Crash Bandicoot has been the video game series that has endured in terms of my enthusiasm for it since my childhood. Born in 1998 and a keen Playstation kid from a very early age, I was caught up in that era’s Crash-Mania, owning all 4 of the original Naughty Dog games and enthusiastically consuming even the vastly inferior and now definitely very dated extentions of the series on PS2 and XBOX 360.
I have to admit I’d largely forgotten about the series for a long while while it remained in a state of flux, though I’d still occasionally get a burst of nostalgia from old memories of playing Warped or Wrath of Cortex particularly. But my enthusiasm for the series was reignited big time by the remasters of the original Naughty Dog trilogy on PS4 (as the N Sane trilogy) along with the Crash Team Racing remaster a year later and at last a newly released original Crash game in 2020. It inspired me to go back and replay all the games in the series. What I found was that beyond Naughty Dog, with only a couple of exceptions, the series largely has produced an almighty amount of trash since Naughty Dog had to give up control of the series after 1999, and now it’s time to put them to the sword, as well as celebrate the series’ best moments.
Note that this list will ignore all of the numerous mobile games released as I do not have the time or energy to even bother, nor do I think they should even count. Ditto for the PSP versions of some of the late 2000’s console games as they’re basically the same game anyway. I also won’t be including the crossover game with Spyro (Crash Purple on GBA) on here because I don’t think it really counts.
19. CRASH BOOM BANG (2006)
This abomination to gaming, one of the worst games ever made let alone the worst Crash game, is by far the worst thing to come out remotely associated with this series, and that includes all of the various bootlegs, McDonalds games and blocky slow mobile games.
The 2nd party game in the series after Crash Bash, this DS game does the impossible and somehow makes Crash Bash look like a masterpiece, with appalling character animations, dull and ridiculously difficult games which made the game last forever and absolutely broken controls.
There really isn’t much more to say. Everyone unfortunate enough to have played this pile of wank knows just how bad it is.
18. MIND OVER MUTANT (DS) (2008)
Near enough equally as abysmal of a game as Boom Bang, Mind Over Mutant on DS has no excuse for being quite as lousy as it is, given its Titans predeccesor on the same console was polished, had really good visuals and actual voice work, as well as being different enough from the console version of Titans that it stood on its own, being better than the console version in fact.
MOM DS is the opposite. In terms of gameplay it’s a drab downgrade on its console version, a brutally tedious beat-em-up with utterly nothing else to the gameplay beyond endlessly going through the same waves of enemies, only worse than all the other Titan games combined due to the slow plodding controls of the DS and its nature as a side scroller.
It’s also a disaster in terms of visuals and voice acting. In fact MOM DS doesn’t have any voice acting at all, instead just using the occasional snippet clipped from the console games while subtitles are shown at the bottom. Aku Aku also pops in with hints, shouting “CRASH!” each time, so many times you want to rip the annoying wooden prick out of the screen. The visuals meanwhile are half-arsed by 2008 portable standards, and so little effort ends up going into it overall that they don’t even get N-Gin’s name correct when naming one of the levels, astonishingly titled “N-Jin Labs”. Jeeesus.
17. CRASH OF THE TITANS (GBA) (2007)
Out of all the different versions of Crash of the Titans, and yes I’d even probably guess the mobile version given how bad this is, the Game Boy Advance version is the worst, which is saying something given how bad the main console game is to begin with.
There’s almost nothing to say about Titans GBA except that it has all the same problems as the console version, being really dull and repetitive, except with a lesser variety of levels, worse and more restrictive gameplay, worse visuals and worse boss fights.
Really ridiculously bland overall, especially compared to Crash’s previous GBA entries. Just not outright broken like the bottom 2.
16. CRASH OF THE TITANS (2007)
My pick for the worst Crash console game. I wouldn’t actually say it’s technically the worst in terms of visuals and controls, in fact it’s very well polished with good visuals, a detailed world and sense of direction, some levels out of the 20 that are better and more exciting than others and largely smooth controls.
