Retro Wrap-Up: Crash Bandicoot Edition

The special PlayStation announcement will be upon us in a few days. Given the leaked picture of a new PlayStation controller, we can probably assume it’s going to be the hotly anticipated PlayStation 4. Thus, it only makes sense for the Operation Rainfall Retro Commercial Research Team (in other words, me) to take a look at some of Sony’s better ad campaigns. So for this week’s Retro Wrap-Up, we take a look at one of Sony’s first franchises for the PlayStation, Crash Bandicoot.

Here are the highlights of this past week.

Nintendo announced a good amount of news in this week’s Nintendo Direct, including a new Mario and Luigi game, , a new Mario Golf game for the 3DS, a port of Donkey Kong Country Returns for the 3DS, and more.

David Rawlings takes a look at some memorable intro cinematics in this week’s Scattered Showers.

Rumor has it that Watch Dogs, among other things, will be coming to ‘all home consoles.’ Here’s hoping this is true.

Randy Thompson talks about some of the problems with current digital distribution methods for anime.

Nintendo announced Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate bundles for Europe. Fire Emblem: Awakening’s getting some sweet European bundles, too.

Phil Schipper takes a look at Sands of Destruction in this week’s Games of the Past review.

Fumito Ueda gives us an update on The Last Guardian.

We take a look at Cryamore, Power Up, and more in this week’s Crowdfunding Spotlight. On a related topic, Gas Powered Games, the studio behind the Wildman Kickstarter campaign, was purchased by Wargaming.

Australia seems to have had enough high prices from Apple and Microsoft, so they decided to subpoena them and ask them what their deal is.

Rose Weitz takes a look at Anju and Kafei from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask in this week’s installment of Building Character.

A total of 466 possible games have been listed as coming to the OUYA.

David Rawlings takes a look at the top six romances in video games that were just never meant to be.

GameStop surveyed its customer to ask them if they will buy next-gen consoles that block used games from being played. The results are unsurprising.

Joel McCabe gives his two cents about Jesse Schell’s claim that demos actually hurt sales for games.

Michel Ancel of the Rayman Legends dev team supports a fan campaign to get Rayman Legends released on the Wii U now.

Justin Graham takes a look at Ayane’s High Kick in this week’s Anime of the Past.

In addition, he also examines the stories and characters of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

New figmas based on Fire Emblem: Awakening have been announced, including a sexy Tharja figure.

Finally, Andrew Eisen, the man who asked Nintendo why they won’t let him spend money on the three games we campaigned for, has a bone to pick with Ubisoft regarding Rayman Legends.

And now, I leave you with Jack Black performing the theme from Cave Story.