spyro, crash and co.

[Cloudman]

jetforcejiminy said:

so i've noticed there's a fair bit of affection on the forums for these late-nineties abominations of character design and good taste. i thought i must be missing something. i've always thought they looked horrendous and weren't even slightly cute or endearing. and to add to that, i never found that the gameplay either in crash or in spyro was all that compelling. they seemed to me to be fairly standard-fare 3d platform games ripping off the rare donkey kong country games' equally horrendous character design.

there *were* some excellent 2d/3d platformers on psx, but no-one talks about them. jumping flash (and later jumping flash 2) pioneered the 3d platformer almost a year before mario 64 came out, and the original rayman was a tough as nails sidescroller with some limited charm. klonoa: door to phantomile was terrific as well, and sort of was the beginning of the 2.5d style you see nowadays in the retro donkey kong country games.

i guess my question is... what's attractive about crash and spryo? how do you redeem these relics of the 90s? is it just... you know... nostalgia speaking? because they do not stand up either as memorable characters or as especially good games to me today.

ugh.

This is off topic, but since I`ve never played them before, would you recommend any of the PS1 Crash or Spyro games? I`ve heard they were good, so some time I would like to give them a fair shot.