But as an overall package, Crash of the Titans is an utter bore. While some levels on their own standalone merits are good, the fundamental problem all the way through is that the gameplay is nauseatingly repetitive to the point of death by drowning. Throughout, you’re just constantly fighting the same waves of enemies and using the same buttons over and over and over again, with nothing else much standing out about it, to the point where it’s extremely easy to get bored playing this long before you’ve even got halfway through.
What drags this game further below just being merely average though are the horrendous character re-designs and the level of “comedy” used throughout. In terms of the character designs, Crash looks like a mid-2000’s rock band reject, Crunch sounds and talks like Mr T, Uka Uka is completely unrecognisable altogether, Aku Aku is fat and Tiny Tiger is now a cuddly Mike Tyson knock off.
As for the comedy, it’s largely unfunny and aimed at the lowest common denominator, with way too much breaking the fourth wall, burp/fart based humour and the occasional bit of innuendo in the episode titles. Who is this meant to be appealing to exactly?
15. CRASH TAG TEAM RACING (2005)
The first entry in the series produced by Titans developers Radical Entertainment, the same people who were behind the classic that is The Simpsons: Hit & Run, Tag Team Racing highlighted from the start how Radical fundamentally misunderstood what made the series appealing.
Now, what I will give Radical credit for is that, much like Simpsons: Hit & Run, this game has a very appealing and creative open world to explore with a lot of interesting side objectives and easter eggs to find. But that’s really the only praise this broken, incoherent mess of a game deserves.
Most of the levels are, as you’d expect, racing ones, but these are all dreadful, and easily the worst racing levels in the Crash series, with bland visuals, stiff controls and gameplay that’s ridiculously easy once you get to grips with the hijacking system.
There’s also a handful of platforming levels however, with a similar style of gameplay as Twinsanity, but with more cartoony visuals, ridiculously easy to dispose of enemies and slippery controls.
There’s also an embarassing level of childish “comedy”, even worse and more in your face than the comedy in Titans, exclusively aimed at 3 year olds seemingly with “hysterical” gags such as N Gin in a dress and Crash being grabbed and farted on by a cow.
Once again, this game tried to aim too high in terms of appeal but ended up pleasing nobody.
14. CRASH BASH (2000)
The first entry in the series after Naughty Dog moved on from developing the games and the last Crash game to come out on the PS1, Crash Bash also marks the beginning of Crash’s post-ND decline very early.
The game is a clone of Mario Party, except…well…bad. Much like Titans, I do think there’s nothing necessarily technically wrong with the game and it is more creative than Titans as well as more coherent and fun in doses than Tag Team Racing.
But its entire purpose as a party game that you can have fun playing with friends is defeated by the fact that you have to beat the Adventure/Story mode to unlock most of the multiplayer games to start with. And the Adventure Mode is……..BRUTAL. To the point where it’s not worth playing the game altogether.
To keep unlocking further levels and bosses in the Adventure Mode alone, you have to keep replaying the exact same types of levels over and over and over and over and over again in order to win further gems and crystals, and most of the levels are exactly the same too, which further adds to the tedium of the whole thing.
The game is pretty much the reverse of 2020’s Crash 4 in terms of its problems, in that one pretty huge part of the game is utterly impossible and tedious in terms of completing, only in Crash Bash’s case it is the mode you *have* to complete to unlock everything else that is brutal to get through, thus making it hard to recommend altogether.
Like I said, what is in Crash Bash’s defence is that once you finally get to the boss fights and the multiplayer games, they are all quite good, and it is actually probably the best game in the series next to Crash 4 in terms of its boss fights (not hard). It also has the 3rd best soundtrack in the series next to Cortex Strikes Back and Wrath of Cortex.
But just getting to the good parts this game has to offer is utterly brutal to the point of death. Do not recommend.
13. CRASH NITRO KART (2003)
Crash Nitro Kart can be best summed up as a frustrating experience that should and could have been so much better than it was.
