a bit paranoid about wikis. But it said that there was a deal between Universal and Konami, where Universal would produce the games, you know, with their developers, not themselves, and Konami would publish them overseas, and that made CrashGo multi-platform, which is, you know, weird. It's weird. It's like when Sonic went on the Nintendo.

It was just weird and wrong, you know? Yeah. But that gave us the next Crash Bandicoot game, which is a much more traditional one. Crash Bandicoot, The Wrath of Cortex, released in 2001 for PlayStation 2. I believe Xbox and GameCube came a little bit later. So the PlayStation 2 was the sort of core of it.

And originally, this was Travelers Tales, who I love very much. You know, they only make Lego games now, but I do love them very much. And originally this was going to be called Crash Bandicoot worlds and have a more free-roaming sort of planet-hopping, puzzle-solving type thing. And I remember seeing early screenshots of this in magazines and thinking it looked quite interesting. But then when it came out, it was it was kind of Crash Bandicoot 3-2, you know, like Final Fantasy

132. And that's not necessarily a bad thing because Crash Band-A-Cute 3 is not my favorite, but it's a very, very good game. And this game kind of bites it real hard. Did you play this when it came out, Sean? Oh, yeah. This was, I got this alongside my PlayStation 2 for Christmas one year. So this was, I got that.

Okay. I got Agent Underfire, Smackdown just bring it, and Crash Banercoot the Rath of Cortex together. That's a three foot right there. That's three, yeah. Three bangers right there. And as you can imagine, it's a big wrestling fan,

a fan of men in suits and Crash Banachu. That was a big deal for me at that time. And Rathorkech, you know, once again, as a crash fan, really cool to get a crash platformer again, especially after, you know, a few years without one. So for me, being able to turn this on and have it like look like the crash I remembered, you know, Crash Baner Q3, we're back in a warp room, we're back doing platforming. Coco's there. The whole gang's there. We've got a new character with crunch. It was like really

cool to be back doing that again and also getting blown away by the, you know, the quality upgrading graphics, or at least what I perceived as the quality upgrade at the time, because everything was smoother, everything was cleaner. We're looking at 60 frames per second. Yeah, I mean, the jump from PS1 to PS2 is tremendous when you see it for the first time. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a really good looking game, like, stylistically

to this day, it still looks good, I think, because it's so smooth, because it's so clean. Thomas, did you play this when it came out as well? Only a bit later, I'm afraid, not when it came out. I know, well, that's the same with me. I didn't play it until I got the GameCube version many years later, and the GameCube version sucks. It's really

bad, which is surprising, because that's normally what happens with multi-platform games. But what they, this is, like I said, it's, it really is the same as Crash 3. It's got the same sort of warp room layout. It's got quite a lot of the same level archetypes like The Swimming is Back. But they have added some new things, but they've added the Atlas Spheres, which is the name of an event from Gladiators in the 90s, by the way, where, you know, like Super Monkey Ball kind of crashes rolling around in a big ball.

I'm not quite sure why he's doing it, but I always loved the look of those levels. they're in this kind of, I guess, what you call like a native village type environment where it's all made out of like bamboo or something. It's like the Punjabi prison match in wrestling. Two good references, back to back. Very good, very good. But I enjoyed it.

I do think that visually this is quite a spectacular looking game. I mean, if you emulate it today, obviously, it's going to be an HD and it just, it looks really clean and really nice. And it's a game that I think hindsight's being quite kind to it because when it launched, there was quite a lot of your, oh, it's the same.

We're in the next generation now. We don't need something like this. You know, we've got Jack and Daxter coming. We've got all this sort of thing. We've got GTA. That is a thing, actually, I think, because, I mean, the Crash Bandicoot games on PlayStation 1 were just these big trendsetters, right? They were amazing.

They really showed off the system, and they felt fresh and interesting. And I think people just hope for a similar experience on the PS2. And it was, yep, it's a PS1 game, but nicer. and probably just didn't make the cut for many. There are new features. There's also stages where you ride in like a giant walker mech, like Ripley at the end of aliens. There's mine-cart stages, which I found a bit frustrating, but that's mind-cott stages for you. I mean, that's a thing, right?

Yeah. And you can play as Coco one foot for the first time, like doing actual sort of platforming levels. And she has this kind of... kind of stereotypical. I don't want to use the, I don't want to be inadvertently upset anyone because I don't know what the correct word to use is. Eastern, is that fair to say?

It has that kind of like, I guess like sort of Zen Garden kind of look to it. Yeah, she's also acquired, instead of a spin, a karate kick of some sort too. Yeah, yeah. But I thought that was all pretty fun. I know there's a level where you're sort of running away from a tsunami, which is quite distasteful,

but here we are. And yeah, I thought this was a fun game. I enjoyed going back to it. I think that it holds up quite well and it has really nice visuals, as I've mentioned. The boss battles, though, the boss battles just don't hit for me at all. Very sort of frustrating experience. You're always fighting Crunch. He's like been, he's like sort of Royd-Rage crash, but he's like Brock Lesnar crashed.

That's the third one. Yeah. And you know, I think I can tell you why that is, actually. Oh, yeah. because the thing is, right, that game was made in very short time. Well, it must have been if they were changing direction. Exactly, that is the thing. From what I heard, they had about 12 months to finish the whole thing.

Oh, wow. With the reboot. And from my experience, making the boss is just as much work and effort as making a whole other level. Yeah. So that's probably where they had to cut some corners. Yeah. I mean, I think, I just overall, I think it's pretty fun. Like, I could go back and play this.

