Crash Bandicoot is a "DEAD END"

It's worth noting that the same article also wanks off Sonic (and Zelda but not important) i.e. the other platformer that "was never good".

attempt to revive dormant IP

make bad game

assume nobody likes this IP

let it die

wait ten years

repeat

WOAH

crash turns 30 next year

woah...

Crash 4 was an abomination.
As if feminist Tawna wasn't enough, they proceeded to create faggy donut steels in that party spin off that died instantly.

crash is a garbage series and it only became popular due to mario envy.

I don't understand why people care. Crash was dead the moment it left PS1 and other companies started tarnishing it. This is the same old story for most platformer characters. If you grew up with him I feel sorry for you, but the time to let go was long ago. I get that the remasters breathed some life back into the IP, but Crash 4's reception is an indication enough that some IPs are left better in their graves.

What companies should be doing, is making new platformer IPs for kids to get into. Something fresh to drag them away from Robloxs, Fornite and Minecraft.

What companies should be doing, is making new platformer IPs for kids to get into. Something fresh to drag them away from Robloxs, Fornite and Minecraft.

Companies are ran by jews now. They can't into creativity.

Never heed the words of journalists

I too don't understand why people still like things that I personally am not interested in

Beat me to it.

Crash 4's reception is an indication enough that some IPs are left better in their graves

Right, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Crash 4 just wasn't good. If you make a bad revival and people don't like it, that means they never wanted a new one in the first place despite saying they did.

mid party game

Is what consoles were for, 30 years ago. That's how Nintendo built their console business. Not by chasing a deep narrative and good graphics but by giving players the same games they loved playing as a child, just with updated visuals.

Because they refuse to post the actual truth: major companies are killing themselves because they've decided to buy lottery tickets to make money (try to make the next addict-slop Fortnite) rather than get a job (tried and true medium budget, medium return genre games).

Doesn't matter. The only people wanting to make it are the guys you say suck, while nobody else, including the original creators care.

original creators

That's not Jason Rubin or Andy Gavin you fucking poser.

give IP to studio

they remaster the first trilogy

people really like it, IP revived

they make a remaster of the kart game

people really like this one too

Activi$ion chooses to never release it on PC because ???

send studio to the CoD mines

give IP to different studio

they make a direct sequel

it's very derivative and received with mixed results

next they make a console only moba(???)

nobody plays it

IP dead again

The only people wanting to make it

You think Toys 4 Bob is the only developer that wanted to make a Crash game? Why?

everything but making fun video games

Why is it so popular? Then comes indie fun games and they all wonder

"HOW THE FUCK IS THIS POSSIBLE?!"

noooo stop liking old IP

my man I'm not gonna suddenly start caring about whatever your buddies at activision are making even if you somehow convince me to stop caring about crash

Where honestly could crash go?

Semi open world or open world collectathons. Just like many other platformers. Even fucking Mario evolved like that.

He’s right.

The resurgence was aways going to come to a halt once they had to make an actual new title, with or without Toys for Bob at the helm. A majority of the people who bought the remakes did it because “oh I played that as a kid” and not “oh I love the Crash Brandicoot IP”

Crash is another series so intrinsically linked to the 90's perhaps it's only natural he'd be a dead end today

Counter argument: picsreel was essentially a Crash Bandicoot game with a gravity gimmick

It’s almost like Activision is incompetent and completely propped up by farting out yearly installments of the same slop that those fans gobble up no matter what

Bandicoots only live for 2-4 years so it's natural that he died

doesn't need to go anywhere when there's nothing else like it in [current year]. the only 3d platformers around these days are collectathons and metroidvanias, literally why not make another game like the ps1 trilogy?

b-b-but crash 4

sucked, try again

sly cooper 1 was essentially a crash game too

Where honestly could crash go?

Dragon Quest has gone on since the fucking NES with 0 notable "shakeups"
Not everything needs to constantly be "innovating"

"Gamer News articles" threads are just as cancerous as twitter threads. Kill yourself.

this, I hate hearing news about video games

tfw grew up with Mario games and they're still going strong

Feels good, man.

Naughty dog did do that in jak and daxter. Thats kind of the issue , you might as well just make a new series and let old series be old

There's a joke in here about how Sonic games tend to be experimental, shifting in design from game to game. At the same time, that willingness to be experimental is why he's still around.

