Crash (Bandicoot) And Me: The Naughty underdog that defined my childhood (aka: Screw you Sonic!)

Alright, well not screw Sonic. By all means, happy 20th Sonic, you've got a pile of all time greats beneath you (which, admittedly, are stacked upon a bigger pile of all time awfuls), let's hope there's more to come.


But reading some of this week's excellent features and blogs on the blue bullet (such as this rather touching piece on Video Gamer) reminds me of something significant about my early days of gaming. I was one of those ones that was just a little bit late to the party. My early childhood was spent hypnotized by my friends playing Chip N' Dale and the Michael Jackson game on their SNES (two rather odd picks when stacked up to the rest of the console's library). I loved gaming, but, as with most, my parents didn't.

Heck, I didn't even spend time asking my parents for a console because I simply thought they wouldn't ever cave. Imagine my surprise when my older sister unwraps the silver treasure chest that was the PlayStation back in Christmas 96.

So it's a secret I don't like to admit; PlayStation was my first real console. When you're trying to write up there with the "big boys" of games journalism that can be a pretty embarrassing fact. I have fun SNES memories Golden Axe with Gareth, Mario Kart with Gareth, Super Gameboy games with - you guessed it - Gareth (if you're reading Gareth, thanks for that), but I don't have the full SNES chapter to my gaming past.

Back to 96 then, when I was six, back to a Christmas morning of Air Combat, V-Rally and Rayman. While the recent return of that armless Frenchie has sparked fond glimpses back into the past (I remember a fight for the controller breaking out with my older brother, resulting in a PlayStation updside down and a Rayman that was stuck walking back and forth between two points on the over world), he just wasn't the apple of my (now square) eye.

In fact, there was no apple of my eye. There was a wampa fruit, a gigantic apple-looking fruit that I'd virtually consume around a million billion times over the next decade or so. I am of course talking about the currency for one Crash Bandicoot, the Sony mascot as that was as much of an underdog as he was a Naughty one. Again, I had first played the game from the now-legendary Uncharted developers at a friends and fallen in love. This time it was different though, this time I was armed with the tools to take control of the orange marsupial myself.

And while I did not buy (until it was relaunched as a PS One Classic on the PSN), I did indeed borrow the original Crash Bandicoot. And I beat it. And then I beat it to the 100% mark. And it was great. Amazing. More entertaining than any film I had ever watched or any book I had ever read (not that I'd exactly covered any of those classics by then). Turtles fell victim to the vicious, crazed spin attack, crates were crushed beneath my feet and my friends and I argued over just what Aku-aku said when you burst him out of a box (I rest firmly on the belief that he randomly blabbers "Pol-key-dot!"). And I needed more.

More would come, a little unexpectedly. It was that rare occasion when without struggle, without arguments, without fake crying, your parents would take you out to buy a game. That wonderful, Christmas-come-early like occasion. I was going to buy Hercules, because the Hercules film was awesome so this game would be awesome. It was a simply theory I would later apply to A Bugs Life and The Simpsons wrestling (and I was right!), but Electronics Boutique, now known as Game, didn't have Hercules in stock. Bugger.

But what did they have? Crash Bandicoot 2: Wrath of Cortex.

I remember welling up with excitement, and desperately convincing my Dad that I didn't only just want this one because I simply had to get a game this day (which I did). I remember getting home and being so annoyed that Mum was so selfish that she actually insisted that she vacuumed the TV room before I could play. The nerve of that woman. I remember lots about Crash 2.

Now, it's quite simple really. Sticking to the developer's well-known work, Crash 1 is like Uncharted 1; a fantastic experience that is the tiniest bit rough around the edges. Crash 2 is Uncharted 2; prettier, smoother, new moves, bigger levels, more variety and every other buzzword/term I can think of.

Oh. My. God. This game was good.

One of the silent hero's new moves, the bellyflop, became a symbol of life for me. To do something so entirely stupid, pointless, yet oddly amusing, all with a big grin on your face. The fact that this - clearly quite moronic - Bandicoot became such an influence on me now that I look back is pretty stunning. A stupid dance to celebrate victory, a bazooka that shoots fruit, a massive, humanoid tiger called Tiny, legging it away from boulders like a was Indiana Rodent and a mix between a friggin' crocodile and a dingo are all strangely woven into my very being. It was like Mario had taken the happy stuff and painted himself orange, which almost feels like a good way to describe the further 13 or so years of my life that have followed.

And from then on, it was pretty much the Sonic-love you may have read about all this week. I had to have the t-shirts, the toys, the magazines with his face plastered all over them. I couldn't get enough.

It was the new Crash for every Christmas right up until Nirto Kart, the second racing adventure. I eventually learned to let go thanks to a certain mullet-haired nomad and his bandanna, which I'll go into next time, but you basically take those feelings many have expressed for Sonic and fling them onto Crash and you've got my early gaming story right there.

But sadly I somehow doubt that the games press will be painted orange as it has been blue this week come 2016. Crash will always be my PlayStation hero but he was never the world's, Sonic and, as the blog I linked put it, the Italian twat made sure of that.

But he deserved it. His 15 minutes of fame were all too short, soon to be shunned into the world of mediocre PS2 platformers and spin-offs. But for three excellent first games and a brilliant kart spin-off, Crash didn't soar, he span.

So here's me, raising my glass to you when no one else will Crash. My wardrobe, filled with clothes that I never wear, still holds my PJs and t-shirts, and there's a box full of broken action figures in shoved away in the loft that are all themed around you.

Oh and those Game Boy Advance games rock too. Those were the only two games I bought for that system (another embarrassing journalism fact for you).

You'll always be the one I wampa-root for.