Crash Bandicoot 2 was the first game I played for the Playstation, and as a consequence the first game to press upon me the all-consuming need to have one. I'm pretty sure I drove my mom up the damn wall with how much I begged for a Playstation of my own. Every time we went into the Toys R' Us near our house, we would walk by a massive Playsation display near the entrance, and every time I got it in my dumb little head that maybe, just maybe, this would be the day she would relent and buy me one. At the time I couldn't quite conceptualize how poor we really were. It just wasn't going to happen.

I only got a Playstation years later when my friend was throwing out his own, which his dog had knocked over and broke. Jokes on him, the console worked fine! ...If you turned it upsidedown, that is. But man, I played the shit out of that thing until I finally scraped together enough money to get a refurbished PS2.

My friend moved shortly after getting Crash Bandicoot 2, and since most of my other friends had Nintendo 64s, I never got to play more than the first two worlds of this game until much later. I think it's interesting to see where my nostalgia begins and ends with this game as a result. I love Crash 2, but it wears on me by the time I get to the final world. It's one of those games I think starts incredibly strong and just tapers off the deeper in you get. Again, I think that's mostly nostalgia, I'm just very hung up on the first couple hours of the game. And you know what? They hold up. They're every bit as fun as I remember! I also don't want to totally misrepresent the end game, I still have fun with it, it's just, you know... Jet packs.

Even if I think Crash 2 is a game of diminishing returns, it's still a clear step up from the first. There's a lot more story, the voice acting is terrific, there's a ton of new level gimmicks and most (not the jetpack) are actually fun to engage with, and it just feels good to play. I know a lot of people like to hold the original trilogy of Crash games up as being "hard" or whatever, but I think Crash 2 is well balanced and very approachable, *3 even moreso. It's 1* that's straight bullshit.

Sure I could try to look at this one more objectively, but I don't want to. I hear Cortex say "crystaaalssss" and my neurons start activating. One of the best Playstation games I've ever played.