Not really, the problem Crash has is that after the PS1 the IP was given to other companies that tarnished it with low quality titles losing fan's goodwill, about the only decent one from that era is twinsanity and even then this one was sabotaged by a combination of incompetent developers and time constraints so the game ended up being rushed.
Another problem is that Crash is very based on the Looney Tunes, and the LT aren't that popular nowadays, in fact an animated movie was recently released and it was a commercial flop barely breaking even
Crash is at the same level as Rayman where it'll have his niche fanbase but it'll not be that popular and will only get a game every once in a while

so was jak & daxter

grew with Mario, Sonic, Crash and Spyro

The latter two are dead with Spyro in particular not even getting a chance at a revival beyond the trilogy remasters, Mario has always been going strong and Sonic has been a complete mess for 90% of its lifetime, but I suppose its strength as an IP is just so high it can withstand any potential failure.

Why is this a new concept for anyone? There's very few classic franchises that ever benefitted from going on forever. They might make money but no one genuinely likes it anymore. See: Star Wars, Simpsons, capeshit slop

See: Star Wars, Simpsons, capeshit slop

Right, nothing to do with the fact that the people handling these IPs are incompetent and putting out bad products. It's totally the consumers who decided they suddenly don't like the IP.

Spyro was always superior.

crash 4 great

massively underselling CTR

Useless article by charlatan

AI slop

Let crash stay dead

Crash 4 is great. Only seething casuals hate Crash 4 because it was too hard to 100% and they wanted the piss easy 100% that Crash 1-3 provide. Crash 4 is the best Crash game in terms of gameplay and content.

Crashing out

I've heard this term for the first time a few months ago and I'm already sick of hearing it. No other new term was ran into the ground this hard.

Its about a guy who jumps into boxes, where honestly could Mario go

This is true. Actual Crash fans liked Crash 4, but most "Crash" fans don't actually like Crash, they just want to reminisce about their childhood. Hence they get a game that plays almost identically to the original 3 games and they hated it.

Crash was never good. Naughty Dog was always a glorified shovelware house.

they get a game that plays almost identically to the original 3 games

You and I both know that literally isn't true in the fucking slightest.

Actual Crash fans

So you're saying the Crash fanbase is so small that making games for them is a mistake?

What are you talking about. It absolutely does. The differences are mostly in 100%, the base game is almost 1 for 1 crash with the only real difference is that the levels are longer.

Yes.

replying to bad b8

The differences are mostly in 100%

Crash is a collectathon. 100%ing is the entire fucking point, and the level design it forces you to go through while 100%ing is so vastly different that trying to pretend it's the same as the originals is fundamentally retarded.

Yeah? That's why naughty dog bailed after 3 (ctr was a bonus game). Twinsanity could have salvaged it if the true vision of it was met but there's not much the devs are willing to do with him.
Saying that, TFB fucked it all up

Is it bait though?

Why should I care? The most recent Crash game I own is Twinsanity, and I still play the old games from time to time and keep enjoying them. You don't have to pump new stuff constantly.

It's not. 100% is one way to play the game, but Crash 1-3 were not designed around kids 100%ing the game. 100% is a way to play the game, but it's not the "intended" way to play the game. The intended way to beat the game is simply beating the final boss.

I did 100% Crash 4 and found it very enjoyable however. It has flaws, but I much prefer how difficult it was compared to the complete joke that Crash 1-3 were. 100% Crash 1-3 was almost non-existent and basically amounted to just beating the game anyway. I am talking the originals not the remakes (Crash 1 and 2 for example had no time trials)

You get a bad ending when you don't 100% the old games.

That's an interesting thought. Why didn't you get a bad ending when you didn't %100 Crash 4? Seems like a HUGE oversight given the tradition from Crash 1 to CTR.

I did 100% Crash 4 and found it very enjoyable however

(You)

Do you think the average person in 1996 had access to the internet and even knew there were secret endings for 100%? It may as well have been "That kid" tier shitposting because everything was just word of mouth.

Secret stuff was mostly in addition to 100% that added up your completion to more than 100, but you didn't have to get them for the good endings.

average person in 1996

I had gaming magazines which told me such things. Even then, Crash 1 has that weird level you can't complete without getting all the gems. Not exactly a secret.

Bro the bad endings literally have the characters tell you "you didn't get all those other stuff so you didn't win" little kids could still understand something as simple as that

Somebody told me the actual ending to beating Venom II in StarFox64 and I thought he was bullshitting me until YouTube came around and I saw it for myself

It's a balancing act to keep a brand alive. Look at how the car industry has kept their popular models alive over the decades like Porsche with the 911.

All the models over the years have the same DNA but have very different driving experiences.

Videogame series should be treated in a similar fashion which they have to success before like crash racing. Making something different enough to be fresh but similar enough to the old to not feel like something totally alien

and even knew there were secret endings for 100%?