I mean, the main issue it had for me is it's quite well known that the original PS2 version, the loading was super bad. I want to say this with one of the blue disc games on CD. It was a blue disc CD. And this kind of goes back to the whole point of when I got these PlayStation games. There were DVDs and there were blue discs. But as a kid, I did not know the difference between these. I just was like, wow, this is blue and this is silver. I don't know what this means.

But this is maybe the first time in my life where I could purposely notice these load times are atrocious. You know, the first time where, like, I've played PS1 games for years, which notoriously in many cases have bad load times, but this was maybe the most noticeable instance of, well, these low times are really bad. This is crazy. It kind of hurts it more because Crash Bandicoot levels, to their credit, they're not really that long,

so you're going to be seeing this loading a lot if you're playing for any remote extended period of time. Yeah. But then the Xbox version, well, the Platinum and Greatest Hits, well they're the same thing. The Platinum slash Great Assits version, they did improve the load times. I don't know if they moved into DVD or they just optimises it or what,

but they're definitely better. The Xbox version is more or less the same except Crash has actual individual fur like Conquer, you know, in Live and Reloaded, which is cute. I like that. But as I mentioned before, the GameCube version, it's the version I played originally and it's just really bad and laggy

and doesn't look good. And I don't know what happened there. It's a powerful machine. a lot of times the GameCube version of a multi-plat is the best version or at least the runs better, performs better. I mean, like burnout too, I'm pretty sure is much better running on GameCube than it

is on PS2. But it just didn't happen here and I can I don't really know why that is. I can only guess that it was a port of, because it was a port of a PS2 game rather than a lead platform thing and sort of made from scratch because it came out quite a bit later. That's just what happens. It's a shame. So if you do want to play

this game, if you still have a 360, I think you can buy it. on the store, the Xbox version. Or you can just buy it anyway because it's pretty cheap. I have a favorite thing about this game, which I'm going to have to mention. It would be absurd of me not to mention it, which is that in Coco's stages,

there are some storefronts where there are some, you know, sort of characters on the storefronts, by which I mean, like, text. There's like some words on them. Then it's not real. It's like nonsense. it's kind of kanji-looking kind of thing, but not real.

And it turns out that what they did is they wrote the phrase, and this is not me doing this, they did this, okay? They wrote the phrase, Big Dog's Cock, which is taken from Viz, which is a U.K., a very funny UK comic that's mocking British, well, not mocking, but affectionately being as profane and puerile as possible. And it had a strip called Rude Kid, where one of them was just

his mom saying like how was your day-to-day rude kid and he'll just say big dog's cock because he's just a root kid and you know they snucked this nobody noticed this for it is rude and then nobody noticed this for like a quarter of a century

until it turned up on like Reddit and I've got to say I love that they did that these are always great stories yeah just put some patent obscenity into this game for children may I again share this one something I can tell you about.

I won't name any names or actual games, so it's where it's happened to. So long ago, a former student of mine worked on a game as an artist. And because he caught, he hit a lot of dicks in the textures. Because nobody noticed because it was very low-res. Until the day, the publisher made an HD patch. And all of a sudden, oh, oh, my. Wow.

That is something we still find it variously funny until this day. I don't think he wasn't ever exposed. No, that's good, unlike the Dix, of course. They were very much, yeah. I could almost fuel a whole episode. I've seen things that have been hidden in games. But, yeah, I mean, do we have any final thoughts about the wrath of cortex? It's a bit of a, it was a bit of a sort of bed-in-ois for the community for a way.

I think people have come around to being like, yeah, sorry, go on. I think it's one of those games when it comes out. You don't really appreciate for it for what it is. But many years later, when you actually saw, okay, this was kind of sort of one of the last of its kind, you really like it a lot better all of a sudden. I think that is what it is nowadays. Sorry.

Sorry, it was kind of a victim of effectively, as you mentioned, being crashed 3.5. You know, it didn't. It was, judging by how quickly it was turned around, I don't really think Traveler's Tales had a tremendous amount of time to really reinvent the wheel. They were pretty much just going for. What have crashed three, but prettier.

And some of the new ideas they tried, like the Atlas fears, the balls, as you mentioned. I'm quite fond of those levels too. There are definitely a few misses and some levels that I think are a bit empty and seem a bit rushed if you compare them to, you know, naughty dog, who, to be fair to them, were really, really good at making levels for this particular style of game. So it got a bit of a bad rap for being effectively a worse crash tree with bad loading times and slightly prettier graphics. And even then some people in the fandom think that the, you know, the cleaner look of the game kind of took a bit away from the personality of crash. That's still a bit of a thing for some people. But as you mentioned, you know, this was something that at the time necessarily not, you know, getting like a, at least a game in the original crash style for better or for worse, we weren't going to get something like that for a very long time.

Yeah. And as new iterations came along, you went, man, I just wish they'd make a game like this again. And for me, as a kid who just wanted that on the PS2, it gave me pretty much all I wanted. And, you know, Crunch as well, who was effectively the shadow of the hedgehog or the warrior of the crash world, you know, as you know, you got to get eventually. Do you think they named Crunch after the development process? Sorry, that's not very nice. That's the real evil. Yeah.

