By the mid-90s the home console war revolved around Nintendo and Sony Computer Entertainment. Sony’s PlayStation may have been released first, but the Nintendo 64 won audiences over with their new games. Rebooting new title from the Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong series reeled in millions in profits and took Nintendo right to the top of the chart. Titles such as Donkey Kong 64 and Super Mario 64 played on the nostalgia factor, taking players back to the time when the Super Nintendo was still popular.
Both Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo utilized their popular characters as their brand mascot in order to capture their audience’s attention. Nintendo already has their slew of characters (Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, to name a few!) while Sony PlayStation revolved their brand around Crash Bandicoot. Crash Bandicoot was the answer to Sony’s lack of any mascot character that would compete with Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario. He is an orange bandicoot who spins around like a tornado, knocking off any enemies/boxes at his sight. His main quest is to defeat his antagonist Doctor Neo Cortex before he completes his scheme of world domination.
Crash made his first appearance on the Sony PlayStation with the title Crash Bandicoot in September 9th, 1996. Players can run, jump, slide, and spin away any enemies that could hinder his journey to defeat Doctor Neo Cortex. This release followed with the release of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (October 31st, 1997) and Crash Bandicoot: Warped (November 4th, 1998). Sony hasn’t made any announcement about other Crash Bandicoot titles lately…until now!
Sony announced that all three Crash Bandicoot titles from the PlayStation will be remastered for the PS4. The remastered games will become a trilogy pack titled Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Vicarious Visions utilized the original level geometry as a guide, but they also rebuilt the gameplay by adding its own ‘lush and zany art, animation, and audio’. Other than level design, the characters will also be rebuilt through the original designs as well as updated cinematics inspired from the originals.
Three other unique features for the game include:
- Unified checkpoint & save game system (including manual & auto-saving)
- Unified menu system
- Time trials for ALL three games
The rebooted trilogy won’t be released until 2017, so you’ll have to wait until AFTER Christmas to pick up this nostalgic title. What’s interesting is that it isn’t the first video game to be making a re-mastered comeback. We’ve seen this trend of releasing old games with the launch of the NES Classic Mini and the Sega Mega Drive (see my former post here!). This trend of reboot classic titles is being heavily favored by the Millennial audience because these were the games that they grew up with.
It was great to hear about Crash Bandicoot getting a rebooted trilogy series! I used to love playing the Crash Bandicoot series when I was kid and I look forward to this game’s release. Now I may always have been Team Nintendo, but I loved playing some titles from Sony and Sega! Mario and Sonic already got their reboots and now it was Crash’s time to shine for Sony Computer Entertainment.
Remastering Crash Bandicoot will truly increase people’s awareness of Sony’s brand mascot. This is an easy and cheaper way to bring back awareness of Crash Bandicoot without having to come up with a whole new title for him. This nostalgia strategy is really increasing video game sales for 2016. Video game sales haven’t been slumping, but it is providing a boost for the latest consoles.
With that, I am excited for the release of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. This and other titles make it seem more convenient to purchase a PlayStation 4 soon. Here’s to Crash spinning into the 2017 with his rebooted adventure!
makesandcastlesnotwar 
Good post! Video game nostalgia is definitely bigger than ever this year, and I expect we’re going to see the return to many classic franchises in the coming years as well. After all, when the kids who grew up playing these games get into the industry, it’s only natural that we’d see interest in returning to franchises like Crash. Hopefully we can get a proper Spyro game soon 😀
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Thank you for the comment! Yeah nostalgia has been a huge trend in video games this year & it isn’t slowing down anytime soon. It would be nice to see another Spyro game soon!
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Yeah definitely! I appreciate what the Skylander games are doing, but we really need a stand alone experience that brings him back front and center! 😀
That said, do you share your posts on any other websites? I work over at Creators .Co (we’re part of Movie Pilot and Now Loading) and this is the sort of content that makes for an interesting read. If you were open to the idea of posting your work on our sites in addition to also having your blog/site here, I’d be more than happy to help you get started. My e-mail and more info can be found on my page. (o^.^)b
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Great point Paul! I am most definitely interested in sharing my work for your website. I’ll contact you later today. Thanks!
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