Dude, literally every single bad ending aside from Crash 1 shows you all the shit you missed and basically tells you to go back and get it. It's like Eggman juggling the chaos emeralds at the end of the Sonic bad endings.

Megaman got twelve games, more if you count stuff like the Game Boy games, and never got tiresome. It has a lot of gameplay experiments but they happened in spinoffs, some of which were also very successful and long-lived. You don't need to reinvent the wheel if you have a winning formula.

defeated again! this is not fair! maybe i can retire to a nice big beach, with a nice big drink, and a woman with nice bags of... ice for my head...

ITS NOT OVER BANDICOOT, THERE ARE STILL THE GEMS, WE STILL HAVE A CHANCE TO TRIUMPH! HAHAHAHAHA

Warped was kino

your career is a dead end nog, time to start a youtube channel and a patreon grift like the rest of your journo friends.

This such a weird cope. Pretty much every game of the era did this. Games to this day still do this. What "100%" gives varied completely off the game. Magazines were often wrong as well because they just made up bullshit as well. Sometimes it unlocked something cool, sometimes it was a secret ending, sometimes it was just a picture and others it was nothing.

Game information back in 1996 was abysmal and full of bullshit. 100% was never the intended way for people to play the game. It was just a bonus for people who wanted to keep playing as an extra challenge. The normal ending was acceptable for most players.

I love 100% but people are talking about Crash with 2025 lens instead of what Crash actually was back in the 90's and early 00's.

Megaman fans have had enough food

I will be forever omegamad Clancy Brown never came back as Cortex in any Crash game after CNK.
The faggots at toys for niggers had the perfect opportunity to do so with the time travel shit in Crash 4 but I doubt they even knew Brown was Cortex's second VA anyway.

I played the remake of 2 and realized I should have read the damn manual as a kid. The long jump trivializes half the game

NOBODY GOT 100%

The game was literally designed around it.

NOBODY KNEW HOW TO GET 100%

The game tells you what you missed explicitly.

NOBODY DID IT BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KNOW IT WOULD DO ANYTHING

I'd still buy Mega Man 12, Mega Man X9, Battle Network 7, Zero 5 or ZX3

This whole ending discussion just made me realize how Crash 4 doesn't have a proper "good" ending or a proper "bad" ending. I mean, what exactly happened? Uka Uka still being alive is a good ending how? And the "bad" ending is just them playing video games while Cortex gets sent off to the end of the universe. Why were we even collecting gems in this game at all?

No really, you collect Gems in Crash 1, 2, and 3 for story reasons. They didn't need to be in 4. Why did they even bother?

Pretty sure he voiced Uka Uka too. He also voiced Mr. Krabs, and Long Feng in Avatar. I like hearing their lines and picking up that Cortex voice coming through. Kino guy

youtube.com/watch?v=YVqz3tTtlB0

because they're a collectible
sometimes developers forget to put a reason for collecting, beyond just collecting

No you are moving the goalpost. The argument isn't "Nobody got 100%". The argument is "100% isn't the intended way to play the game". Tons of people got 100% in Crash, it's not even hard. The argument is that playing through to the end without caring about box counts was the intended way for most people to play the game.

Pretty sure he voiced Uka Uka too

He did. I just made a mental shortcut because I always assume everyone knows Clancy Brown voiced a few characters in Crash.

It's a video game. You collect the gems because it's fun or satisfying to do so. The secret endings are just fun extras if you go that extra mile. Why does everything have to have some narrative element to it?

The argument is that playing through to the end without caring about box counts was the intended way for most people to play the game.

game literally shows you every single box you missed after every single level in the first game

the two following games force you to walk past a giant conspicuous "5/100" counter every fucking level

Why does everything have to have some narrative element to it?

Because Crash 1, 2, and 3 had narrative elements to them. You called the game "Crash Bandicoot 4" so I'm going to hold you to those standards. Should've called it something else like "Crash Twinsanity", but even then that's a shitty defense.

Not that anon, but it can always be nice to have some context as to why you're doing something. At their core, you could often remove a game's story outright so you're just mechanically doing what the game expects you to do, but that can feel a bit drab. Would at least expect some visuals and some two sentence explanation, than playing as featureless box in a gray room.

Yes? Mario 64 shows you stars you don't have yet every time you jump into a level. Does that mean they actually intended for every player to get every star?

Showing the extra's and telling players "Hey, there is more here" is just good design, it doesn't mean they actually intended for you to get all of them, otherwise it would block your progression until you get them.