I mean, big respect, honestly, for turning a game around that's that polished, because it is. It's really polished in that amount of time. I just Travellers' Tales. I mean, has anyone played their game Haven, Call of the King on PS2? Haven is great. Haven is a really, a really good game. I think pound for pound, like, during, you know, outside of the big 3D platformer publishers, so many of Travelers' Tales games, even the ones, the licensed ones, that they had to turn around pretty quickly,

like Toy Story 2, a Bug's Life, there's some really cool and fun ideas in those games. And, you know, for every rascal, which is, you know, a technical marvel, but also a terrible game, They just put out, if you got a Traveler's Tales game during that period, you're pretty much guaranteed to get something very good at worst. You're either going to get something good or you're going to get something that's interesting, like Ruskell. Like, it sucks, but it's amazing looking and feeling. 60 frames per second, great music, cool guy with hat, time controls and a platformer.

It's a fascinating game. Well, it worked for Croc, kind of. Speaking of crock Now this is that's rude It's not a crook The next crash game was on In 2002 and this was on The Game Boy Advance

From Vicarious Visions I heart them I heart them very much It's a shame where they are now I think they're in a call of duty minds But Oh no They've been shut one or the other

Crash Bandacute Oh sorry go on Oh I can add a bit to that I did my research about Vicarious visions And they have been absorbed Pretty much into Blizzard nowadays And they are They used to be in the

of duty minds for a bit, but right now they are armor in the Diablo mines. Yeah, they just pushed the expansion of Diablo 2, right? The Diablo 2 resurrected, that just got a big expansion, I believe. So that must have been the thing. So, but at least they're still around, so that's something. That is good. And somebody is happy about

Diablo 2 expansions, you know? There are people out there who appreciate that more than Call the Duty yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would love Diablo 2 resurrected if it didn't have to be always online and keep kicking me out. There we go. You can play offline, but what's the fun in that? Crash Bandicoot

by Crash Bandicoot XS, as it was called in Europe, for some reason. Whereas in America, it's called Crash Bandicoot, the Huge Adventure. I can't decide which title I like less, but whatever, it doesn't matter. Now, Vicarious Visions have got sort of form for GBA platformers. They made

a lot of licensed platforms on GBA, and they made the Tony Hawk games on the GBA, which are excellent. And Mitch at Radio. Yeah. I mean, I back when the GBA was a thing, when it was happening, I've talked about this before briefly, but basically the GPA got emulated,

I think before it came out. Like, you could run the games in Visual by Advance and stuff. And, you know, I was furiously playing GBA games via ROMs. Sorry, everyone. Sorry, the police. And, yeah, I played a lot of Vicarious Visions games, including masterpieces like Shrek 2. I'm only being half ironic.

That's actually quite a good game. But then they get hold of Crash Bandicoot and they push what I think is a really successful sort of translation of that series to the handheld visually and in terms of the feel. Did either of you play this when it came out? Not at the time again. Oh. Yeah, this is also one that I didn't get to play until years later, you know, in just the simile, just a big GBA ROM dump at some point. And I went, oh, you know, I might as well finally get around to playing this. And, yeah, it turns out it's really good.

Yeah, my friend of, I didn't have a GBA, my friend of mine did, and they kept lending me it because they wanted me to beat the games for them for some reason. They didn't want to do it themselves, I guess. Ah, the cool friend. Yeah, but I did play through this back in the day on the original sort of GBA, which is not the easiest thing to do given the light, the light issues with the screen. But yeah, I mean, I think that they kind of nailed this. It's not like a perfect game. Some of the level design is a little bit pedestrian, I think, but if you're going to make a side-scrolling crash game, I mean, I mean, a lot of the original crash games were side scroll bits as well.

You know, there were full 2G levels in both games. But yeah, I think they nailed it. Like the feel is almost spot on. The music is great. All the sound effects carried over from the originals. And as well as the 2D stages, which are all drawn from, mostly drawn from Crash 2. There's some Crash 3 in there, I think. I'm trying to think which one is from Crash 3.

Yeah, it's mostly kind of just re, I think the underwater stages are Crash 3. And then the remainder kind of like the jungle stages, the sewer stages, a lot of it like is effectively just, you know, we're going to give you a greatest hits of crash on the PlayStation and turn it into just a purely,

well, 2D for some of the levels. And then you have the stages where you're running towards or away from the screen, that kind of thing. Which also works really well on GBA form. I think they did a great job with that too. I'm always impressed by, sorry,

oh. There's one. that really grinds my gaze with this game, also with the second one, is when they just use PlayStation 2 real-time graphics and just take stills from that for their cutscenes. Oh yeah, that is... It feels so cheap and just

doesn't look any good. Yeah, I mean... I mean, just draw something. It's a game by advanced. It's the many pixels. Just do it. I do agree with you. I do agree with you. And this isn't me defending the practice, but my response to the cutscenes in the crash game was to press start as fast as possible.

Yeah, of course. So it's like... But then again, when I played the second one, which we'll get to Entranced, I was taken aback by how horrible some of the cutscene graphics actually were. But this original game...

Yeah, I really like it. The semi-3D stages, I don't... There's like jetpack stages, which are obviously similar to the ones in two except really not control-wise. They're more along the lines of like... A not very good sort of Panzer Dragoon, maybe.

But they are beautiful, I think. They are beautiful, but... That is some great sunsets. Yeah, true. What impresses me is the abominable snowman that chases you on the snow levels, because that thing's animated like butter. Like, it's so smooth. Like, it's really impressive. And there's some fancy sprite work, however, they're doing that. But I was playing it recently. It almost felt like you were, I mean, I know you're not, but it almost felt like you're running on top of a video. It was that smooth. It just had a real good, like, sprite on top of a, you know, and the GBA was possible to do something like that. But I just wasn't expecting it, one, to have those states. in it and to for them to play and look as good as they were. You know, you could put that in any other game, and it would have been a standout in that type of game. And on the smaller screen as well, it looks even better.

