10 Video Game Developer In-Jokes You Totally Missed
5. Denial About Previous Games - Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (2020)
It took over two decades, but the acclaimed Crash Bandicoot: Warped finally received its perfect successor last year with Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. With that length of time between 'official' instalments, how could the developers have resisted taking a punt at the Crash series' past inconsistencies?
Between 1998 and 2020, there have certainly been a healthy amount of appearances from our favourite "woah"-uttering marsupial. Wrath of Cortex, Twinsanity, Crash of the Titans...yep, we certainly had enough to tide us over.
That said, a lot of these games went off on truly bizarre tangents, with radical character redesigns and pretty drastic diversions from the classic platforming, box-breaking gameplay - and fans weren't always too thrilled with what they got.
Halfway through Crash 4, just as Crash and Coco prepare to face off against Neo Cortex once more, the transdimensional mask, Lani-Loli, comments on the "fraught history" between the two parties. He asks how many times they have defeated him, to which Coco tiredly replies, "three", and, confused, he quietly remarks, "Really, only three? Funny. Seemed like more."
Only the most loyal of Crash fans will pick up on this as a dig at the previous games in the series (Cortex has obviously been fought WAY more than three times), and perhaps even an effort to erase them from our memories altogether. Ah, it's good to have you back, Crash.