I should note that there are SEVEN different categories of minigames, not five, and also the final category consists of four rather different minigames just with a matching aesthetic (though most of these are unlocked post-game). A couple minigames in other categories also change up the rules and mechanics drastically like Swamp Fox, which does alleviate the problem A LITTLE and give us about a dozen unique minigame styles. Still not great but better. As for Oxide, I'm kinda willing to take his presence by simple fact he is such a hilariously petty over-competitive villain. OF COURSE he'd come back just to one up you. I do agree that the co-op tie breaker is a way more satisfying final showdown however. This is actually the game that got me invested in good/evil mode campaigns in video games. I do agree that Bash hasn't aged great. The Wii era especially ate it for lunch, though I do have nostalgia for it, and wouldn't mind a similar party game down the line that took the right notes from it while downplaying its shortcomings.
That is completely poor explanation on my end, I'll admit that. I should have clarified "In terms of main story completion" instead of overall availability of mini-games. Thank you for commenting this and providing extra context to future viewers, I appreciate it! :)
@@TheFogFrog No problem. I will admit that hiding most of the more varied minigames behind annoyingly steep post-game unlockable stipulations was a dumb idea anyway, especially Mallet Mash, which is one of the best minigames in Bash.
Truth be told, I'd like to see Bash get the "N.Sane Trilogy" or "Crash Team Racing" treatment. Perhaps with an online mode introduced, a new lick of paint and a bunch of new mini-games it could actually be a good Mario Party contender. The only downside that comes with that would be the unfathomable amounts of DLC characters that would be piled into it
@@TheFogFrog Truth be told I wouldn't be against a similar package as Nitro Fuelled, with Bash, some polished up elements of Boom Bang and some new content. If they took what worked from those games and added some valid quality of life, it could be a really solid party game, though if they took what didn't it could be a total disaster. :P
I loved this game as a kid! I never actually owned a PS1 but I had this game since it was backwards compatible for the PS2 and I got it for maybe $2. We would always try and beat the game in one sitting since we didn't have a PS1 memory card I couldn't save.
I think I’ve only ever played Crash Bash with friends and didn’t even realize it has a story lol maybe that’s why I have such fond memories of this game❤️
The game easily beats mario party because of the story and the koop playthrough the mini games are not as good as the big catalog of mario party but the full playthough makes it epic
I feel like the ending redeemed the game to some extent; but it doesn't hide the fact that overall this game made me want to throw myself into a Nitro Crate
When I have a retro game night, Crash Bash is always more popular than Mario Party, which is drowning in RNG and unfairness. All of the minigames in Bash are genuine tests of skill. Sure, we tend to play maybe 5 or 6 minigames and then move onto another game, but it's always a fun experience for that time.
Crash Bash definitely is fun in small doses, especially with friends. But doing the campaign, solo, with progression locked beyond replaying old mini-games, is a slog
I absolutely love Crash Bash... But it's a terrible game! I really can't disagree with most of your negative points. As with your previous videos mentioning asset reuse and level themes being reused, I don't think this is an issue for me at all, personally. I think getting used to each type of minigame but having some variation in them is an important part of the game and I wouldn't expect that to change if this game got a remake. The opponent AI being unfair is absolutely a sore point and it only gets worse if you go back to the levels after you finish the game to try and get the relics against "the best" opponents for those games. I think more than anything else, this is what really made the game take a hit. Adding a more obvious element of randomness or a higher likelyhood of mistakes to the opponents (especially with stuff like the opponents rushing to pick up something the instant it spawns) would have been a huge improvement and made them feel more like real players. Some of the level designs were just frustrating as hell too. Dot Dash and the rest of the Dash games were my least favourite but I also disliked the Pogo games too as they weren't my personal cup of tea. Space Bash was my absolute favourite though. The game was hilarious to me when I found out how easy it was to drop opponents through the floor. I think having friends (or, in my case, cousins) to play with really made the game more fun. Regarding the boss unlock requirements: I remember getting to the second boss and not even realising there were more collectibles in the game until that point as I had not returned to a previous level as yet. The first time you access a level, it doesn't indicate at all that there's other options. Only after you've completed them the first time is there a sort of selection menu. I think if these were always available but the gem and crystal were greyed out, it would have been more obvious. Your other point about the characters having different invisible stats was definitely relevant too. The problem is that they can't just be shown on a small bar graph because these stats apply differently to each type of minigame. Crash is fast and can charge more often than other characters in the Polar Push games but appears to have a weaker attack power. Then in the Crate Crush minigames, he has a slow pick up and a weak throw, but his spin attack is very good compared to other characters having a weak kick. The thing is that there is some idea of balancing in it and I guess it would be helpful if it was directly stated in the game. Perhaps there needed to be a detailed bio for each character in case someone was interested in seeing that info. Random point that I hadn't really thought much about before: If a brand new character was created anyway (Rilla Roo), then why couldn't they have just created 2 new characters for the Good Team instead and kept Cortex, Brio, Tiny and Dingodile as the Evil Team? I guess they could have even used Papu Papu and Tawna as the other two if they wanted because I always figured that Papu Papu wasn't "Evil" in the first game but was just grumpy that Crash had broken into his home and woken him up (I'm sure they could have changed the first boss if needed). Or... they could have used Tawna and Spyro? Too much work behind the scenes to allow Spyro to be used? I don't know. I think if this game was remade with great graphics and other design improvements, more minigames, online play, cross-platform play and more fair AI, then it would be very well-received. It could have proper cutscenes for the bosses and proper animations and structure for transitioning between Warp Rooms as you mentioned. It also surely could have a bigger character roster. It feels very strange to me that Crash Team Rumble came out instead of a remake of this that a lot of players were calling for.
