I only finished Ripto's Rage out of Spyro games, but I enjoyed it much more than the 3 original Crash games (of which Crash 1 was arguably my favorite just because it kicked my ass and I liked that as a kid.) I liked Crash, but CTR is on another level and it ain't no platformer!

Croc, I played it for a bit with a friend but I don't remember anything. Safe to say I didn't enjoy it. Gex 3 I did enjoy!

I don't see how Croc was considered a PS mascot considering it was also on the GameBoy Color and Sega Saturn.

While he wasn't PS exclusive, he was most popular on PS1 and generally associated with that platform, sort of like how Tomb Raider was on Saturn, yet Lara became an iconic PS character of the day.

Tomb Raider released on the PS1 and Saturn at the same time, and no one in NA or EU had a Saturn so by default people just associated Tomb Raider with PlayStation. That pretty much was any franchise/game that released on both platforms.

I don't mean to derail, but it still shocks me the games the Saturn had that people just didn't know. Resident Evil, Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4, Castlevania Symphony of the Night (Japan only), Tomb Raider, etc. Some of these games were better on Saturn and had extra content. (Looking at you Resident Evil and Mega Man 8).

It's kinda like how Resident Evil 2 has an N64 version that hardly anybody knows about, or COD MW3/Dead Rising on the Wii, Starcraft on the 64, etc.

Sometimes a game that's not actually an exclusive becomes seen as an icon of a certain platform just cos that's where it is most popular.