I should note that there are SEVEN different categories of minigames, not five, and also the final category consists of four rather different minigames just with a matching aesthetic (though most of these are unlocked post-game). A couple minigames in other categories also change up the rules and mechanics drastically like Swamp Fox, which does alleviate the problem A LITTLE and give us about a dozen unique minigame styles. Still not great but better.

As for Oxide, I'm kinda willing to take his presence by simple fact he is such a hilariously petty over-competitive villain. OF COURSE he'd come back just to one up you. I do agree that the co-op tie breaker is a way more satisfying final showdown however. This is actually the game that got me invested in good/evil mode campaigns in video games.

I do agree that Bash hasn't aged great. The Wii era especially ate it for lunch, though I do have nostalgia for it, and wouldn't mind a similar party game down the line that took the right notes from it while downplaying its shortcomings.

28:29 - That's actually incorrect. The lightning bolt and the size increase are absent from 'Melt Panic'. Since Uka Uka only grants the player the trapezium weight and the size decrease.

I have really good memories from crash bash from when I was a kid, what a gem it was for coop

I loved this game as a kid! I never actually owned a PS1 but I had this game since it was backwards compatible for the PS2 and I got it for maybe $2. We would always try and beat the game in one sitting since we didn't have a PS1 memory card I couldn't save.

Crash Ball being like a soccer/pong hybrid is an interesting comparison. The goal system and back and forth movement is fitting.

In trying to come up with a similar comparison, my mind saw it as a pinball/air hockey mash up.

Story would be so so so different if sony had made a Crash x Spyro party game

You can use the walls as a block in pogo. It gets insanely easier once you realize this. 16 points each time with just half a box made

Still my favorite crash. I know I’m delusional but me and my cousin used to play this adventure mode every new years while all our other relatives got drunk. Miss my homie.

Crash bash is amazing. I am biased cuz I grew up with all crash games so they’re all good to me. Crash was huge in kuwait, still is. I love all crash games. I think traveler tales have my favorite crash games.

This was the funnest game to play with my lil brother when I was a kid in the early 2000s but man it was so good and had strong story structure I didn’t even realize it was just a party game game at the time I just thought it was a crash bandicoot game lol

Was waiting for you to mention the full completed game after the gems and crystals there's best of the best relics that are the hard part of the game and in the battle and also modes there is 4 more completely unique games

Technically there are over 28 minigames in total, 22 if you don't wanna count any of the 5th warp room ones and 32 if you wanna count the bosses as their own minigames as well.
The good part of the 5th warp room minigames is that they're the most varied yet when compared to the others (except maybe Dante's Dash being exactly like Toxic Dash but with a volcano in the middle shooting fireballs in random directions instead of a slime monster spawning little slimes going in a predictable pattern, which is very anti-climatic considering that's the very last minigame you unlock, requiring 27 trophies to do so);
The bad part of the 5th warp room minigames is that it's all post-game content, on top of having ridiculous requirements to unlock them all (17 gold relics for Splash Dash, 23 crystals for Swamp Fox, 25 gems for Keg Kaboom, 19 crystals for Dragon Drop, and 21 gold relics for Mallet Mash) as well as being the most difficult minigames in the game (judging all this from my experience in getting both gold and platinum relics when i was 200%ing the game four separate times, N.Ballism and Sky Ball were pretty high up there too, and considering your skill level i'd wager that you would've struggled hard with the trophies alone).
In terms of the general critique of the game, i pretty much had the same opinion on it for years, and why i wasn't surprised on why the 200% TAS was ultimately rejected (due to all the repetitiveness of the minigames and how many load screen there are).

Yeah, I did 200% it with coco (aka, hard mode), and while the AI are toned down when facing a "new" category of minigames, such as warp room 1's trophy, warp 2's tanks, warp 3's dash, and warp 4's ring ding, everything else is cranked up to 8 out of 10 when it comes to gem/crystal gathering, then to 11 when it comes to the gold relic, and THEN to infinity when it comes to their plats relics, forcing me to perfectly master each minigames, and lemme tell ya... the basic ones that were toned down were generally HARDER due to a lack of extra items/gimmicks to help players. Also, for the crate minigames, I never played with the pickup button since I never felt comfy w/ it, therefore the bandicoots have the best mobility attacks, their spins sending the crates the furthest distances on the ground, despite making crates go in only 8 directions doing so.

The difficulty scale goes like this:

Tiny & Koala are the easiest (and are the ones used in speedruns)

The N stand for normal (cortex & Brio)

The Bandicoots are hard mode

The Dingodile/Rilla Roo are the "near-impossible" mode

on a happier note though, my favorite minigame when playing with others is the basic crash ball since 4-way pong rules

on a more grim note, CPUs take LESS dmg from all types of attacks in general if life bars are involved (the extra salt on the crappy cake of BSness)

The character stats is pretty clear sure they don't say tiny is stronger than crash but u play it a single time u can easily tell oh there like this so the first game is blind but once you play each u know for the 500 times after that

@TheFogFrog THE ONLY Bash review that took time to sometimes appreciate a graphics of game! Nobody talks about it and everyone ignore, but i liked the extra effort how they changed background and theme of game on the crystals challenges. They DIDNT HAVE TO DO THAT. Yet they did. Unfortunately its true that this alone cant save the game itself. However i was looking on it completely different as a child. I didnt even realize how repetitive the game was. I just always liked the new environment and added element of other versions from same minigame :D Also what do you think about soundtrack of this game? You didnt mention it

I think I’ve only ever played Crash Bash with friends and didn’t even realize it has a story lol maybe that’s why I have such fond memories of this game❤️

Never play this game alone. Always have someone to play with. Played 4 players & it was a blast

this game has the best crash soundtrack

There are also extra minigames you can get in another area: Dragon Drop, Mallet Mash and Keg Kaboom iirc
The rest are the usual reskinned levels

I never understood why they went to the trouble of making a new character in the form of Rilla Roo and then made two evil characters move to the good side. Why not just make two new OC characters and put them on the good side?