Yeah, I did 200% it with coco (aka, hard mode), and while the AI are toned down when facing a "new" category of minigames, such as warp room 1's trophy, warp 2's tanks, warp 3's dash, and warp 4's ring ding, everything else is cranked up to 8 out of 10 when it comes to gem/crystal gathering, then to 11 when it comes to the gold relic, and *THEN to infinity* when it comes to their plats relics, forcing me to perfectly master each minigames, and lemme tell ya... the basic ones that were toned down were generally HARDER due to a lack of extra items/gimmicks to help players. Also, for the crate minigames, I never played with the pickup button since I never felt comfy w/ it, therefore the bandicoots have the best mobility attacks, their spins sending the crates the furthest distances on the ground, despite making crates go in only 8 directions doing so. The difficulty scale goes like this: Tiny & Koala are the easiest (and are the ones used in speedruns) The N stand for normal (cortex & Brio) The Bandicoots are hard mode The Dingodile/Rilla Roo are the "near-impossible" mode on a happier note though, my favorite minigame when playing with others is the basic crash ball since 4-way pong rules on a more grim note, CPUs take LESS dmg from all types of attacks in general if life bars are involved (the extra salt on the crappy cake of BSness)
This game had so much potential. The issue is that it was turned into the epitome of game padding via difficulty scaling. It's a fun game, it's just not the best Crash game
@@TheFogFrog agreed, if it was less repetitive and more AI progressive, it would have been the best crash game, or at least on par with CTR. Medieval Mayhem being the misc. minigames, and the other 6 category being a minigame w/ other cosmetics/gimmicks, there are basically only 10 purely different minigames... also, the more you failed at beating Oxide, the more leveled down Oxide becomes, and first attempt at oxide when arriving on Gasmoxia, it's a super sayan of Pong XD
I can’t believe I used to really love this game. It would be so much better if the unlockable mini games didn’t require that much of the player since by the time everything is unlocked we wanna stop playing.
There's nothing at ALL wrong with loving this game! People love all kinds of games, and what others can see as poor, another can see as perfect. I used to love BRINK, so I can definitely understand you enjoying Crash Bash
You think it would be easy to make a Mario party clone. The biggest mistake was locking 2 player coop mini games with story mode. I DO like the pinball like game, but the other games may need work.
i love/hate this game ,not for the reasons you might think but for the cheat codes that don't work in the american version. apparently only the demo on spyro 3 works so why bother.
Technically there are over 28 minigames in total, 22 if you don't wanna count any of the 5th warp room ones and 32 if you wanna count the bosses as their own minigames as well. The good part of the 5th warp room minigames is that they're the most varied yet when compared to the others (except maybe Dante's Dash being exactly like Toxic Dash but with a volcano in the middle shooting fireballs in random directions instead of a slime monster spawning little slimes going in a predictable pattern, which is very anti-climatic considering that's the very last minigame you unlock, requiring 27 trophies to do so); The bad part of the 5th warp room minigames is that it's all post-game content, on top of having ridiculous requirements to unlock them all (17 gold relics for Splash Dash, 23 crystals for Swamp Fox, 25 gems for Keg Kaboom, 19 crystals for Dragon Drop, and 21 gold relics for Mallet Mash) as well as being the most difficult minigames in the game (judging all this from my experience in getting both gold and platinum relics when i was 200%ing the game four separate times, N.Ballism and Sky Ball were pretty high up there too, and considering your skill level i'd wager that you would've struggled hard with the trophies alone). In terms of the general critique of the game, i pretty much had the same opinion on it for years, and why i wasn't surprised on why the 200% TAS was ultimately rejected (due to all the repetitiveness of the minigames and how many load screen there are).
