Marsupials on Parade!

An orange ball of fur comes loping up, that silly grin plastered over his ever-optimistic face and a devilish glint in his eye. He jumps, tucks, rolls, and sliiides … leaps back up and spins into a whirling dervish of fury as he bursts through the Playstation® wall and onto the Xbox® stage in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. He's making the new scene. Checking out the locale. And, he's just as cool as he's ever been. Crash Bandicoot belongs in the ranks of signature-characters like Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog and Nintendo's Mario. In fact, he started out as Sony's mascot, ready to be instantly identified with Playstation. So, set the way-back machine for 1996, take a wild ride back into the past, and check out his not-so-humble beginnings.

Crash Bandicoot's Playstation debut was not meant to revolutionize platformers, even though the game did a few cool things. The best and brightest move was Naughty Dog's development, which all but eliminated the side-scrolling adventure format. From the start, Crash had a freedom that other characters envied. He scrolled forward, up, and down. Sometimes you followed right behind him. Other times you watched from a great bird's-eye view. The camera often shifted within a level, which was a refreshing touch to an old concept.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

But what really made Crash Bandicoot stand out was his on-screen attitude. Crash was never much of a worrier. With his casual sneakers and hip shades, you got the idea that he was really a laid-back kind of guy. But watch out when he got riled. Thanks to some genetic experiments and a good dose of natural hyperactivity, he could go from "hey dude" to "outta my way" in two shakes of a bandicoot's leg. This attitude followed him into his next adventures, Cortex Strikes Back and Warped. Each game introduced new elements to the franchise, with a move toward less linear gameplay and wonderful (if odd) stories that kept mixing technology with cartoon humor. Crash had become a true fan favorite by the time Warped made the stage in 1998, and now the eager players had a time-travel adventure on their hands that took their heroic orange marsupial on adventures through ancient Egypt and into the future. Free-movement settings that placed Crash on a Jet Ski® (among other vehicles) also made for an interesting breakaway from traditional scrolling adventures. And hey, Jet Skis are cool, too. Crash doesn't do mopeds. He does, however, get into racing and demolition. His next two games were in the ever-popular series of racing titles released from Sony and included Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash. These games explored the idea of free-roaming levels even more. In a way, it was a slight side step from the regular Crash Bandicoot titles, but with 20/20 hindsight you can see the benefit that shows up in his next major adventure, The Wrath of Cortex.

This game is not set on rails. See?

And something else was up with Crash as well. He came under new management as Vivendi Universal Interactive took over the franchise for the relaunch of Crash Bandicoot onto Playstation 2. Suddenly, Crash was looking at a much larger world than he'd ever known before—a world that included Nintendo and Microsoft as well as Sony. Dr. Neo Cortex was coming at him from all sides, with one dastardly plan lined up after another, and Crash, well, his safe little home in Playstation was gone. He met that challenge with typical Crash-ness. You can imagine the waggle of eyebrows, as Crash lifts his shades to slip you a wink. "Hey. No prob." Crash is back in a big way. Spinning off into an Xbox-powered world, he looks better than ever. The Wrath of Cortex follows the same design as other game station ports, but he's discovered a few new things about himself on Xbox. First and foremost, he has real fur thanks to Xbox texturizing and the hardware's "fur-shading" ability. He also runs smoother (in his trademark loping gait) and slips through his animated scenes with more grace than ever before. And he'll need all the grace he can get. Dr. Neo Cortex is back, too, and he has a new weapon in his arsenal. Is it going to be bandicoot versus bandicoot? How much more of the world's (and the universe's) weight can one marsupial shoulder?

Crash just smiles.

Article by Danny Chihdo