Crash Bandicoot, one of the most successful and best-selling
videogame franchises in PlayStation history in 1995 continues to
set unprecedented industry records, with overall sales of the
franchise (including the original Crash Bandicoot and Crash
Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back) surpassing the 5 million-unit
sales mark worldwide earlier this year. Crash Bandicoot is the
first and only PlayStation franchise to have both the original game
and its sequel exceed the one million-unit mark in North
America.
The first four Crash Bandicoot games were developed by Naughty Dog
(Crash 1, Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Crash 3: WARPED and CTR:
Crash Team Racing). Crash Bash was developed by Eurocom, Crash
Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex and Crash Twinsanity were developed
by Traveller's Tales, Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure (titled
XS in Europe), Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, Crash Nitro Kart and
Crash: Purple (called FUSION in Europe) have all been developed by
Vicarious Visions and finally Crash Tag Team Racing was developed
by Radical Entertainment. Almost all of the Crash titles were
published by Universal Interactive, now called Vivendi
Universal.
Even though the games were originally published by Sony for the
PlayStation, Vivendi Universal owns the copyrights to the games and
characters, which is why multiple developers have worked with the
property, and why games have been released for Nintendo and
Microsoft consoles.
Most people consider the Naughty Dog games were the best in the
series. After that the games have not recieved that much critical
hype, aside from the Vicarious Visions games, which did not fare
critically as well as the Naughty Dog games, but have still
recieved praise from fans due to Vicarious Visions sticking to the
Naughty Dog Crash Bandicoot formula.