I never understood why they went to the trouble of making a new character in the form of Rilla Roo and then made two evil characters move to the good side. Why not just make two new OC characters and put them on the good side?
I definitely agree. It didn't make any sense to create a new character and then make them a villain, especially since the villain roster in Crash up to this point had been so wide and in-depth
Crash and Coco are the only characters in the game that can move while using their melee attack in the crate crush levels. They're also smaller than everybody else making it easy to spin into other characters while they're picking up or holding a crate so they also get damaged from the crate landing on them. Can also spin crate along the ground everywhere and make chaos. I'd argue Crash and Coco are even better than Tiny and Koala Kong. Even though Those 2 can throw far if Crash sticks to them they can't hit him with crates as it goes over his head and they robably won't even be able to throw a crate cus Crash is gonna bully them with the spin. You should almost never pick up crates with Crash. I'd also argue Crash and Coco are the best in polar push levels given they have the most stamina and dashing completely cancels push momentum from others. The only type of game where they are absolute trash is the tank wars.
I'm glad. I do try and put a lot of effort into my content so I'm happy to see it's paying off and I'm gathering a good amount of people who are interested in my experiences :)
I should note that there are SEVEN different categories of minigames, not five, and also the final category consists of four rather different minigames just with a matching aesthetic (though most of these are unlocked post-game). A couple minigames in other categories also change up the rules and mechanics drastically like Swamp Fox, which does alleviate the problem A LITTLE and give us about a dozen unique minigame styles. Still not great but better.
As for Oxide, I'm kinda willing to take his presence by simple fact he is such a hilariously petty over-competitive villain. OF COURSE he'd come back just to one up you. I do agree that the co-op tie breaker is a way more satisfying final showdown however. This is actually the game that got me invested in good/evil mode campaigns in video games.
I do agree that Bash hasn't aged great. The Wii era especially ate it for lunch, though I do have nostalgia for it, and wouldn't mind a similar party game down the line that took the right notes from it while downplaying its shortcomings.
That is completely poor explanation on my end, I'll admit that. I should have clarified "In terms of main story completion" instead of overall availability of mini-games. Thank you for commenting this and providing extra context to future viewers, I appreciate it! :)
@@TheFogFrog No problem. I will admit that hiding most of the more varied minigames behind annoyingly steep post-game unlockable stipulations was a dumb idea anyway, especially Mallet Mash, which is one of the best minigames in Bash.
Truth be told, I'd like to see Bash get the "N.Sane Trilogy" or "Crash Team Racing" treatment. Perhaps with an online mode introduced, a new lick of paint and a bunch of new mini-games it could actually be a good Mario Party contender.
The only downside that comes with that would be the unfathomable amounts of DLC characters that would be piled into it
@@TheFogFrog Truth be told I wouldn't be against a similar package as Nitro Fuelled, with Bash, some polished up elements of Boom Bang and some new content. If they took what worked from those games and added some valid quality of life, it could be a really solid party game, though if they took what didn't it could be a total disaster. :P
I loved this game as a kid! I never actually owned a PS1 but I had this game since it was backwards compatible for the PS2 and I got it for maybe $2. We would always try and beat the game in one sitting since we didn't have a PS1 memory card I couldn't save.
I remember the “no memory card” days very well. I got EXTREMELY good at beating Jak 3 as fast as I could after a few weeks!
@@TheFogFrog we’re so spoiled these days 😥. Loved the video by the way, excited to watch your others! These old crash games deserve retrospectives
I think I’ve only ever played Crash Bash with friends and didn’t even realize it has a story lol maybe that’s why I have such fond memories of this game❤️
It's SO much better with friends
The game easily beats mario party because of the story and the koop playthrough the mini games are not as good as the big catalog of mario party but the full playthough makes it epic
I feel like the ending redeemed the game to some extent; but it doesn't hide the fact that overall this game made me want to throw myself into a Nitro Crate
@@TheFogFrog you dont know how i feel what you saying 😃😅
When I have a retro game night, Crash Bash is always more popular than Mario Party, which is drowning in RNG and unfairness. All of the minigames in Bash are genuine tests of skill. Sure, we tend to play maybe 5 or 6 minigames and then move onto another game, but it's always a fun experience for that time.
