Every console has a game synonymous with it. A game that effectively represents it, its capabilities, and its legacy. For Atari, it was Pong and possibly Pitfall. For Nintendo, it’s always been the Super Mario franchise. Sega’s is Sonic the Hedgehog. The PlayStation though went without a “mascot” or mainstay platform game for the first few years of its development. That’s not to say that there weren’t amazing games. There absolutely was. Jet Moto, Twisted Metal, Ridge Racer and Tekken were/are the kinds of exclusive titles that you could sell a console around- and they did. But they didn’t give Sony that “character” every other console brand had.
That is until Crash Bandicoot arrived in 1996. Selling nearly seven million units on the PlayStation alone and earning a slew of sequels on the console that also sold millions of units, it put Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin’s Naughty Dog on the map, making future franchises the likes of Uncharted, Jak and Daxter and The Last of Us a reality.
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Patrick Hickey, Jr., is the founder and editor-in-chief of ReviewFix.com and a lecturer of English and journalism at Kingsborough Community College, in Brooklyn, New York. Over the past decade, his video game coverage has been featured in national ad campaigns by top publishers the likes of Nintendo, Deep Silver, Disney and EA Sports. His book series, "The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult and Classic Game Developers," from McFarland and Company, has earned praise from Forbes, Huffington Post, The New York Daily News and MSG Networks. He is also a former editor at NBC and National Video Games Writer at the late-Examiner.com
