>>14174338
>made platform jumping nearly impossible.
How bad can you possibly be at a video game?
The physics are very slightly different, but it's really only noticeable in a couple parts. And only if you're mega autistic and can play the originals by muscle memory. Which I am. But when the most noticeable thing is that it's harder (but not at all impossible) to cheat on the bridge levels in Crash 1 by walking on the ropes, it's really nothing to complain about. The fact that Relic challenges and playable Coco were added to the first two games more than make up for it.
>>14174689
Mario couldn't figure out how to translate its 2D gameplay into 3D, and they ended up making something very different that just happened to have the Mario name and aesthetics. Crash tried to translate the level design philosophies of things like Sonic and DKC, and it was great. But then the "open world" trend really caught on by the PS2 gen and now people shit on Crash for not having obstacles that you can just walk around.
>>14177484
Crash Bandicoot has the same sort of level progression. Cortex bought his own island to do experiments on, and Crash jumped into the sea and washed up two islands away, now having to make his way back. So the first island is completely free of Cortex's influence, because it's the furthest away. The boss isn't even one of Cortex's minions, he's just the local tribe leader. Note that he wears on his head a mask of the same sort of design as Aku Aku and Uka Uka, because the obvious implication is that they were originally from this tribe, and perhaps were once chiefs, with Papu Papu being their modern equivalent.
By the time you get to the second island, you see more of Cortex's influence, such as Ripper Roo, Cortex's first animal subject and a major failure, living here instead of with the rest of Cortex's minions, and Koala Kong, the strong guy, running a mine near the coast that is closest to Cortex's island.
On Cortex Island the story is much more explicit, as you make your way through his factory, which leads you to the plant that powers the factory and labs (which are coming up), and then to his toxic waste dump, before you take out the literal boss of the power plant, Pinstripe. You then have to cross the river to the other half of the island and climb up the outside of the castle, then sneak inside in the dark, get through the inner workings of the Castle Machinery, take out Cortex's right hand man, get through Cortex's lab itself, cross a Great Hall to the rooftop exit, and fight Cortex as he tries to make his escape in his blimp.
Crash 2 then takes place on the same islands, but Cortex and N. Brio have taken over more of the islands as they try to fight each other. N. Brio of course being the real creator of the Evolvo-Ray, he is the one in control of all the animal enemies in the game, while Cortex controls only robot and human enemies, like are seen in his lab in Crash 1, after you defeat N. Brio (though Crash 3 shows these guys are robots too). In the first four Warp Rooms, all the enemies consist of animal enemies from Crash 1, only with implants and armor and stuff added on, because now they work for Brio, while in Crash 1 they were just regular animals. When you get to the last Warp Room, Crash finally turns against Cortex, so the animal enemies disappear and are replaced with robots and humans.
Crash 3 then has nothing but human enemies and regular animals, no altered animals, because that is N. Brio's specialty, and he's not in this game. The human enemies work for Cortex and the regular animals are just regular animals.
This attention to who the enemies are working for applies to the bosses as well. In Crash 1, Ripper Roo, Koala Kong, and Pinstripe are all working for Cortex, but were actually created by N. Brio. In Crash 2, Ripper Roo, the Komodo Bros, and Tiny are all working for N. Brio. Why did Ripper Roo switch sides? Well we see in this game that he cured his insanity and became educated. So he chose to help N. Brio try to save the world. In Crash 3, by contrast, Tiny is working for Cortex despite being created to fight Cortex in Crash 2. But Tiny is the franchise's idiot, and can be easily fooled or convinced. Note that the only boss actually created by Cortex in Crash 3 is Dingodile, who is explicitly not the same type of mutant as all the previous ones, and is instead a new type of experiment in creating a hybrid of two creatures, rather than just mutating one or turning it into a cyborg.
The end of Crash 3 then sees Cortex and N. Tropy lost in time as babies, fighting over Uka Uka. We don't know how Cortex got back to the present, but evidently he beat N. Tropy, because in the next game, N. Tropy is a ghost. Though Ripper Roo and Komodo Joe getting the Uka Uka powerup instead of the Aku Aku powerup is a fuckup, because they were both fighting against Uka Uka in their last appearance in Crash 2.