Crash Bash definitely is fun in small doses, especially with friends. But doing the campaign, solo, with progression locked beyond replaying old mini-games, is a slog
I absolutely love Crash Bash... But it's a terrible game! I really can't disagree with most of your negative points.
As with your previous videos mentioning asset reuse and level themes being reused, I don't think this is an issue for me at all, personally. I think getting used to each type of minigame but having some variation in them is an important part of the game and I wouldn't expect that to change if this game got a remake.
The opponent AI being unfair is absolutely a sore point and it only gets worse if you go back to the levels after you finish the game to try and get the relics against "the best" opponents for those games. I think more than anything else, this is what really made the game take a hit. Adding a more obvious element of randomness or a higher likelyhood of mistakes to the opponents (especially with stuff like the opponents rushing to pick up something the instant it spawns) would have been a huge improvement and made them feel more like real players.
Some of the level designs were just frustrating as hell too. Dot Dash and the rest of the Dash games were my least favourite but I also disliked the Pogo games too as they weren't my personal cup of tea. Space Bash was my absolute favourite though. The game was hilarious to me when I found out how easy it was to drop opponents through the floor. I think having friends (or, in my case, cousins) to play with really made the game more fun.
Regarding the boss unlock requirements: I remember getting to the second boss and not even realising there were more collectibles in the game until that point as I had not returned to a previous level as yet. The first time you access a level, it doesn't indicate at all that there's other options. Only after you've completed them the first time is there a sort of selection menu. I think if these were always available but the gem and crystal were greyed out, it would have been more obvious.
Your other point about the characters having different invisible stats was definitely relevant too. The problem is that they can't just be shown on a small bar graph because these stats apply differently to each type of minigame. Crash is fast and can charge more often than other characters in the Polar Push games but appears to have a weaker attack power. Then in the Crate Crush minigames, he has a slow pick up and a weak throw, but his spin attack is very good compared to other characters having a weak kick. The thing is that there is some idea of balancing in it and I guess it would be helpful if it was directly stated in the game. Perhaps there needed to be a detailed bio for each character in case someone was interested in seeing that info.
Random point that I hadn't really thought much about before: If a brand new character was created anyway (Rilla Roo), then why couldn't they have just created 2 new characters for the Good Team instead and kept Cortex, Brio, Tiny and Dingodile as the Evil Team? I guess they could have even used Papu Papu and Tawna as the other two if they wanted because I always figured that Papu Papu wasn't "Evil" in the first game but was just grumpy that Crash had broken into his home and woken him up (I'm sure they could have changed the first boss if needed). Or... they could have used Tawna and Spyro? Too much work behind the scenes to allow Spyro to be used? I don't know.
I think if this game was remade with great graphics and other design improvements, more minigames, online play, cross-platform play and more fair AI, then it would be very well-received. It could have proper cutscenes for the bosses and proper animations and structure for transitioning between Warp Rooms as you mentioned. It also surely could have a bigger character roster. It feels very strange to me that Crash Team Rumble came out instead of a remake of this that a lot of players were calling for.
Yeah, I did 200% it with coco (aka, hard mode), and while the AI are toned down when facing a "new" category of minigames, such as warp room 1's trophy, warp 2's tanks, warp 3's dash, and warp 4's ring ding, everything else is cranked up to 8 out of 10 when it comes to gem/crystal gathering, then to 11 when it comes to the gold relic, and *THEN to infinity* when it comes to their plats relics, forcing me to perfectly master each minigames, and lemme tell ya... the basic ones that were toned down were generally HARDER due to a lack of extra items/gimmicks to help players. Also, for the crate minigames, I never played with the pickup button since I never felt comfy w/ it, therefore the bandicoots have the best mobility attacks, their spins sending the crates the furthest distances on the ground, despite making crates go in only 8 directions doing so.