Not everything does but it was a nice bit of worldbuilding, despite everything about the games being a cartoon, the games were fairly grounded and had pretty solid world building including the gems being a part of the world.

At least SEGA regularly makes Sonic games compared to the latter two.

Still bullshit that the secret levels in Crash 3's NTSC version give you an automatic platinum relic regardless of your time while the PAL version has actual times you need to beat for them

Hey could be worse
Could be trying to get Excalibur 2 in FF9

Yeah they wanna get rid of fun game characters so every game is the last of us II,as in kill white men simulators

Pal version wasn't too bad, you just take a mask in and tank the nitro destroying it before you grab the clock and the dino level was es

it doesn't mean they actually intended for you to get all of them

You do know the game blocks your progression if you don't have enough Stars right? You need the power of the stars to unlock all the doors. Furthermore, the narrative is that Bowser didn't know about all the Stars in the castle hence why he's surprised if you have more Stars than needed to unlock his final door.

Why don't they just sell these characters to companies that are cool with reliable niche audiences? Why is it always some fucker reaching for the stars with some old mascot when even Sonic can only do okay.

Sure, but you don't need all the stars to beat bowser. In the same way you don't need gems to progress in Crash. It's purely optional content that you can seek and when you do, you get bonus content (such as your dialogue posted and the secret ending in Crash). The developers didn't make the game expecting you to get all stars or all the gems otherwise they would've required you do so.

In the same way you don't need gems to progress in Crash.

Except that Crash gives you an explicit bad ending if you don't, unlike SM64.

Crash worldbuilding is largely in it's level design though. Early Crash games were 100% "rule of cool" games. They made cool and interesting levels and taped some basic reason to go investigate the levels. The overall narrative was total secondary though to the actual experience of playing the game.

It's crazy to think how bad modern video game story telling has rotted out what good "video game" story telling is. Video games are the definition of show don't tell and Crash is a great example of this.

The developers didn't make the game expecting you to get all stars

Yes they did or they wouldn't have put them in the game. Furthermore, you can't meet Yoshi if you don't get all the stars.

But none of that matters cause you are wrong. You tried using Mario as an excuse and got BTFO'd.

You can do a lot with how to deliver a story in video games, but I guess as the other anons put it, there was some semblance of a reason for the collectibles to exist. Whether it's a good or bad thing that Crash 4 skimps out on said reasons can come down to personal taste, and I guess in a way, it's just another thing to dogpile the game for given the other faults players have with it.

Bad end.

No, normal end. A bad end implies the ending is in defeat. Crash 1 and 2 are both normal ends. Crash 3 is probably the only real "bad" end.

has by and far the best kart racing game

just make CTR2 and try to make the load times good for easy money

The Cortex Vortex is still around if you get the bad ending. Only getting the gems will allow N. Brio to destroy it and give you the good ending. 3 is a bad ending as you said, and in CTR Oxide tells you he won't leave Earth alone if you don't get all the relics, and in order to get all of those you need all the other collectibles anyway, completing the 100%.

It's a shame Crash 4 was made with such an anti-fun corner scratching framework in mind

mishandled franchise doesn't perform well

Whoa!

Crash bandicoot returns and crash bandicoot tropical freeze

astrobot and mario 3d worlds are also kinda crash games too.

Kinda but also wrong, Beenox and VV made more money while being in the COD mines than by making Crash games.
It's also why toys4bobs got the job, they know they could kill COD if they worked on it.

Crash 1 doesn't have a narrative reason to collect gems. Crash 3 doesn't have a narrative reason to collect time relics (that I recall at least). There is no narrative reason for colored gems or death gems.

Even then, what are you to do? Invent an arbitrary bullshit reason for gems to exist, even though it doesn't fit the narrative? Remove the gems because they don't fit the narrative? Create some other collectable solely so it fits the narrative?

There was never any winning here. The gems were included because almost every crash game has gems and it's iconic to the series as the optional collectable.

Make game that emphasizes all the worst parts of crash and none of the positives

Series dies

Gee maybe trusting toys for retards wasn't a swell idea.

Crash 3 doesn't have a narrative reason to collect time relics (that I recall at least). There is no narrative reason for colored gems or death gems.

Uka Uka says "there are still the gems". In order to get all the gems you need all the relics, as they unlock levels 25-30. And the colored gems unlock paths for other gems, and the death paths have gems in them. It all ties up for 100%

Gee maybe trusting toys for retards wasn't a swell idea.