In a vacuum, it’s an alright game to play, with great visuals, excellent music and in fact decent enough racing mechanics. In fact, Nitro Kart is basically just a remastered version of CTR for the PS2, with the added benefit of getting to choose which characters you want to play as in the story mode, between the heroes (Crash/Coco/Crunch) and the villains (Cortex/Tiny/N-Gin)
But, fairly or unfairly, it’s when put against CTR that this game suffers. Given that it’s basically a copy/paste of CTR with the exception of a couple of additions like the character choices or the anti-gravity sections, you’d expect them to have also copied the addictive control scheme from CTR as well, but instead CNK’s controls feel a lot more restrictive, giving the feeling of you hovering along the surface rather than authentically racing at full speed. The difficulty is also a lose-lose situation, with the races themselves being ridiculously easy and the time-relics being absolutely outrageously hard to get compared to probably more than any other game on this list.
Therefore, while Nitro Kart is sort of blandly competent, there’s largely no real point in actually playing this given that it’s basically just CTR with worse controls, with the visuals/graphics being the only real improvement. It’s unfortunately average at best.
12. CRASH: MIND OVER MUTANT (2008)
The final main Crash console game before the series vanished into obscurity for the next decade, and given some of the utter tosh that got released under the brand in the 2000’s it’s really not a surprise. Crash: Mind Over Mutant, however, really is not as bad as its reputation suggests. In fact I’d suggest its reputation comes mainly from out of association with Crash of the Titans, which was considered a massive disappointment and so this game (being of the same variety) sold poorly.
Surprisingly though, Mind Over Mutant is actually a big improvement over Titans and marks the point in this list where I now start to regard the games as OK. While it does still have a lot of the same faults as Titans (lousy character designs, lots of mind-numbing repetition in the gameplay) and overall the game is far too short and easy, for what it is it’s actually quite alright.
There’s a few different features added to the control system to make it more fun and varied to play, including the first usage of Crash’s ability to tunnel underground since Cortex Strikes Back, and best of all some spectacularly creative and funny animated cutscenes in between each level, which are probably the single best thing to come out of the entire Crash series with how inspired they are, particularly the ones involving the returning N. Brio.
11. CRASH OF THE TITANS (DS) (2007)
Finally out of all the ridiculous amount of different Titans/Mutant games released in 2007-08 we reach the best one, and even then it only ranks as high as 11th.
Titans DS still suffers from all the issues as the other games, i.e. a lot of repetitive beat-em-up gameplay and terrible comedy (including Crash farting when jumping too high) but there’s much greater variety in gameplay, being a mostly neat mixture of titan-jacking and traditonal Crash platforming, with boxes to break and extra collectables a couple of great additions that make it more fun than all the other titan games.
10. CRASH BANDICOOT: THE HUGE ADVENTURE (2002)
Released over here in Europe as Crash Bandicoot XS, there’s very little to actually say about the first Crash GBA game, as it’s basically just numerous level types from Cortex Strikes Back and Warped remade for the GBA system.
It does suffer a little bit then from the same issues as Crash Nitro Kart, in that its lack of original ideas and being on a more restrictive system may leave you with a feeling that you should be playing one of those two console games instead.
But Crash XS is a fun distraction nevertheless if you’re out and about on a long car journey, with solid visuals and mostly solid gameplay for the standard of the GBA, a lot more smart usage of the power-ups than in Warped and even a fun secret extra boss that can be unlocked by acheiving all the crystals, gems and relics.
09. CRASH BANDICOOT: THE WRATH OF CORTEX (2001)
Panned by most at the time for failing to live up to the standards of the original Naughty Dog trilogy, especially as the much hyped 4th entry in the series and the first Crash game on the PS2, Wrath of Cortex has aged surprisingly well when you consider some of the other rubbish below it on the list and with the perspective of time. And especially when you consider it was made in only a year by Traveller’s Tales
Wrath of Cortex’s main problem is that basically tries to be Warped but bigger, and yet just ends up becoming a mostly worse version of Warped in process. There’s vehicle levels, except way way too many of them and a majority of them control terribly. There’s boss fights at the end of each warp room, but all of them against the same enemy (Crunch) and at least half of them pretty mediocre. There’s power ups, most of them just the exact same ones as Warped except for the addition of an incredibly laughably lame ability to tip-toe on rows of Nitro crates (only ever used in 2 bonus stages). There’s an *enormous* amount of uniquely designed levels which are all wildly hit and miss in their execution, as opposed to the same recurring types of the different level themes from the first 3 games. There’s monkey bars to swing across in certain levels, but the movement on them is soooooooooooo slow it should be considered a war crime.
