PSX · Classic Vidya Review
Crash Bandicoot
Completed 19 Feb 2024
Cover Art
Ending Screen
- It’s kinda another one of those retro games you “have to” play, being such a classic and all. This was my first time through it, I never played as a kid.
- The first 20-30% of the game: Extremely fun! After that…. kinda a slog in places
- There are some rough edges where it’s really obvious that everyone was still figuring out “this whole 3d thing.”
- The ending pictured is what happens when you go straight through the regular levels, not the 100% ending. This game is too hard for my boomer reflexes, and the checkpoint system is too annoying, for me to attempt getting all the emeralds for the good ending.
- Speaking of the checkpoint system, the one here in Crash Bandicoot might be the worst one I have ever encountered. You are only allowed to save your game when you collect 3 of a certain token on a stage, and then you have to play a “bonus stage” to the end in order to get to the Save point. You can die in this bonus stage, get sent back to the level you were on, and finish it without ever saving. At that point, you have to decide whether to attempt the level again just to get a save, or keep going and hope there are Checkpoint tokens in the next level (usually there aren’t, in back to back levels)
- The deeper into the game you get, the worse the balancing is. I beat the final boss on my very first try. It took me probably 10 tries to beat the second boss in the game. I’m not sure this is because my skills were improving.
- While all of the bosses are pretty easy compared to the stages themselves, even the stages get weird at the end, difficulty-wise. The last 3-4 levels are not bad at all compared to some of the really awful ones in the middle of the game.