Comment by overdunk
8 years ago
Crash Bandicoot had repellent level design.
Placing it next to Super Nintendo's Super Mario World is like placing catfood on the same table as Thankgiving dinner.
Believe me, I suffered through more than 15 minutes of the game.
I'd agree to some extent - there was far too much focus on "frustration" based gameplay for my liking. Some of the levels are simply much too difficult for more casual players. I don't think I personally finished the game without using one of those cheat memory cards that gave you 99 lives etc, which was never the case with any Mario instalment. I still remember it fondly though, and visually it's aged incredibly well for a 3D PlayStation title.
I'd argue Crash is often held in high regard more because at the time in the mid-nineties it was assumed a console _had_ to have a big mascot franchise in the mould of Mario or Sonic, and Crash was a great character design. Many people seemed to be excited that Sony "finally" had a Mario competitor. I certainly felt at the time that Crash was going to grow into this role for Sony, which didn't really happen.
Most of the frustration I remember had to do with the lack of depth perception, especially in Warped (which I remember best). It was certainly a fun game - I'd spend hours on end playing it - but it was also frustrating to be unable to properly judge exactly how far Crash needs to jump lest he plummet into a bottomless pit (or a stack of nitro boxes).
Probably accurate. And based on the quip from the article where the original nickname for the game was "Sonic's Ass" the rest falls into place.
Basically, I remember the main character kind of just hovering in place, and performing slow levitating jumps, while the scenery flies by.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK-h4M4Aetg
Looks like my memory is halfway correct, since I forgot about the side-scrolling levels, which I thought were from one of the follow-up sequels, and not the original game.
Ugh, the music and sound effects. Still horrible.