3. Crash Team Racing Four-Way Fun
For a lot of people their first taste of four-way fun would have been with GoldenEye on the N64. An awesome game to be sure, but not one that I was ever prone to playing on (I've been a PlayStation boy since the early days of the PSX, and FPSs have never really been my forte) but for me it was Crash Team Racing. With the addition of that hideous grey, horseshoe your two-port Playstation could suddenly hold four controllers and racing was never the same again. Whole summers disappeared as we sat on bunk beds, the curtains firmly drawn against the outside sun, playing winner-stays-on over such classic tracks as N. Gin Labs, Cortex Castle, Papu's Pyramid, and Roo's Tubes.
2. Crash Bandicoot Indiana Bandicoot
Sega had Sonic, Nintendo had Mario, and Sony had nothing... but then came the bandicoot. In a mix of 2D and 3D, Crash, well, crashed onto the scene and made us forget that we couldn't curl up into a little blue speedball or double in size with only a nibble of a single mushroom. He ran, he jumped, he spun, and he made us laugh. What he also did - the thing that blew my Indiana Jones-loving socks off - was run towards the screen whilst being chased by a giant boulder. In later games the threat was escalated as you ran from monsters while riding polar bears and the like but, although they were all awesome, they never quite matched the first time the camera spun around and watched as you ran for your life. And the winner is...?