Crash Bandicoot is a series near and dear to my heart. It wasn’t my first game, but it was very close to being that first game (that honour goes to Super Mario). I went on to spend many, many hours on the original releases for the Sony PlayStation, especially the 3rd entry, Warped once I had my own copy. Given my history with the series, you can imagine that I was extremely excited for these remasters albeit not for its initial exclusivity to the PS4. Fortunately, Crash Bandicoot eventually came to my home gaming platform of Microsoft Windows.

Gameplay is just as I remember with added support for the analogue stick in the earlier games and an added coat of paint. The controls are quite faithful and feel as I remember, complete with the issues that come with that. It’s still just as easy to fall down a pit and swear that you jumped at the right moment to make it over the gap.

The graphics are gorgeous with many added details yet keeping the levels the same as the original in terms of size and enemy placement (as far as I can tell). The games were never bad looking but early 3D games never aged the best and Crash was no exception. Crash is appropriately furry though I always thought he would be slightly smoother. Overall, very pretty.

Performance is excellent. I was happy to discover that my modest system Core i5 2nd gen system coupled with NVIDIA GTX 1060 was running the game at Ultra settings, full speed and 4K out of the box. I use a 1080p screen so that the game accessed the dynamic super-resolution added by my graphics card was a welcome sight.

I am looking forward to playing these remakes further and hope Crash’s good friend Spyro follows him on to the PC and Switch sooner rather than later.