Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage [GBA]

Former Sony mascot Crash Bandicoot has been making quite a name for himself on the Game Boy Advance. In his latest outing, he teams up with another GBA favorite, Spyro, and opts for a somewhat less traditional style of game.

Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy and Crash Purple are designed to complement each other, rather like Nintendo's variously colored Pokemon titles. Both games have the same plot: series villains Doc Cortex and Ripto team up to make Crash and Spyro's lives miserable. While playing Crash Purple, you'll periodically meet up with Spyro and other related characters, and the two titles can be linked for trading collectibles.

Ripto's Rampage has a different style than other GBA Crash games. Rather than platform-jumping as the main course, here it's a method for Crash to travel from one WarioWare-style mini-game to the next. Unfortunately, these sections aren't as developed as in the Spyro game.

Driving tanks, flying rockets, and shooting bazookas at sheep are themes of Crash's mini-games. While they're longer than WarioWare's sound bites, they're just as easy to understand and play. However, their difficulty isn't very well balanced -- you'll find some games easy to complete on your first try, while others are extremely unforgiving.

In this game, Crash doesn't have "lives" in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, whenever the player dies, they restart whatever mini-game was being played. There's a small price to pay: you'll lose some of the "wumpa fruit" Crash collects. However these are so plentiful, this penalty becomes meaningless after the first 10 minutes.

One area where the game excels is in its save system. Progress is saved automatically whenever Crash enters or exits a minigame, reaches a new level, or accomplishes anything of consequence. Players can be confident that if real life intrudes on their handheld gaming time, their progress is secure when they switch off the Game Boy Advance. All handheld games should have systems like this.

Crash Purple also offers some multiplayer features. A few of its mini-games allow linked play with both single and multiple cartridges, and there's an additional two-player game that can be played between Crash Purple and Spyro Orange owners.

On the presentation side, developer Vicarious Visions (responsible for the superb Tony Hawk GBA games) has done a characteristically fine job. Crash is full of character, and although the sprites for the mini-games can be indistinct, it's still a good-looking game. Music and sound effects are standard fare for the series -- lots of bongo drums and whizzy noises.

In the end, Crash Purple doesn't come anywhere near the superb mayhem of WarioWare, while the platform segments are poorly developed and feel like an afterthought. Although it's passable entertainment, there are certainly better Crash GBA games out there.