There’s quite a number of flaws with the presentation too, probably not helped by the game’s rushed development. The translation to PS2 graphics in terms of the character designs is not *that* bad but was a bit rough in some places (particularly Crash and Cortex). Also, the rushed nature of the development is very apparent when it comes to the extra levels unlocked by collecting time relics, as 3 out of the 5 (Ghost Town, Force of Nature & Ice Station Bandicoot) are very blatantly unfinished, broken messes, to the point where you can win the gem in Ghost Town without even touching the controller and Force of Nature looks like an prototype level accidentally left on the real game. Hilarious. And of course there’s the infamously, brutally long loading times which still give people of a certain age nightmares.
But despite all of these big problems, Wrath of Cortex is still a game I can pick up and have a good time playing, and in fact it’s quite admirable to a point that the game came out as good as it did after Traveller’s Tales were given only a year to do it after a previous, more original idea was scrapped.
When the game sticks to the classic Crash formula of platforming, breaking boxes, avoiding enemies, taking secret routes and collecting crystals/gems, it genuinely does excel, with a decent amount of the game’s large number of levels ranking up there among the better ones in the series. Actually, even amongst the series of appalling vehicle stages, the Atlasphere levels are great fun, always a fun and strange type of prop to use and always set in great locations.
The controls generally when it comes to the platforming parts of the game at least are an impressive improvement over the previous games too. Despite the mountains of flaws that make it worse than the previous games on the whole by a mile, the controls feel about as smooth as they ever did for a Crash platforming game (until N-Sane and Crash 4) as you’re able to break lots of boxes, jump, belly flop and ice skate without much issue at all.
The music is absolutely top tier, the 2nd best soundtrack in the series very closley behind Cortex Strikes Back, with near enough every level being given a beautifully atmospheric and epic track.
And last of all, the story is also quite good and builds off of the previous 3 Naughty Dog entries very well, with this still being an entry at this point where the characters were taken mostly seriously. Crunch is also a great new character who becomes a series mainstay from here on out. And it was great to hear the likes of Mark Hamill, R Lee Ermy and Thomas F Wilson voice some of the villainous Elemental masks.
08. CRASH NITRO KART (GBA) (2003)
We’re now getting into the games which I actually have mostly positive things to say about and are overall 7/10 quality or above. What a relief.
Being of course a racing game on a more restrictive system, Nitro Kart GBA is nothing outstanding but it is surprisingly a solid improvement over its main console counterpart.
It’s basically the same game as the console version but the driving feels better and controls better, and it’s more of a real challenge, which I suppose is all you can ask for.
07. CRASH BANDICOOT 2: N-TRANCED (2003)
The best out of any of the Crash portable games, Crash 2: N-Tranced is the sequel to the previous GBA game The New Adventure.
It has basically all the same gameplay features and mechanics of its predeccesor, but it improves on it for a few reasons. Mainly, it isn’t for the most part just a rip off of the main console games and features quite a few creative and slightly different levels (even if not all of them are hits, for sure) and the Atlasphere stages are as good as the ones from Wrath of Cortex.
It is also very easily the game with the highest quality of boss fights throughout along with Warped and It’s About Time, particularly the final fight against the titular antagonist, N-Tranced, which is a real challenge. The story itself is also good and original, again a big improvement over The Huge Adventure whose narrative was just a bunch of jibberish clipped over from the main games.