It looks absolutely superb on the actual hardware. So you know, there is an interesting connection there, actually, because Shinnan was involved in this game, but from what I've seen only with the sound, but the tech in that level where the snowman follows you has its very Shinnon look to it. You are so right. That would make sense.

As soon as you said that, as soon as you said that, I was like, that, that completely makes sense. Yeah. I have no idea if they were involved in these levels. Maybe they exchange some tips, some programming tips, some tricks or whatever. Yeah. It's probably like a prop to Shinnan that if you see like something in a game that looks, this looks unusually good. You'd be like, ah, Shinnon involved somewhere. I'd like to gesture at this point to Garfield's nightmare on the DS.

A 60 frames per second, fully polygonal, oh my God, it looks amazing. And that's Shinnan. They'll do mainwain magic from anything. They did Eridion and Eridion 2, right? Like, amazing. That's great. But yeah, very faithful. Not the most difficult game, but you don't really want that, do you?

You want to breathe. I mean, Crash was never really like that until Crash 4. Never really known for terrible challenge. Maybe Crush 1 a little bit. Yeah. I mean, the smaller screen, getting things compacted, you know, don't want to create like a very difficult style of game, especially when you're on the go. Like the expectation

is that, you know, kids might be playing this. They might be playing it in the car. You don't want to be doing like high, you know, crazy level platforming while doing it. It's just challenging enough and keeps pretty much the core crash abilities in there. You can jump, you can slide. You can do everything that you think you could do in the PlayStation game with, you know, limited set buttons. I think they even bring in the fruit bazooker

towards the end as well. Even that's in there. Yeah. It's very much Crash 3, but with a lot of stuff from 2, and it's fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone. I'm probably not that expensive. Either I did check, and you can get it pretty cheap, especially if you buy it as part of the Crash and Spiro SuperPacks. They put three of those out. The third one has Crash and Spiro Fusion on it. Do not buy that one.

You really want them. The other two have good games on them. I'd always be careful of Pirate Copies on the Game Board Advance. Oh, yeah, that's very true, yeah. Now, moving on, a multi-platform thing, Crash Nitro Kart, which is 2003 and is the follow-up to Crash Team Racing, pretty much directly. Vicarious Visions again, which interested me because I didn't know they'd worked on a 3D crash game until the N-Sane trilogy, which they did, I believe. Yes. But Crash Nitro Kart is one that I didn't really play until I did this, until I was preparing for this. and Sean, did you play this on PS2?

This is actually another one that I played only quite recently. It was bought for me as a Christmas present by my partner. I gave her a giant list of PlayStation games that I hadn't played before, and this is one of the ones that showed up. That's good. My thoughts of this one, like, Crash Team Racing was one of my favorite racing games of all time, and I'd always heard on the grapevine that Crash Nitro Kart was similar, but not as good, which is kind of true for a lot of PS2 follow-ups of certain games,

And you could probably say the same for Rath of Cortex as well. But I've fully finished this game quite recently, and it's interesting for sure. I mean, the fact you fully finished it has to be a testament to something. Like, unless you finish everything that you play, I don't know. Oh, I definitely do not. No, no, I absolutely not. But I finish this one, and it's a hard game too, mind you, I will say that. I mean, I think CTR is a hard game, but then again, I am just crap.

Thomas, did you play this one at all? I played it on DBA for a bit Oh, GBA version, yes We'll get to that for sure But not the big one sadly No, the big I mean, when I played it That was pretty much my conclusion

Is this is not a bad It's not bad It's not bad It's I think the track design Is very good So I was happy that they carried A lot of the tracks forward to I think all of the tracks

Actually to crash team racing nitro fuel They were in that But I think the game feel Is just not there Like it is in CTR It's just so tight And this just isn't quite right for me But, you know, it still has that tremendous boost gimmick, which I love, and I wish Mario Kart, but just copy.

Yeah, I think it's one of, if not the best, like, boost features in any CartRacer, because it's very simple to get to grips with, but also very technically demanding, especially if you're chaining boosts and whatnot. It's why, like, so many hardcore cart racers are really big on Crash because it has such a high-skill ceiling, especially for what on the surface seems like a very, you know, a kid-friendly game. It will teach you to get very good at driving and video games if you want to get into the wheeze of this stuff. And it was nice to see Nitro Kart effectively continue that lineage as well. And speaking of copying a little bit earlier, I mean, Mario Kart 8 copied the anti-gravity thing. And it was not great in Nitro Kart, and it wasn't that great in Mario Car 8 either. It's just a very, it's a gimmick. Yeah.

It doesn't really add a whole. I mean, I'll hold my hands up here, and I will just say directly, I think, If Crash Team, and I'm not a big frame rate guy, if Crash Team Racing Nitro Fuel was 60 frames per second, that would be the king for me. That would be the peak of all karting games. I mean, it kind of still is even in the state it's in. I'm still waiting for them to put it on PC.

It's the most mind-boggling thing. Why is that not on PC? It's crazy. But yeah, this game, a lot of different versions. I can't really compare them outside of the GBA version. I will mention that it was also put on the N-Gage, which added like a sort of a 3D engine, and some kind of like, you know, dips, contours to the tracks,

but I haven't played that because I've never touched an Engage in my life, not because I don't want to. Of course, I want to desperately, more than anything. But I haven't had the opportunity to play this. I should really look into whether you can emulate the Engage. I'm sure you probably can. It would be very cheap by now, wouldn't it? I'd hope so.

