Naughty Dog
Crash Bandicoot

August 1994, somewhere between Boston and Los Angeles. Two 24-year-old guys, Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, while stuffing their faces with McDonald's sauces, are seemingly shooting the breeze.

"Oh, man, this 3D stuff is really cool! Racing games, fighting games... surely everyone's switching to this 3D."

"And the platformers?"

"...Well, we could think about that! Who knows what would come out of it..."

"Well, since the character would always be seen from behind, we could call it 'Sonic's Butt Game'!"

Laughter ensues endlessly.

Too bad Andy and Jason aren't just any young guys, but rather the co-founders of the legendary Naughty Dog. And so it turns out that Sonic's butt game gets made, and it's for the Playstation, Sony's brand-new console: sexy stuff, unlike those half-baked ideas of Atari Jaguar and 3DO. And while we're at it, still talking about Sonic, why not create a mascot for this Playstation too? Thus, the Crash Bandicoot saga was about to be born, with its first, legendary episode appearing in 1996.

I won't go on about the plot, which is pretty well-known. There are the usual two mad scientists, Doctor Nitrus Brio and especially Neo(nazi) Cortex, who as a hobby want to conquer the planet and, with a stroke of genius, think they can do it with an army of humanoid and evil animals. It ends up that one day two fresh bandicoots, Crash and his... little friend... Tawna, arrive at the lab; Cortex wants to make Crash the leader of his henchmen, but everything goes wrong, the Cortex Vortex is still in the testing phase, Crash is good and gets thrown out, everything goes to hell. The moral is easy to deduce, you make it up. The fact is, our hero in blue shorts wakes up on the beach of N. Sanity Island. This is, of course, the farthest point from Cortex's lair, which Crash has to reach by crossing three islands filled with a myriad of dangers, from bat-like traffic lights to potoroo men throwing toxic waste at him.

If you're looking for a list of technical details, look elsewhere. "Crash Bandicoot" is a hardcore platformer, the joy of completing the game with just two moves, jumping and the iconic spin, knowing there's always something lurking; all characterized by structures halfway between 2D and 3D: linear, but with some notable exceptions (who has forgotten "Cortex Power"?). There are also variations, like boss levels, riding levels (on a boar?) on a boar, and those stunning ones with the boulder rolling on your (s)back.

But I want to talk about something else, I want to talk about why I love this game: because it lets me savor the taste of originality, the aroma of bygone times, when a Crash game was stuffed with cheats, when you could find... passwords. An element I consider of primary importance in this first chapter is the atmosphere. I don’t know how, but it always fits perfectly, whether it’s a level up the...river, running in darkness, or a walk on a non-existent bridge 3 km high. Critical are the expressiveness of truly remarkable graphics and a soundtrack that always manages to give an idea, to summarize the type of level in question. Tell me if the track for "Slippery Climb" doesn’t suggest you might slip into the abyss at any moment. Tell me if that of the unforgettable "Generator Room" didn’t make you stain the couch yellow.

There’s another aspect that gets me over the moon: the difficulty. This is, by far, the hardest Crash platformer. Remember the second episode? There, too, to collect the gems you had to break all the crates, but if you died it was no problem, checkpoint and on you go. In fact, they thought, if in some levels you didn’t die until a certain point, you earned the right to access a secret area. Well, nothing like that here. Here the main collectible isn’t the crystals, but rather the gems, and just dying once during any level nullifies all your efforts. Hence the cult status acquired by nightmares like "Slippery Climb", the endless "Sunset Vista" and the legendary "Stormy Ascent", removed from the final version because it was too difficult. Not to mention the crate bridge in "Castle Machinery". In short, for Crash, jumping on the end-level portal, not to wipe his forehead, we had to break a sweat, but it was worth it, because you ended up in the "winner's room": an intimate, cozy place (that atmosphere again! Sigh), where you knew you’d be rewarded for your efforts, only to be gently told you hadn’t broken a crate. How many curses, what nostalgia.

Yeah, then you had to get the keys too, but they were found at the end of N. Cortex’s bonuses (or rather, maluses), and heck, what do I know, I would die after two seconds.

I could say that the gems contribute to the game’s longevity, but I must hurry to conclude, emotions are about to take over. Yes, because this video game for me is a symbol, the symbol of an age now lost, when, at the end of the 90s, we talked continuously about gems (there was also Spyro!), we joked about Playstation 3 and 4 comparing them to an alien invasion and to have fun "all you needed" was a marsupial that jumped, spun, smashed crates and, as they say, shouldn't die. And don’t talk to me about Playstation Network or similar things: different times, the race has overtaken the runner, I no longer understand a thing. Would a game like this "suffice" for today’s kids? I don't know, let someone who knows more than this ignorant enthusiast answer.

Sigh.