06. CRASH BANDICOOT (1996)
You’d expect the original game, the game that proved popular and marketable enough to create such a long lasting franchise, to be further up the list but to be honest the original Crash Bandicoot was already very dated by the time its sequel came out the following year.
For what it is, Crash Bandicoot 1 is still a good game. The worldbuilding is pretty much perfect, and it’s easily the most serious game in the series with Crash traversing an island full of vicious mutant creatures to rescue his girlfriend from his creator. The platforming is consistently brilliantly designed and challenging, with levels like Road to Nowhere/The High Road, Heavy Machinery/Castle Machinery, The Lost City/Sunset Vista, Slippery Climb, Temple Ruins/Jaws of Darkness and The Great Gate/Native Fortress proving particular highlights. And it has a brilliantly sinister, creative and variable soundtrack.
However, there’s a few things about it that really decreases its replay value when compared to the games above it.
For a start, the gameplay is far more limiting than its sequels, as all Crash can do is jump and spin. The controls are also unbearably stiff, which even at the time without knowledge of the sequels can be considered a bit of a problem in some stages, especially when getting to the tougher levels later down the line. Like a lot of Crash games, the boss battles are also really lame, with Papu Papu and Pinstripe standing out as ridiculously easy and only N. Brio’s being good.
But what really holds the game back from holding up as well as other classic games from this period is its insane difficulty when it comes to full completion. To win a gem you have to complete a level without dying a single time, while breaking every box. Especially on this game, that is an insane ask given the amount of challenging platforming, and having to do it for every level. And considering the only prize for collecting all the gems is just getting to skip the final boss against Cortex, it’s barely worth it.
Overall, Crash 1 was a good game for its time and very influential for its platforming and characters in 1996, but it has definitely dated considerably.
05. CRASH BANDICOOT 4: IT’S ABOUT TIME (2020)
This is really frustrating to me, because the long awaited newest entry in the Crash series, the first in 12 years, is genuinely the best game in the series in many ways. The gameplay and platforming particularly is insanely fun, challenging and satisfying. The boss fights are…actually good! The variety in characters and different types of gameplay between them is perfect. The story and characterisation is strong. Basically, if played in its main story mode alone, Crash 4 should easily top this list. So…why doesn’t it?
Well. Because of of all the extra stuff. As YouTuber Caddicarus brilliantly demonstrated in his review of the game, trying to get 100% on this game is a BITCH.
This game just quite frankly asks way way way way too much of the player to win 100%, from the absurd numbers of boxes required in each level (a lot of them incredibly hard to locate, equally as much as a lot of the hidden gems), attempting not to die more than 3 times, completing all the (incredibly incredibly hard in their own right) flashback tape levels, numerous ridiculous extra character levels which for some reason require you to complete the levels they lead into all over again, different versions of all the normal levels with different design schemes and time trials.
It’s absolutely insane how much is required of you to try and get 100%, and it’s so unbelievably bloated and repetitive, requiring replaying the same levels over and over and over and over again that it becomes Crash Bash levels of tedium. And ultimately it means that only about a third of the overall experience here is actually worth playing to begin with.
04. CRASH TWINSANITY (2004)
I’ve seen a lot of critics lambast Crash Twinsanity for practically being an unfinished, rushed prototype of a game that was planned to be greater in scope, imagination and general ambition than what we ended up with, with Traveller’s Tales yet again going through developmental hell in trying to get their Crash game out.
But come on, stop focusing on all the lost material and how short the game is and focus on what we have. Crash Twinsanity is just damn great. The gameplay is a refreshing change from the norm for the Crash series, retaining many of the series’ core platforming elements but mixing it up with a bigger variety of things to do, from the open world hub areas and puzzles to the hilarious and creative ways to use Cortex to get past obstacles and even quite unique stealth missions at times.
The boss fights are strong, the characterisation is strong, the music is different but good, it looks great, bursting with colour, and the meta humour here is also very very funny, even though it would ultimately lead to childish crap taking over the series in the Radical era.