The difficulty scale goes like this:
Tiny & Koala are the easiest (and are the ones used in speedruns)
The N stand for normal (cortex & Brio)
The Bandicoots are hard mode
The Dingodile/Rilla Roo are the "near-impossible" mode
on a happier note though, my favorite minigame when playing with others is the basic crash ball since 4-way pong rules
on a more grim note, CPUs take LESS dmg from all types of attacks in general if life bars are involved (the extra salt on the crappy cake of BSness)
This game had so much potential. The issue is that it was turned into the epitome of game padding via difficulty scaling. It's a fun game, it's just not the best Crash game
@@TheFogFrog agreed, if it was less repetitive and more AI progressive, it would have been the best crash game, or at least on par with CTR. Medieval Mayhem being the misc. minigames, and the other 6 category being a minigame w/ other cosmetics/gimmicks, there are basically only 10 purely different minigames... also, the more you failed at beating Oxide, the more leveled down Oxide becomes, and first attempt at oxide when arriving on Gasmoxia, it's a super sayan of Pong XD
I can’t believe I used to really love this game. It would be so much better if the unlockable mini games didn’t require that much of the player since by the time everything is unlocked we wanna stop playing.
There's nothing at ALL wrong with loving this game! People love all kinds of games, and what others can see as poor, another can see as perfect. I used to love BRINK, so I can definitely understand you enjoying Crash Bash
You think it would be easy to make a Mario party clone. The biggest mistake was locking 2 player coop mini games with story mode. I DO like the pinball like game, but the other games may need work.
Locking freeplay minigames behind story progression was a completely crappy business move, I agree
i love/hate this game ,not for the reasons you might think but for the cheat codes that don't work in the american version. apparently only the demo on spyro 3 works so why bother.
Technically there are over 28 minigames in total, 22 if you don't wanna count any of the 5th warp room ones and 32 if you wanna count the bosses as their own minigames as well.
The good part of the 5th warp room minigames is that they're the most varied yet when compared to the others (except maybe Dante's Dash being exactly like Toxic Dash but with a volcano in the middle shooting fireballs in random directions instead of a slime monster spawning little slimes going in a predictable pattern, which is very anti-climatic considering that's the very last minigame you unlock, requiring 27 trophies to do so);
The bad part of the 5th warp room minigames is that it's all post-game content, on top of having ridiculous requirements to unlock them all (17 gold relics for Splash Dash, 23 crystals for Swamp Fox, 25 gems for Keg Kaboom, 19 crystals for Dragon Drop, and 21 gold relics for Mallet Mash) as well as being the most difficult minigames in the game (judging all this from my experience in getting both gold and platinum relics when i was 200%ing the game four separate times, N.Ballism and Sky Ball were pretty high up there too, and considering your skill level i'd wager that you would've struggled hard with the trophies alone).
In terms of the general critique of the game, i pretty much had the same opinion on it for years, and why i wasn't surprised on why the 200% TAS was ultimately rejected (due to all the repetitiveness of the minigames and how many load screen there are).
Yup it was poor explanation on my behalf! I mean in terms of "Core story" :)
I never understood why they went to the trouble of making a new character in the form of Rilla Roo and then made two evil characters move to the good side. Why not just make two new OC characters and put them on the good side?
I definitely agree. It didn't make any sense to create a new character and then make them a villain, especially since the villain roster in Crash up to this point had been so wide and in-depth
There are also extra minigames you can get in another area: Dragon Drop, Mallet Mash and Keg Kaboom iirc
The rest are the usual reskinned levels
Yup, I should have clarified in terms of "main story" progression! Poor explanation on my part :)
METAL GEAR MENTIONED RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I might take off the cardboard box soon enough...
Crash and Coco are the only characters in the game that can move while using their melee attack in the crate crush levels. They're also smaller than everybody else making it easy to spin into other characters while they're picking up or holding a crate so they also get damaged from the crate landing on them. Can also spin crate along the ground everywhere and make chaos. I'd argue Crash and Coco are even better than Tiny and Koala Kong. Even though Those 2 can throw far if Crash sticks to them they can't hit him with crates as it goes over his head and they robably won't even be able to throw a crate cus Crash is gonna bully them with the spin. You should almost never pick up crates with Crash. I'd also argue Crash and Coco are the best in polar push levels given they have the most stamina and dashing completely cancels push momentum from others. The only type of game where they are absolute trash is the tank wars.
I just wish I was able to read this in the game, not have someone comment on a video to understand what was going on
I'd need the 3 friends in the same room and booze DLC to play this
I'd probably need something stronger than booze to revisit this game
😂@@TheFogFrog
I'm really enjoying this crash series
I'm glad. I do try and put a lot of effort into my content so I'm happy to see it's paying off and I'm gathering a good amount of people who are interested in my experiences :)