Have either of you messed around with the Engage at all? I got an Engage QD off a friend. He was like, you like video games, right? I was like, yeah, sure, just gave me an Engage. one day. And I have a surprising amount of Engage games. I've played Tony Hawk, Tomb Raider, Pandemonium on that bad boy. I mean, you should not do that. It's not an ideal way to play any of these things. But it was one of those products that, you know, as a, you know, a game, a big game fan as a kid, I was like, wow, a phone for gaming. There's nothing I'd love more.

I know there was a Sonic game. There was port of Sonic Advance. It's pretty much just advanced. And I think Nitro Kart, for the most part, right, having looked at pictures of it, I believe it's mostly similar to the GBA version as well. Now, speaking of the GBA version, I thought that was great. Like, really impressed with that. I was probably my favorite karting game I've played on the GBA. I was super impressed. They managed to get so much of the feel of, and I think it's tighter than the main game as well.

Obviously, it's still that kind of mode 7, like, flat kind of racing game, but I thought this was really well done. And there's a lot of crappy cart games on the GBA. There are some good ones. Like, you know, well, Mario Card Super Circuit's pretty good. And Konami Crazy Racing, I like a lot. Mostly for the sort of fan service. But this is up there. Like, Thomas, what did you think of this GBA version?

I completely agree. I would say this is on the level of Konami, Wi-Wi Racing and Mario Kart. I thought it was just like really, like, impressively challenging. You know, you had to make good use of your boosting of your attacks. And the whole sort of a venture game, while it's simple, The fact they even had it in there was kind of impressive to me. The whole thing from driving around the hubs, going, doing your CNK challenges to collect all the letters.

It's all in there. It's just a really satisfying thing. I'd highly recommend it to anyone. And also, you can play as the boss characters in the GBA game, but not the console one, which is crazy to me. But I'm not losing any sleepover, not getting to players like Velo, you know? Yeah, nobody likes Velo.

Yeah, I mean, speaking of that, the amount of work they put in the story and the cutscenes. Oh, yeah. The cut scenes, the presentation is great. Like, the music and everything, just really, really well done, I think, in the big version.

But also, it makes you wonder, why? Yeah. I mean, why? Why not? But why? I mean, I want to race, I want to race across the track. I don't care about some alien guy,

whatever. Just put the guys, here's your cards. Drive, have fun. See, this is, I played Diddy Khan Racing back in the day and when, you know, an elephant on a magic carpet floats down to me and I'm going, hey, this guy's got something to say, I need to listen. Ever since then, people taught stories and cart races.

They can be anything you wanted to be. So we're going to put the effort in. Yeah. I mean, I kind of appreciate it because, you know, it really is beautifully done. Even the menus, especially the music, I think, is a huge step up from Rath of Cortex. I really enjoyed that. But I guess I'm just glad that they put these tracks in nitro fueled much later, because that was just, I mean, I think we'll talk about nitrifield, but I want to say it now because

it's relevant. This is just the kind of thing that always impresses me is catering to your sort of fan base to the level they did with that game. There's a character in the Java mobile version of Crash Nitro Car called Yaya Panda. The cute little panda character is only in that game and it's just like the most obscure Crash character imaginable pretty much. And they went, yeah, we'll put her in it. We'll get everyone. Everyone is here. It's a Smash Bros. Ultimate of Crash Brothers Ultimate, there we go. The level of fan service at work there is just,

it's very, it's nice, it's heartening, it warms the cockles, you know? It's one of the nice things of like these games taking as long as they do to eventually get, you know, remastered is that a lot of the people who are going to have working for your studios are old fans of these games, the people who originally were big into them.

So you have people who are in the weeds and know what the fans want. Like they could have completely just remade Crash Team Racing. people would have been fine with that. They didn't need to put all the extra stuff in. And I mean, they put so much into nitro fuel. Some would argue too much. I would never.

But it's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of game. I would say outside of what we've mentioned about the, well, I've mentioned, excuse me, about the frame rate or like not being on PC, like, you know, it is a micro-transaction game, but it's not like it doesn't give you free coins. I'm just, you know, it's drips and draps,

but it is a micro-transaction games. People should probably be aware of that. I'm assuming it's still live and you can still actually play this. You can still play it. It's not being updated anymore. It's long past that stage, but that was most of the negativity towards that game. Very little towards the game itself. Just obviously it had Activision monetary practices in what is effectively a children's game.

I mean, they did the same thing with the Crash Battle Royale style game. Oh, God, Crash Rumble, yeah. I haven't played that. I think anybody has in the whole play. Nobody wants to, no. It was just such a, because Crash 4 had come out. and really reinvigorate. I mean, say what you want about Crash Fly.

I'm not a fan personally, but I respect the effort, you know. And they really reinvigorated the series with that. And everyone was sort of like, oh, wow, crashes back. We got this high-budget, beautiful, massively packed platform game. What are they going to do next? And it's just that shit.

Yeah. I haven't played it. I mean, that's just modern gaming. They're going to spend a lot of time making a game that's about five years out of date that nobody really wanted it in the first place. And maybe it's the most fun thing in the world, I don't know.

But, I don't know. Not for me. Not for me. I'm a guy in my mid-30s. I want my old-school crash children's game. Speaking of old-school crash, following that was the Game Boy Advance sequel to XS slash the huge adventure, which is called Crash Bandicoot 2 Entrance,

which introduces a new villain called Dr. N-Trance. You know, that's a kind of recurring thing they have there, Entropy. N cortex, et cetera, embryo. I never noticed. And it's very similar to huge adventure, except they've adapted sort of more level archetypes from Crash 3,

like they brought in the kind of like stereotypical like Arabian Nights thing from Crash 3. They did however introduce some new things. Like there's a sort of a volcano-ish type environment which isn't from any of the previous games, which is quite interesting. And also they made the graphics

really bright and colorful, which I'm assuming is because of the whole dark GBA screen thing. That was kind of a trend for a while. If you've played the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country, you'll know what it looks like, which I guess is to account for that.

