The Playstation Experience 2016: Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

Crash Bandicoot is BACK baby, oh yeah! Bigger, badder and more eyebrow-ier? Anyways, it seems that after a healthy dose of rumors and some teasing, the good gents at Activision have decided to re-release the first three Crash Bandicoot games; Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I, for one, cannot be more excited. Me and the orange tornado in blue shorts had plenty of good times back on Playstation 1 and now I can’t wait to get the chance to dive back in. The remaster will be helmed by developers Vicarious Visions, who worked on the Crash Bandicoot games for Gameboy Advance, along with Crash Nitro Kart. They’ve also been working on the hugely successful Skylanders series of games since 2011, so it’s safe to say that Crash is in capable hands.

The N. Sane Trilogy is being bandied about as a ‘remaster plus’, which I suppose is just as good a term as any. What this means is that the trilogy will not be simply upscaled graphics and smoothed-out polygons (remember those?). That used to be everyone’s buzzword of choice back in the Playstation 1 era. Back then, all my friends and I would talk about how many polygons were crammed into a 3D character model, and we tried to look like we knew what we were talking about by claiming how a game with more polygons was better than a game with less of them. Meanwhile, this generation people like to do the same, instead of polygons, they throw around terms like FPS and the varying degrees of HD, so I guess not much has changed. Okay, I better end my old-man rant and get back on topic before I get tarred and feathered (do people still do that???}. Because the code for the original games is so old and barely usable, Crash Bandicoot is being rebuilt from the ground up using the same gameplay, level designs, and concept art that fans know and love. Even the original voice cast is back onboard to re-record the dialogue and sounds, so that’s awesome!
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What really caught my eye was how much more detailed the iconic N. Sanity Beach level looked in the demo shown at PSX 2016. Just going by that you can tell that Vicarious Visions is intent on lovingly re-crafting the original without sacrificing anything that made it such a fun, original game in the first place. As of now, the N. Sane Trilogy is set for a release sometime in 2017, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long before being able to jump back on to the Bandicoot bandwagon! Check out some screens below!

By Richard Jewell