Sep 072016
The Boundin’ Bandicoot turns 20 years old this month, so we’re looking back at his original PlayStation adventures. Thumping drums, twangy rock and tinkly xylophones provide a backdrop for this chart-topping trilogy.
SHOW NOTES
0:00:00 – N Sanity Beach (Crash Bandicoot)
0:12:57 – Hog Wild (Crash Bandicoot)
0:15:11 – Pinstripe (Crash Bandicoot)
0:17:21 – Slippery Climb (Crash Bandicoot)
0:25:16 – Snow Go (Cortex Strikes Back)
0:31:06 – Hang Eight (Cortex Strikes Back)
0:34:44 – Bear It (Cortex Strikes Back)
0:48:46 – Warp Room (Warped)
0:50:54 – Motorcycle (Warped)
0:53:24 – Dingodile (Warped)
1:02:20 – Ending Credits (Cortex Strikes Back)
Guys, of COURSE the best game in the Mario/Crash/NiGHTs competition was Mario. Not even close. I was still clinging to my Saturn at the time, so of course I bought NiGHTs and the controller. It was a beautiful game. I spent the first few days trying to play as the kids, exploring the whimsical settings for as long as possible before the alarm clock caught up with me.
It wasn’t until I actively tried to beat the game with that I realized how shallow the gameplay is. NiGHTs, at its core, is a top-down car comatose racing game where your only weapon is driving circles around your opponent. The way you win is get the most kills and the fastest lap times. That’s IT.
I had been playing the game for weeks before I realized this point. I already had he N64 and Mario at that point, but now, 20 years later, I think me beating NiGHTs was the point at which I gave up on Sega. I had a DC, and I still love the company and the memories we’ve shared over the past 30+ years, but I think that game is the point where I stopped believing in them.
Fun tracks from Crash, BTW. I think they’re dated in a way that hasn’t come back in style yet, and that might be another big reason why they don’t speak to us. You’re right, I felt the same way about the Spyro tracks. I wonder if the kids who were 10 when these games came out feel differently.
Just throwing this out there, but when are you gonna do the Ridge Racer series? You’ve done Tekken…..I don’t know about you, but I think Rage Racer has some of the best techno/jungle/drum n’ bass to ever grace a game.
Still hanging on every episode, Elston! Thank you!
Please ignore the word “comatose” above. Siri is an idiot sometimes.
I can finally die happy.
There seems to be a typo in the filename. No big deal, obviously…love the show!
I have…mixed feelings about Crash. Enjoyed the demos of them back in the day but never owned / truly checked them out until they were on PSN. OK so Crash 2 and Warped I think are still OK, but I had the first one on my first smartphone, an Xperia Play, and it was a frustrating experience, most notably for the convoluted save mechanic (you can only save your game after collecting three items in the levels, which take you to a bonus round, which if you fail said bonus round, you don’t get to save your game).
I’d probably give Crash 2 and Warped a fair shake in their PSone Classics forms, but I think maybe I’ll just wait for the Remasters.
Musically, I sorta agree that the music is more “listenable” when paired with the actual gameplay, although the main theme has been ingrained in my head thanks to the amount of time I put into the Xperia Play version.
I’ll give it to you guys for trying to be nice here, since this podcast has been so great at celebrating video game music and its impact on even non-gamers, but this soundtrack… man, it’s not great. I don’t say that about game music a lot. Crash 1 sounds like a toy drum kit handed off to a psychotic toddler.
(And I rather liked the Spyro 1 soundtrack–but I was a fan of Stewart Copeland before I finally got to playing with little purple dragons.)
Best quote: “But if you listen to it on its own, you’re a serial killer.”
Completely agree with Brett saying, “The point of this show is to illustrate trying to separate nostalgia and be like no-no-no, this music is good even if you don’t have an attachment to it. This one I struggle with…”
I have only a mild nostalgia for this game. The first one was a fun discovery on a demo PSX in EB back in the day, but I never played through it the whole way or any of the others in the series. When you’re playing and paying more attention to the action, the music is just a nice tone-setter, but man I could not just listen to this while driving to work or something.
It’s surprisingly thin too; kind of like a guy messing with the keyboards in the back of a guitar store.