But yeah, so Crash 2 Entranced. They added the ball rolling stages from Rath of Cortex, and I think they're still pretty fun here. They added a jet skiing level where you have to escape from a shark that plays the knock-off Jaws theme when it gets near you, which I'm very fond of. And I think there were some...

I think there's some of the flying levels, which I forget, to be honest. Does anyone remember which other flying levels they were in this? I think there's some cocoa stages. I mean, do you have that at wakeboarding stuff in there? I remember that. Yeah, yeah, sorry, it's not a jet ski, is it? It's wakeboarding, you're right. I think there are some stages where you are pulled by a motorboat, right?

Yeah, an off-screen motorboat in this case. But, yeah, I think there's some cocoa stages where you're, like, in space and you have to like maneuver around all sorts of oh god I don't even know the word debris you know but overall I

I liked this it doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything rather than collect sort of gems colored gems you have to collect sort of fragments of them which eventually will build a full one which ultimately means

there are more secrets there's more the levels are bigger the levels are less left to right and more I don't want to say airplane hanger because that's used so negatively but there is more verticality

basically, which is cool. I thought this was fun. I had a good time with it. Did anyone else like this game? Yeah, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It's very much, as you said, it's more of the same, and I think, at least for the first follow-up to something, I'm very much of the mind where if it

was good the first time around, I'm happy to see a similar iteration, but with a few new adjustments or few new tweaks, a bit of polishing added to it, which very much was the case for Entrance with me. I like this a lot, and, you know, Between this and the first one, I think it's a great duology of GBA games.

Honestly, some of the better platformers that I played on the console. Yeah. Really fun, I think. Yeah. They also added, there's not much to it, but the original Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation had a sort of an overhead map, and this has an overhead map as well, although it's much simpler, which means you have a choice. You can't just choose from five levels.

You've got to make a sort of a path through, which is vaguely interesting. And what I thought was quite funny was basically, after you beat a boss in Crash 3 and Wrath of Cortex, you'll get a new power along the lines of the double jump, the tornado death spin, the death tornado spin, which I love that it's called that. And in this, they added the

super slide and the super jump, which will just get you killed. Oh, yeah. It's like, this is too strong. This is too high. This is too fast. But it's kind of funny, right? Like, just holding L and pressing R and just going, rocketing off, it's quite funny. It's the kind of thing

you know, is speedrunner is going to be like absolutely insane way when you're going to see like crazy tech and whatnot. Me on the other hand, trying it out for the first time, I'm like, well, never doing that again. I liked the super jump, which is just a very high vertical jump, but when you do it, crashes nose like comically bends downwards and I'm very fond of things like that. They did a good job with the animation, I think. Yeah, a good game, good fun, and again, you can get this very cheap, so I'd keep an eye out for this one. If you like 2D crash, you will like this basically, which is a cop-out thing to say.

but it's true. And, you know, it came out the year before a very much maligned Crash Bandicoot game also on the GBA, which is, yeah, Crash Bandicoot Fusion in Europe. Overseas, Crash Bandicoop Purple, Ripto's Rampage. Now, wait a minute, Ripto is the villain from Spyro 2, Gateway to Glimber,

not whatever you call it in America, I forget. What is it called in America, Spyro 2? Ripto's rage, I think. It's just Ripto's rage. Okay, yeah, it's always going to be Gateway 2ndi Glimber for me. It's much more pleasant name. Yeah. Yeah.

Rippedo is just a horrible name. Like, I don't like it. It makes you think about things getting ripped two shards. Also, I think rage is overrated as well. Yeah, that's true. It's the emotion in general. Remember there's the angrier American boxes, and this is the much more pleasant gateway to happiness

that is Europeans experience. Yeah, instead of using the angry eyes like Kirby, they just add a more unpleasant sort of like verbs. Yeah. I think verb is the wrong word, though. I have messed up. Oh, well. This is why I'm...

Let's go with word. This is why I do podcasts and don't write. Oh, wait, I do that too. No. Okay. So, yes, Crash Bandicoot Purple released. It's a two-fur. There's also Spiro Orange, which is called something else I forget. Sorry, I didn't check because I don't really think much of this game.

However, no, first of all, let's talk about what it actually is. It's basically a mini-game collection, not like, really like Crash Bash. It doesn't tell you, though. It doesn't tell you. No, it doesn't tell you. But essentially you're in these large sort of spaces, and you're platforming around as Crash, with the same basic moveset,

to find portals that will warp you two minigames. There's quite a lot of different mini games, and some of them are completely insane. Like, there's one where you'll crash with the bazooker, and you just have to kill as many sheep as possible. And it's a bit like tapper, you know, root beer tap. Yeah, it looks straight up like tapper. And you're meant to stop the sheep's from going into nitro crates to explode,

and you do that by blowing them up anyway, you know? Yeah, it makes no sense. Why not? Why not? Yeah. But it's why, this is widely regarded as something of an atrocity as Crash Games go. And on the replay, I really hate to say this, but I kind of dug it. Like, I don't think it's good, but it was just gentle, you know? It was just kind of nice.

