O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
For most people from post-soviet countries Playstation was the fifth generation of consoles. All of it. Sega Saturn was barely known, N64 not well known and it felt outdated due to the usage of cartridges instead of CDs, 3DO was known to only a few, no one ever heard about Jaguar and I still don’t know what an Amiga CD even is. That’s why, PS1 titles were so memorable. And most knew that a crazy mascot of PS1 was a bandicoot called Crash. But he wasn’t the only one competing for being the mascot. Apart from Gex, whom I still love due to Gex: Enter the Gecko (best 3D platformer, fight me), Spyro became extremely popular as well. And today, almost 15 years since the original Crash Bandicoot, I’ve finally decided to play these classics for the first time. So I didn’t even have to fight my nostalgic memories.
Crash Bandicoot was an immediate hit in 1996. I remember how popular it was and how many good reviews it got. Yet, playing it today, I can tell without a doubt that it’s not fun. The weird 2D in 3D perspective and controls are not fun, it’s almost impossible to judge distances and control the jumps. It’s infuriating more than anything else.
Surprisingly, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, despite still not being an actual “3D platformer” and having the weird 2D and 3D mix, was so much better. It’s still rough and the genre evolved a lot since then, but unlike the original game, this one can be enjoyable.
The last PS1 platformer in the series, Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, is arguably the best of the bunch. If you’re just planning to play the series for yourself like I have, I’d suggest just playing this one, honestly, and skipping the first one and maybe the second one too.
When Naughty Dog decided to stop making platforming titles about Crash, Insomniac, literally the same year as the last Crash title, decided to release their own take on 3D platformers – Spyro the Dragon. And it’s really good. It doesn’t feel outdated, it’s actually 3D, it still looks surprisingly good and most importantly it’s still extremely fun. It had lots of little cool ideas too, like the whole concept of the life meter shown as your companion firefly colour or the way sprinting worked.
The sequel, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage! was plain better mechanically while also growing in terms of style and the story. If the original Spyro didn’t grab your attention, this sequel certainly will. It’s a fantastic 3D platformer and arguably one of the best examples in the genre to this day.
Which makes the existence of Spyro: Year of the Dragon questionable. Where Crash was improving with each release (and to be fair it started at such a low point that it had a lot of room to improve), Spyro peaked at the second game and this one felt like a pointless rehash of the same stuff. It also suffers from the Sonic titles issue of having countless “friends” who muddy the water too much without being interesting. It’s certainly not a bad game, just a really-really pointless one.
I was surprised to see how these early 3D era platformers aged, especially since this was my first experience with all of them. Apart from the infuriating gameplay of the original Crash and the somewhat pointless existence of the last Spyro, these games are still worth revisiting today, especially if you have never experienced them before. Also Gex: Enter the Gecko’s great, but I might revisit that one some other day.