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Comment by overdunk | Hacker News Reader

Crash Bandicoot had repellent level design.

Placing it next to Super Nintendo's Super Mario World is like placing catfood on the same table as Thankgiving dinner.

Believe me, I suffered through more than 15 minutes of the game.

I'd agree to some extent - there was far too much focus on "frustration" based gameplay for my liking. Some of the levels are simply much too difficult for more casual players. I don't think I personally finished the game without using one of those cheat memory cards that gave you 99 lives etc, which was never the case with any Mario instalment. I still remember it fondly though, and visually it's aged incredibly well for a 3D PlayStation title.

I'd argue Crash is often held in high regard more because at the time in the mid-nineties it was assumed a console _had_ to have a big mascot franchise in the mould of Mario or Sonic, and Crash was a great character design. Many people seemed to be excited that Sony "finally" had a Mario competitor. I certainly felt at the time that Crash was going to grow into this role for Sony, which didn't really happen.

Most of the frustration I remember had to do with the lack of depth perception, especially in Warped (which I remember best). It was certainly a fun game - I'd spend hours on end playing it - but it was also frustrating to be unable to properly judge exactly how far Crash needs to jump lest he plummet into a bottomless pit (or a stack of nitro boxes).

Probably accurate. And based on the quip from the article where the original nickname for the game was "Sonic's Ass" the rest falls into place.

Basically, I remember the main character kind of just hovering in place, and performing slow levitating jumps, while the scenery flies by.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK-h4M4Aetg

Looks like my memory is halfway correct, since I forgot about the side-scrolling levels, which I thought were from one of the follow-up sequels, and not the original game.

Ugh, the music and sound effects. Still horrible.

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