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Crash Bandicoot, a gaming legend
In the universe of consoles and major production companies, every company wants to have a game that best represents it, and along with the game comes its mascot. In remote eras, mascots defined the production company, placing it at the height of its competitors in the great golden age of the “console wars”; The Nintendo there was Mario; The segaSonic and the PlayStation was still looking for its representative, and for a while it was very well represented by an anthropomorphic bandicoot (animal of Australian origin), with orange fur and pointed ears slightly similar to those of a fox, called crash.
Crash Bandicoot is a game franchise originally exclusive to PlayStation and launched by Naughty Dog, however, after some problems, it ended up going through the production of a series of companies and losing its exclusivity with the console of the Sony. The structure of this franchise is based on family friends games, three-dimensional platform games, mostly, following the pattern of stages; always well animated, colorful and with remarkable music, the Crash franchise marked an era, and it’s coming back with full force in the current generation of consoles.
The first
launched by Naughty Dog in 1996, created by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin (founders of the company), the first game in the franchise was called Crash Bandicootwhich is unique to the PlayStation. This pleasant mix between a Runer and a platform game that exploits much of the graphic power of the console’s hardware Sonywith the application of polygons and a lively scenario, welcomed many gamers and carved its mark in the hearts of players.
The game’s story takes place in the fictional Wumpa Islands, an archipelago located off the northwest coast of Australia, and in a simple way, our hero seeks to put an end to the evil plans of the villain Neo Cortex and his henchmen, as well as collect all the rare items from each stage to save your entire home.
highlights
The franchise has more than 18 games, and certainly the most outstanding are the first three and unforgettable games (Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped), therefore, we will deal with titles that are not part of the wonderful trilogy:
Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto’s Rampage
Published in June 2004 by Vivendi Games, this spinoff of the franchise, released for Game Boy Advanced, is actually a crossover between Crash Bandicoot and Spyro: The Dragon. Doctor Neo Cortex (the main villain of Crash’s adventures) decides to join forces with Ripto (the villain of Spyro’s adventures) so that they can dominate the world and destroy their main opponents. So, Ripto sends his monsters (the Riptocs) to the Wumpa Isles and to his own world, which causes, when they meet, Crash and Spyro fight each other, but when they realize they have been tricked, they set out to defeat Cortex. and Ripto.
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
In Japan, this would be the fourth game in the series (Crash Bandicoot 4: Explosion! Magician Power), released in 2001 for Xbox, Game Cube and PlayStation 2 by Vivendi Games in partnership with Konami.
On a space station floating in Earth’s orbit, Uka Uka complains to Dr. Neo Cortex, N. Gin, Tiny Tiger, Dingodile and Dr. Nefarious Tropy (the bosses in “Crash Bandicoot Warped” respectively) that their incompetence has been disastrous and says they better come up with a good plan soon so they can destroy Crash and his friends. N. Gin accidentally lets slip that Cortex has been working on a super-secret weapon day and night since the last time Crash defeated him. Cortex confirms the claim but says the crucial missing element is the power source. Hearing the word “element”, Uka Uka begins to ponder and thinks about releasing the Elementals, evil masks capable of controlling the four elements of nature and that had been hibernating for millennia. Cortex then decides to use Crunch (the super secret weapon), a bandicoot genetically altered by him (Cortex) as a test subject controlled by the Elementals.
Crash Bash
This game was the last to be released for PlayStation, developed by Eurocom Entertainment Software and released in November 2000, its idea is to be a multiplayer game party, to compete directly with the acclaimed Mario Party.
Its story is simple, in a kind of floating temple in Hyperspace, Aku Aku and Uka Uka argue to see who is better: good or evil. For this to be resolved, Aku Aku has the idea of choosing people to fight each other, as a team. Aku Aku chooses Crash and Coco, while Uka Uka chooses Dingodile, Tiny Tiger, Nitrus Brio, Neo Cortex, Koala Kong and Rilla Roo.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time
Thanks to fans, the Crash franchise has not fallen by the wayside, and on June 30, 2017, the original trilogy received a fantastic remake, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, published by the current franchise rights holder, the activision. The remeke was an overwhelming success on all current platforms, being well received by the public and critics, and with that, on June 22, 2020, the activision officially announces the fourth game in the series, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Timefor PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Xbox Series Xfor the date of October 2, 2020, something that left all the fans of the franchise crazy.
Full stop
Crash Bandicoot back “to the charts”, thanks to Microsoft. The powerful company acquired Activision, and with it the rights to the franchise on the agenda. It is worth remembering that Crash was the mascot of PlayStationtoday, one of the competitors of the console War with the Xboxand that means a lot.
