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We all know and love Crash Bandicoot as PlayStation's early platformer mascot, and many of us wish for him to make a comeback after an 8 year long hiatus, but we may be forgetting that the last well-received game in the series was released in 1999.



Created by Naughty Dog (now better known for Uncharted and The Last of Us), the first three Crash Bandicoot games were pure platforming pleasure. Though not quite groundbreaking, the games were some of the most memorable platformers from the late 90s, and are generally looked back on by the gaming community with a lot of nostalgia and love.



Oh - and Crash Team Racing, the kart-racer featuring Crash Bandicoot, was arguably better than any Mario Kart title at the time.



However, CTR marked the end of Naughty Dog's involvement with the franchise, and the rights have been juggled between various developers and publishers ever since. Universal, Konami, Vivdeni, Sierra, Traveller's Tales, Eurocom, Radical Entertainment and Actvision among others have had their hand in creating Crash games after its brief heyday, with Activision still holding the rights.



Unfortunately, every primary installment since Naughty Dog's last offering has failed to receive anything more than a mixed reception.



Read more : Ratchet & Clank's success could bring back Crash Bandicoot

We're seeing growing demand for a comeback from gaming's favourite (and only, I suppose) bandicoot, but we need to keep this mixed past in mind so that we're not let down if he does ever make a return.



If Activision (or Sony, if they end up purchasing back the rights) want to make Crash Bandicoot great again and make him fit into the modern era, they need to take a leaf out of Crash Twinsanity's book.



Developed by Traveller's Tales and released in 2004, Crash Twinsanity was a game with exceptional potential but less-than-perfect execution.



Although gameplay-wise it could often be less than stellar (pretty much any moment where you had to team up with Doctor Neo Cortex flopped, and the camera controls were a constant nuisance), Twinsanity nailed the overall vibe of what a post-Naughty Dog Crash game should feel like. It's a vibe difficult to put into words as I've yet to see it in any other video game.

Elements of Twinsanity just felt... well, like it belonged to Crash Bandicoot. Elements such as the colours and environments of the game, its great sense of humour, its wonderful voice acting and genuinely funny dialogue were nigh-on exceptional.



The game's soundtrack was even a video game first: almost all of it is in a capella, and it suits the world of Crash Bandicoot so much that you'll swear it's how the series always sounded. It's still one of my all-time favourite video game soundtracks, and I'll bet that you'll have its themes stuck in your head for weeks.



There's never been another game like Crash Twinsanity, and if it had been built upon in a sequel, we would've had something truly very special. As it stands, Twinsanity is my all-time favourite average game.



Hopefully, whoever ends up developing the next Crash Bandicoot game, they would have played Crash Twinsanity and do its vision justice.