Crash Bandicoot Party Games
- Released on January 23, 2007 for JAVA mobile
- Game modes: Single-player, multiplayer
- Developer: Kaolink
- Publisher: Vivendi Universal Mobile
Overview
Developed by the French Kaolink team and based loosely on the critically disappoiting DS game Crash Boom Bang!, Crash Bandicoot Party Games was a mobile phone tie-in released in 2007 and features 14 wacky mini games, such as cow shooting, tower building, bomb tossing, you name it!
The game is centred around characters from the mainline Crash games, including the bandicoot himself, along with Coco, Dr. Neo Cortex and Nina Cortex. The mini-games are nothing earth shattering; they're all simple one-thumb games, with varying levels of entertainment.
At the time, Nintendo's Wario Ware series set new expectations for collections of mini-games: players wanted lots of them in one package, and the sillier the better. This is a Good Thing if it means less lazy cash-ins, where a popular game character is shoehorned into a bunch of so-so mini-games in an effort to eke more cash out of gamers.
So, to Crash Bandicoot Party Games. The outlook isn't promising. But while the resulting game doesn't really nail the wackiness factor, Vivendi has produced a fun title with a clever nod to Dirty Sanchez style multiplayer fun.
So, to Crash Bandicoot Party Games. The outlook isn't promising. But while the resulting game doesn't really nail the wackiness factor, Vivendi has produced a fun title with a clever nod to Dirty Sanchez style multiplayer fun.
For instance, the mini-game, 'Crazy Mallet' has you pressing a button to block a mallet from hitting the good characters, while leaving it to thunk the baddies. 'Dropping' sees you trying to drop boxes from a plane onto a target on the ground, while 'Infernal Tower' has you, erm, dropping more boxes, this time onto a moving platform to build up a tower.
They're okay, but not hugely engaging, while the baffling 'Crash Baseball' is simply rubbish. Better, however, are 'I'm The Strongest', which sees you weightlifting by pressing a button to match an arrow on a gauge, and 'Cow Shoot', which has you blowing the bejaysus out of a bunch of innocent fresians. It's a mixed bag, in other words.
They're okay, but not hugely engaging, while the baffling 'Crash Baseball' is simply rubbish. Better, however, are 'I'm The Strongest', which sees you weightlifting by pressing a button to match an arrow on a gauge, and 'Cow Shoot', which has you blowing the bejaysus out of a bunch of innocent fresians. It's a mixed bag, in other words.
Single-player mode lets you play individual mini-games, or take them all on in turn to bag the biggest score. The visuals are colourful, and the sound effects fit in well – we're particularly fond of the way the cows moo as you blast them off-screen. Nevertheless, if this was all there was to Crash Bandicoot MiniGames, we wouldn't recommend it.
However, Multiplayer mode improves things, throwing in some free-for-all games where you all have to lay thumbs on the handset to compete, as well as more traditional pass-the-handset competition. There's also some neat in-between level bonuses and forfeits thrown in to spice things up.
However, Multiplayer mode improves things, throwing in some free-for-all games where you all have to lay thumbs on the handset to compete, as well as more traditional pass-the-handset competition. There's also some neat in-between level bonuses and forfeits thrown in to spice things up.
Mini Games
Single-player and multiplayer mini games:
Two mini games are exclusive to the loopy multiplayer mode:
- Crazy Mallet: Block the mallet to save Crash and Coco!
- Cow Shoot: Shoot as many cows as possible!
- Balloon Burst: Burst as many ballons as possible on the black bird! if you touch a yellow bird, you lose!
- The Survivor: Push the bomb back to save Crash and Coco! Only Dr Cortex and Nina should get blown up!
- Mobile Phone Thief: On opening the present, press quickly to earn a maximum of points!
- Dropping: Drop your 3 packages on the target to earn points. Your total must beat the high score shown at the bottom of the screen!
- Infernal Tower: Pile the boxes up as fast as possible! Try to touch the ceiling without making everything fall!
- I'm the Strongest!: Lift the bar as fast as possible! To do this press when the arrow is in the red tone of the gauge!
- Crash Baseball: Hit the balls as far as possible! You have 3 tries.
- Whozzat?: Guess who is hidden behind the boxes!
- Good Sight: Remember the number of dragons of each color!
- Fatal Opening: Hit the buzzer, but don't let the dragon out!
Two mini games are exclusive to the loopy multiplayer mode:
Development
According to producer, Elodie Larre, when developing the mobile version of Crash Boom Bang!, the biggest challenge was to try to achieve the maximum number of varied mini-games, whilst keeping the size of the game in the phone's memory as small as possible, because at the time, phones were less powerful than a PS1. The devleopment team also admitted to be taking inspiration from the WarioWare series.