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Crash Bandicoot Crashing Back To PlayStation 4

By Jovi Figueroa
Published on: 20:31 PST, Jun 4, 2016

In 2014, we first heard about rumors of Crash Bandicoot making a comeback to the latest PlayStation console. Fast forward to 2016, it seems Crash Bandicoot is really on its way to the PlayStation 4 console albeit silence from Sony and Activision about the comeback of the well-loved franchise.

The Crash Bandicoot series go way back, back to the time of the very first PlayStation where everything is pixels and 2D. Crash Bandicoot was a platformer gamer available then on the PlayStation 1. The franchise was first produced by Sony-owned Naughty Dog in 1996 with title Crash Bandicoot, followed by more than a dozen more spin-offs in several other platforms from Cortex Strikes Back in 1997 for the PlayStation to Nitro Kart 2 in 2010 for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

After Crash Bandicoot’s glorified years in the PlayStation platform, it also turned out a few cancelled games such as Cortex Chaos in 2005, I am Crash Bandicoot and Crash Team Racing 2010 in 2010, and an untitled Crash Bandicoot game in 2012.

After several trials in reviving the Crash Bandicoot franchise, a lot of people clung on to every opportunity that the much-loved PlayStation character could come back. After Activision was given the rights to Crash Bandicoot in 2008, on a Kotaku interview with Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg, he foretells, sort of, the future of the franchise:

“I don’t have anything official to announce, but I can speak as an individual, I love Crash Bandicoot. Those were some of my favorite video games growing up. And I would love to find a way to bring him back, if we could.”

A lot of Crash Bandicoot fans also got their hopes up when Sony’s President and Group CEO Andrew House said that although working on a new Crash Bandicoot game for the PlayStation could be a treacherous path, as proven by the cancelled Crash Bandicoot titles, they couldn’t completely close their doors to the possibility of a comeback on the newer-generation PlayStation consoles.

“This is very dangerous ground. In concept, it is something we’ve been thinking about and discussing, and this is a shift for us.

“We’ve started to say that maybe there isn’t anything wrong with going back and looking at characters that people still talk about, that were a big part of either their childhood or their youth. I definitely wouldn’t close the door on that.”

We’re in year 2016, and more and more remakes are making their way to the newer-generation consoles. Like with the remake of the Final Fantasy franchise favorite Final Fantasy 7, developers are expecting on the gamers’ nostalgia to bring in money to the remake. With better technology at their disposal, it seems a new Crash Bandicoot game could really materialize—and it’s going to be even better and badder.

In February 2016, the PlayStation Middle East Twitter account posted the tweet below, which reads, “Most wanted person… where are you Crash?”

Gaming Bolt spots proof that a new Crash Bandicoot game is really on its way to the PlayStation 4. We found Swiss retailer Alcom list a Crash Bandicoot game labeled for the PlayStation 4 platform. Under the genre Jump and Run, it seems this is pretty much a hit since Crash Bandicoot was all about jumping and running back in the day.

As of writing, the Alcom listing of Crash Bandicoot for PlayStation 4 is still up, with a selling price of 78.90 swiss francs and a target release of 2017. The photo of the listing, while bearing the PS4 banner, when translated to English, reads “No picture yet.”

From our previous experiences, slip ups like this of online retailers are usually true. Usually, retailers who post listings of unconfirmed or unannounced items are unaware that a few days or months earlier than the scheduled announcement already would spark up buzz in the right circles. So if previous leaks are true, then Crash Bandicoot’s return to PlayStation 4 is really happening.

[Image via lozikiki | Flickr | Cropped and resized | CC BY-ND 2.0]

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