03. CRASH BANDICOOT 2: CORTEX STRIKES BACK (1997)
Right, so these top 3 are incredibly difficult to seperate as they’re all about equally brilliant, but I had to somehow.
People thought Crash Bandicoot was great back in 1996, but it seemed almost immediately dated the following year when Naughty Dog brought out this masterpiece which redefined and improved near enough everything from the original.
In terms of the gameplay, not only are the levels even better than the first game for the most part (in fact, in terms of level design and level design alone, I’d argue Cortex Strikes Back is the best in the series) but so much has been added to Crash’s arsenal, including the ability to slide, slide jump and belly flop, whereas in the first game all you could do was run, spin and jump. Crash also moves so much slicker and it is easier to control. There’s also a greater amount of “secrets” in levels which are geniusely hidden and make for 100%’ing the game a challenging but fun experience, unlike Crash 1 which was an absolute painful chore to 100%.
In terms of presentation, Cortex Strikes Back also absolutely scores, with improved voice acting (the hiring of Clancy Brown to voice Cortex was a brilliant move), a more coherent and interesting story and some absolutely stupendous music. Cortex Strikes Back has comfortably the best soundtrack in the series, and would make my list of the top 10 video game soundtracks of all time. It really is some beautiful music.
It only ranks at #3 for 2 reasons mainly. First of all, the boss battles are unfortunately still a mixed bag, with only N-Gin’s and Tiny’s being particularly fun and/or challenging and with the final “fight” against Cortex being one of the limpest ends to a video game ever. Secondly, there would be additional gameplay elements that the next entry, Warped, would improve upon further, with this game still also forcing you to jump 10 times on a bouncy crate to get all the Wumpa Fruit. zzzzzzzzzzz
02. CRASH BANDICOOT: WARPED (1998)
I go back and forth all the time between whether Cortex Strikes Back or Warped is better. The universal consensus for a long time seemed to be Warped, but with all 3 games being remastered and given the same type of gameplay on the PS4 with the N-Sane trilogy, a lot of people started to think Cortex was actually the superior game.
I get why. There’s a lot more actual platforming in Cortex Strikes Back, actually probably better levels overall too, while Warped does suffer a bit from having FAR too many vehicle levels, with the motorbike and planes particularly being used too many times and getting a bit tedious when compared to, say, the Polar levels in Cortex Strikes Back or the Tiger levels from this very game. Also, if you’re playing Warped on PS4 you can’t really appreciate the improvements in gameplay to a significant level as both games only have 5 bounces before breaking crates, as well as box counters to show you how many boxes you broke.
But we are purely discussing the originals here and it’s important to acknowledge that when Warped came out, these were very key gameplay improvements to the original version of Cortex Strikes Back that helped give Warped a more polished, fun feel than even the two games before it. Plus, while both games have consistently strong levels, colourful characters and strong soundtracks, Cortex Strikes back quite simply doesn’t have Clancy Brown’s devilishly and delightfully evil Uka Uka, nor the calming wisdom of Mel Winkler’s Aku Aku. The newer boss characters of Dingodile and N Tropy are also riotous and really complete the classic Crash ensemble here.
The key thing that edges Warped to #2 though is the boss fights. Unlike Cortex Strikes Back, every boss fight in this game is satisfying to play, fun and challenging, particularly N-Gin’s absolutely chaotic and crazy space battle.
Even if it does overuse its vehicle levels too much, Warped is an absolute classic from a studio really starting to reach the peak of their powers.
01. CRASH TEAM RACING (1999)
If Warped saw Naughty Dog starting to enter the peak of their powers, Crash Team Racing saw that they’d fully arrived. Now confident to do something different with the franchise and moving away from the formula of the first 3 games, Naughty Dog decided to create a Mario Kart style racer with all the best Crash characters.
There’s not much to really say about it that hasn’t been said. The controls in this game are perfect and it feels amazing to get them just right, the boss fights are fun and challenging, the world is fantastic and it has just the right amount of extra content.
It was remade (along with bits of Nitro Kart) for the PS4 but the original really is exactly as good.
The Circled Square 
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