And the mini games are quite short, and it made me start thinking, like, is this almost like a Crash Band, Acute take on Wario where, with how brief these mini games actually are and how quickly you're off again doing something else. I don't know. Did anyone get any joy out of this whatsoever? I would like to consider myself one of the people who got like stung by this game. Because I didn't have, I had Nitro Kart on GBA, which I loved and thought was fantastic. But I didn't have the previous two games, right?

So when I picked this up on holiday ones for my parents where like, you can get one Game Boy Advance game. And I walked into the shop in Spain and I seen, oh my God, is that a crash bandicoat Sparrow the Dragon crossover? which to me is like, you know, this is my, it's the greatest thing that could ever happen. That's the Thamestons meet the Dan Jetsons right there. And you look in the back of the game. And this game does have some, like it's, once again, it's from Vicarious Visions,

the developers of the previous three GBA games. And the back of the box shows platforming sections, which the game does have, it has like a hub world, which is a platforming style hub world, kind of, in this one. So my assumption was, this is a platforming game.

I'm going to have a great time with this. And then I was, I was not in the frame of mind of the zone for a mini-game collection. Let's just put it that way. I thought it was going to be something very different than what it was. And as a crossover between Crash and Spiro, it's also not the most fleshed out. I mean, not that you'd expect it to be too fleshed out, but it was a very, it's a very, I found it to be like a pretty short, breezy game. Like, I get what you're saying where, like, the actual minigames in it are quite good.

And once again, because it's vicarious visions, it is a competently made game. It's just, you know, very clear. the worst of the vicarious visions, crash games. It's just also, I think the platforming just feels a bit off to me. The police protection

with enemies just feels that's not rewarding when you hop on an enemy. It just feels, that's it. And it's bizarre considering it's once again from the people who made the previous two

which got better game on game. And in this case, it was just a step down. So for me, this is my first experience with like a crash platform on the GBA. So it kind of put me off trying the other two for many years.

Yeah, and also there is the sense of like missed opportunity, right, with crossing over with Spiro. I mean, with respectfully to Spiro and to Crash, because I like them both very much. They're not very compatible. Is that fair to say? I mean, they're very different. Like, the only thing really keeping them together is that they were both on the PlayStation. They both released around the same time towards the end of the year, and they were both published by Universal. So they had this kind of connection.

It was like you said earlier, each, like, a demo for Spiro would be in Crash and a demo for Crash would be in Spiro, you know? They were linked together, however, shared nothing in common. I think you can play a Spiro in the GBA Nitro Kart as well. Oh, yeah, that was the big unlock. I think that at the time, that was the first, like, Spiro inclusion in that, and that was in and of itself pretty amazing.

It's pretty cool, yeah. You had to work hard to get that, too, so it was a big deal. But something else I want to mention about this mini-game collection thing is there's a training card thing going on. There's 167 trading cards across both the Crash and Spiro series. And I wish I could say that they were quite like inspiring, but there are things like crate and grey crates. That's crash law right there. That's the main thing. It's like fruit, box, red box.

Scientists, crusty pros is for training card photos. Sorry. I like to share two thoughts here. The first of the positive one, because I think often that the minigame collections are a very underrated kind of game. Yeah. Because A, they can be really fun. And B, there's always thought, yeah, it's a cheap mini game collection. They didn't have, they didn't bother making something proper.

But these things are actually a lot of work because you are making a lot of separate games all at the same time. And so you shouldn't discount them just for being what they are. So that's the positive thing. the other one though is this is the game basically where I thought okay I think now Crash has really fallen off because now they have to resort to a crossover

to make them interesting and you know a crossover can be very cool I think right if you have two brands two characters in their prime and they meet each other it's awesome right something like Capcom versus S&K it's awesome stuff I love crossovers I'm a big sucker for crossovers yeah but this is crossover it just feels like

okay these two are past their prime, let's just mash them together and see what happens now. Again, bit like, again, Flintstones meet the Jetsons. Yeah, although, obviously, as we all know, the Flintstones meet the Jetsons was masterful work, but this isn't quite on that level. It's more like Fred and Barney meet the new Schmoo or something. But I think as well as that, this is probably the first, not the first Spiro you can say this about, but it's probably the first crash game, you can just straight up say this

sucks. This is bad. Like, because it does actually kind of, like, no, again, no disrespect to vicarious visions, because I don't know what conditions they were developing this on, because it really seems like they were not good based on how it turned out. I know they can push out way better games than that. And like,

the fact that it even kind of runs fairly choppy, the platforming doesn't, it's not even like the same engine, it doesn't feel like it. It's just not there. And it does make me wonder what they were dealing with and how quickly this came out. Then again, as you say, Thomas, making minigame collections can't be the easiest thing in the world.

I mean, you must be working with what, like, multiple engines even, maybe. I don't know. That's a thing. So I write today before that podcast, I talked to a student of mine about their bachelor thesis, and they also said, yeah, I want to make a hub world and several minigames. I just said, no, you don't. You really don't if you're welcome alone. But again, I can't, I don't think this is, like, rancet.

I don't hate this. It's just... It is much worse out there, of course. Letdown. It's such a disappointing game, because what could have been with the Crash and Spiro Cross-E? I mean, even the...

When you meet the Spiro characters in this game, they don't look like they belong there. They look like they've just been pasted over from... Well, they probably have, just been pasted over from the Spiro titles on the GBA, which, by the way, I really enjoyed. Yeah.

And I'd like to talk about another episode at some point, to be honest. But I think my favorite thing about this is that if you turn it on, while holding L&R, you get to play Spiro Party USA. Oh, that's the best thing in the game, for sure, for sure. Yeah, it's, which is like this ridiculous DDR rhythm-based minigame with a dancing Spiro. I think if you do it with a Spiro game, you get Crash Party USA.