Specially after they fucked the spyro remakes

True but I wish MArio and Zelda would hit their dead end as they are stale as fuck

Most franchises are. Its the elephant in the room

this

Toys for Bob

toys for bob was genius and so was skylanders and disney infinity and lego dimensions, it was from an era of innovation and prosperity and was insanely well done right down to the hans zimmerman soundtrack and packaging. So were the rockband and guitar hero controllers and the dj hero controllers and games and real 5.1 surround speakers etc

Now its emulate on a shitty small screen handheld or phone and live in a post good world playing remake the 43rd on headphones because hey homeless people and the turd world

That's quite the stretch. There is no narrative reason for their existence. It's purely a gameplay addition to unlock bonus levels. There is no reason narratively that those levels are locked behind relics, they just are so you have to collect them.

Same deal with color gems and death gems. They exist because they are fun for gameplay. There is no narrative reason for their existence, they just do because it's more fun to have them in the game.

It's funny to even argue this is a problem in Crash 4 when the biggest issue in Crash 4 is how heavy handed it was with the story and how much better the game would've been with all the cutscenes removed. Crash doesn't need some deep over-arching narrative. Just let the levels and character interactions speak for themselves. Let players form their own narrative from the world and level design.

there is no narrative reason for their existence

There is, just indirectly. They tie in to collect the items which *do* have narrative reason, which are required to get the good ending.
Also there's no such thing as "death gems". There's only colored gems and clear gems. Some clear gems have different methods to obtain them but they're all the same type.

hans zimmerman soundtrack

youtube.com/watch?v=Ok-e5zWZehI

That is not a narrative reason. They simply exist to unlock levels. That's a gameplay reason, not a narrative one. It's such a pedantic point to argue. It's fine for relics to exist purely for gameplay reasons. Players can just make up a reason for why they exist and how they work.

Invent an arbitrary bullshit reason for gems to exist

Yes, just like how John Carmack said you should.

Alright... But the gems do have a narrative reason, and you need the gems for the good ending. And you need the relics for the gems... It's hardly the same as having a collectible with no purpose whatsoever

True but I wish MArio and Zelda would hit their dead end as they are stale as fuck

Nintendo made them to last.

Good. Let old franchises die. It's time for a changing of the guard.

Crash 4 was good.
No, I didn't 100% it and I don't intend to.

Me like smash all box. Me no can smash all box, make me angry.
4 bad, simple as

Imagine constantly making excuses for a bad game like Crash 4 so much so that you are arguing both that the "story is in the gameplay" and that "gameplay reasons are not narrative reasons".

Mario/the player collected the Stars cause Bowser stole them. Stars are needed to unlock doors. There are more stars than needed cause Bowser didn't know about all of them.

Crash 4 has gems cause they wanted to sell skins as microtransactions down the line. See Wumpa League and the Battlenet leaks.

What else can they do?
These big corporations have their leadership filled with retards who have no idea what they are doing.
If the people who actually know what they are doing have a lot of freedom then it might not be a problem.
But if the suits have tight control it is fucking done.

All in on moneymaker franchises and abandon all "risky" projects

Chase after retarded trends and big bucks

Tight schedules which can destroy the project even before it started

Force their retarded ideas while not understanding anything

Then it will take a miracle for them to shit out any gems.

Answer this than, relics aren't in the game. What changes in the story.

Activi$ion chooses to never release it on PC because ???

this still hurts to this day
I heard there's a decompilation project of the original PS1 game tho

I understood your point well and it's fine to consider relics as not having a narrative reason, similar to the CTR tokens in CTR. Yet they have a clear functional purpose tied to the narrative - you need them for the good ending, there is no way around them. Crash 4 doesn't have that factor, getting the gems there is pure completionism.

Crash was literally as big Mario and sonic once upon a time, it's sony who left him to rot and die in activision closet, despite activision never having an interest for him and would sell the ip for the highest bidder, but snoy never made an offer. Now they're desperate to shill astrobot as their new mascot but it will fail. Sony's only and last mascot was Crash Bandicoot.

Right, because if they didn't exist, the story doesn't change at all. You still collect all the gems in all the levels. There is no narrative reason to collect them. There is however a gameplay reason.

Wasn't this fag one of the retards saying the N. Sane trilogy was th Dark Souls of platformers?

You still collect all the gems in all the levels

And the devs made it so you need to go through the relics content to get the true ending, making the relics tied to the narrative. Unlike the gems in Crash 4 which have no purpose. Can you seriously not see the difference?

This game was innovative. Use the same hub world idea for a non racing game

I liked the bowling mini-game

They did everything to make the non-racing parts of it enjoyable, to the point they all overshadowed the racing part in the end. (the car fusion is not counted)

This, i literally did everything to minimize my time on the track because the theme park was so fun to explore