Crash Bandicoot has always had style, but which design best captures the essence of the orange marsupial?
There’s a good reason Crash Bandicoot has endured as such an iconic mascot for the decades since his smash debut on the PlayStation in 1996. Designed to be as expressive, colorful, and zany as possible, Crash popped against the beach and jungle backgrounds of N. Sanity Island, and his elastic features, borrowed from stretch and squash frames in cartoons, gave him a never-before-seen (in video games) liveliness.
To many, Crash Bandicoot is a 90s throwback series, but the orange marsupial’s designs have subtly changed over the years in an attempt to move with the times. Some design updates were inspired, and others, reviled. Take a spin through the decades and gander at the Bandicoot’s evolution (at the hands of someone other than Doctor Neo Cortex) as he moved from generation to generation. 7 Crash of the Titans / Mind Over Mutant
Platform(s): PlayStation 2, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360
Released: 2007-10-04
Developer(s): Radical Entertainment
Genre: Beat ‘Em Up
While this incarnation of Crash has its fans, the change was widely derided by the community. The most controversial alteration in Crash of the Titans and Mind Over Mutant was the substitution of Crash’s fingerless gloves for hand and wrist tribal tattoos (which, with a bit of thought, doesn’t make much sense, considering that the ink is painted over fur, not skin). This is arguably the Bandicoot at his most deranged, complete with floating eyebrows, bulging, plastic eyeballs, and a somewhat detached, vacant expression.
Besides the tribal tats, which were already being consigned to history as an early 2000s trend, Crash sports a pair of jorts (jean shorts) and a studded belt straight out of Hot Topic. Crash’s strandy, sometimes mohawked coif was replaced by a gelled-up do. His white underbelly fur, like the rest of his redesign, became jagged and edgy rather than smooth and simple. Crash had gone from a cartoon bandicoot who rampaged through chaotic corridors with grit teeth to a DreamWorks mascot doing their best to be “wacky” and “random.” Not his best look. 6 CTR – Crash Team Racing / Crash Bash
Platform(s): PlayStation
Released: 1999-10-19
Developer(s): Naughty Dog
Genre: Racing
After finally nailing Crash’s looks, the Bandicoot lost some detail in the transition to CTR – Crash Team Racing. This was probably because, unlike the previous games, players would rarely look at Crash face-on and rather be focused on his back or the resource-intensive open road ahead. However, this cannot be said for the game that shared the model, Crash Bash, in which characters would run around and compete in several mini-game stages. An explanation for Bash might be that some rendering power had to be reserved for the other playable characters.
Crash looks relatively the same as he did in the original trilogy, albeit compressed both literally and in terms of render quality. Crash runs around (or drives) with a less panicked or focused look but with more of a hapless, happy, and inviting expression with an open-mouth smile, which might be the result of not having to collect hundreds of crystals or gemstones from dangerous levels for once.