It's like an little Easter egg. But for some reason, the name Crash Party USA just makes me laugh because it just like sets him in America, which I've never really thought of being the case, you know? It can't be, right? They have none of these in America. Yeah. There's a party for Americans. You're not allowed to play it if you're not American.

I would have thought Crash was like canonically, at least from like Australia. Yeah, somewhere nearby. Yeah. I guess we'll just never know. He seems to, he definitely doesn't hang out in like American seeming environments at any point that I can think of. Maybe in twin sanity, but we haven't, that's for next time, isn't it? You know? Yep.

And yeah, I mean, it's a very breezy sort of. episode, but the thing is there are quite a lot more of these, but I wanted to split it into two episodes because you want to give them their due, right? You want to give these games their fair due. Also, we don't want to crash out here, you know? Oh, there it is. Yeah. Beautiful. Right. Yeah, very good, very good. I should co-co. I got jokes. Jesus. There's more to come, and unfortunately I think I can quite reasonably say the worst is yet to come. But there's also some cool interesting stuff coming up that I would hope

everyone will return to talk about. Who knows what will happen. But yeah, that's the first Crash Bandicoot in the wilderness years exploration. Obviously, if anyone has any final thoughts about these games, please do let me know. Does Sean anything to say about this lot so far? How do you feel about Crash on the old Venn diagram of not Venn diagram? What's the one with the lines? A line graph. That's the one.

Oh yeah. Bar-char. Linegrass. Something like that. Some kind of visual shot. I would say, like a lot of games, you know, especially when developers change hand. Crash is a game or a series that's a victim of having a really good beginning. And then the games are following it being kind of held to an almost ridiculous standard by a lot of the old fans. It really sucks if you make really, really great games. And then the games that come out afterwards, even if they're good, if they're not as good, they're going to be seen rather unfavorably,

especially by a pretty, you know, hardcore group of fans, which Crash has quite a lot of. If you got a little furry guy who's a platforming character, you're going to have some pretty hardcore fans where do you like it or not? Yeah, you're not wrong there. Yeah. So for the likes of, you know, Crash Nitro Car, it's not as good as Crash Team Racing. It's still a pretty good cart racing game. I like it a lot.

Rath of Cortex, it's not as good as the first three crash games, but it's definitely a pretty fun platformer if you can take it for what it is. two crash games on the GBA that are platformers, really good platformers. The only one I don't really enjoy or wouldn't really go back to is Crash Bannacue, Purple or Fusion. But then again, that's also me. Thinking a game that I don't necessarily want from the series

and then similarly, I think I played Warrior Ware quite close to that. And if you play the greatest mid-game collection of all time, everything's going to look bad in comparison to it, you know? Oh, Jesus, Warrior Wear is, I mean, all games look bad compared to that. Oh, it's the go. It's like, you know, fun. The most fun you can have in a tiny little Game Boy cartridge, for sure. You know what screws me up about War, right?

Because we're on the subject now. Warrior Ware, the first one, absolutely amazing, right? Yep. And then Twisted comes out, Twisted comes out, even better. Even better somehow. However, you have to play it on the actual hardware or it. Not as good. And then you're like, how can they possibly top this?

And then they do rhythm Tengoku and just, what the hell? Like, three, that's a three in a row right there. I mean, come on. The Trinity. Yeah, exactly. Thomas, do you have any thoughts on Crash's progress so far as we wait through this much? I do, you know, I think this is the time when Crash became from an A-tier to B-tier character in a way. But he had good games, I think. Most of them were quite fun. And we are still far removed from what comes to the next episode then, because I think if he's no bit of B-tier actor, let's say that, right?

Yeah. The game's next episode will be just Crash going to reality TV. Oh, geez. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. Things get weird from the next episode. Like, hopefully people look forward to that because we do get into the bit of a mire. And I'm not saying I dislike all these games because I don't. There are going to enter the real stinkers. The real wilderness years of Crash Pandercube right here. Because this was the twilight years. This was like the sunset of Crash Pandercube.

This, however, now we're in the dark. And I think we're going to have some fun in the dark. If you know what I mean, wink. Wink, wink. We didn't talk about video games, nothing else. Unless anyone's... No, no, no, never mind. No, no hidden penises this time. So yes.

So yes, thank you very much for joining me. Sean, really a pleasure. Thank you. Really enjoyed the videos. I'm very glad you came on. It's been a pleasure. Always happy to be here. Love retronauts.

Love the boys. Thanks so much for having me on. The boys. The boys and the gals, and the days and the Dems, and the marsupials and the hedgehogs. Anybody is welcome. Oh, we got rid of the hedgehogs. Oh, no.

Yeah. And Thomas, again, thank you very much for your time coming on. Always a big pleasure. I pray that I can get you all back for some other stuff. Now, thank you very much for listening. Listeners, listen to how bad I am at ending and beginning podcast. I'll never get good at it. If you've enjoyed this episode, thank you for a start.

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liked me and I'm not allowed to retaliate whatsoever. But lots of fun, lots more episodes from, you know, all the usuals from Jeremy, from Bob, from Diamond, from Kevin, from Nadia, from who the hell am I forgetting? I hope it's not someone. Jess

is on a lot, yeah? So do that, get on it. It's a great time, lots of retro chat. And once again, thank you very much for listening, and I will leave you once again with this sound. What? It was best I can do for an ending. That was a good woe. Once again, that was a good woe.

You did a good Universal Studios productions. You did a good woe. You know? Well, I don't think you can ask for much more.