Crash Bash, yet another Crash Bandicoot game I’ve never played properly. I’ve had a little look at it already, and it seems to be something like Mario Party, with a collection of minigames and plenty of opportunities to embarrass yourself. Sounds wonderful!

Getting it started took a little more fiddling than I’d hoped. I managed to forget the USB connection and then got myself confused about the order of starting the PlayStation and the PSIO software. You’d think I’d have this worked out by now!

Eventually everything started behaving, and Crash Bash loaded successfully. Better yet, the music was working, which is always nice after testing so many games with missing audio. I understand some of the Crash games use a different approach to their music, although I haven’t established the exact technical reason for the difference here.

The first minigame I tried involved keeping balls out of my goal while sending them towards everyone else. Easy enough in theory, but apparently I’m not particularly good at it. The other players kept sending them my way, and before long I was completely overwhelmed. Wonderful!

I also tried another minigame involving little characters and an icy arena, which was equally confusing. There were several pages of instructions, none of which seemed especially interested in helping me win.

Despite my terrible performance, the game itself seemed to be working well. I didn’t encounter any obvious PSIO compatibility problems during the gameplay I tested, which makes this another encouraging result for the prototype.

Please remember that I’m using PSIO hardware 1.1 with software 1.1 revision 1.2, so these results don’t necessarily apply to the eventual finished device. You can find more information at ps-io.com.

Prototype test conditions

  • PSIO hardware: 1.1
  • PSIO software: 1.1, revision 1.2
  • PlayStation: PAL SCPH-5502