In 1990 what would have blown your mind more: Crash Bandicoot or Rayman Origins?

Crash Bandicoot, maybe? I don't know. 8-year-old me was a fucking idiot.

I just finished Rayman Legends, too. Actually went back and finished all the time attack levels.

Probably Crash since it was 3D

The good one.

Motherfuckin 3d Aku Aku.

Crash wouldn't be possible either though. Even in arcades the only 3D games were incredibly basic flat shaded stuff like Hard Drivin' and some vector games. Virtua Figher, which is what I consider to be the first popular polygonal 3D arcade game, didn't come until 1993.

Thinking back on it, it's quite impressive how quickly 3D technology advanced in gaming. You basically go from nothing in 1990 to a fully 3D game on home PCs - Quake 1 - in the span of 6 years.

Rayman. Never cared for Crash Bandicoot.

Back then, sharper graphics were a big deal with CD Roms and arcade units showing off really high end graphics, so Rayman would have fit in.

Crash would have been neat for a bit but then even gimicky 3d games didn't last long like Alone in the Dark or Dactyl Nightmare.

Crash Bandicoot was a pretty amazing title for its time. It nearly didn't come out as there was a memory-card wiping bug (which turned out to be a problem with playstation hardware). http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaveBaggett/20131031/203788/My_Hardest_Bug_Ever.php

Rayman Origins is also fairly amazing. They made their own animation engine (I think it's vector), that allows very expressive illustrative animations at a high frame rate.

Even Donkey Kong Country's stupid graphics gimmick impressed me back then. I'm sure Rayman Origins would completely blow my mind in the 90's.

Crash

Crash Bandicoot, because dumbass child me would've just thought Rayman: Origins was a better-looking version of the first game.

Oh wait no, it wouldn't be "dumbass child me", because in 1990 I was Minus Four Years Old.

Bubsy 3D

The Last of Us

I actually wonder how many GB posters were actually alive in 1990.

Crash, from a pure technical, graphical point of view. Dat level of 3D six years before it actually came out? Supes kray kray.

I think they both would have to 1990 me. The 3D in Crash would have been amazing and Rayman essentially looks like a playable cartoon. Hell, the cartoons of that day didn't look as good as Rayman does.

If I saw any of those games in the 90s, I would have thought they were fake. No way I would have thought Rayman was not a cartoon back then...

Its not like the 90s didn't have a reputation of coloring every game as something they were not.

I think either way, I wouldn't have known they were games. I remember first seeing Super Mario 64, and Mario's face popping on the screen; I stood in front of the TV and asked my parents and brothers if the game was going, or if we were still watching TV. It was amazing and confusing because I had never seen something in gaming so graphically impressive. Then again, I think as with anything, it'd be a short amount of time before we were pretty used to it. I've always liked to ask similar questions, but it's mostly about, what would people think if we saw Crysis come out around the time Quake or even in 04 or 05, when Half Life 2; Far Cry; Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. came out (and it was playable). Well, actually, in 1990, that's when I was born, so I probably wouldn't remember.

A lot of things. I wasn't even born yet. '93 baby! Rayman would've been amazing, though.

Crash Bandicoot, easily. Sure, the art in the Rayman games is several leagues beyond what was on consoles in 1990, but to turn all that stuff onto its z-axis with those graphics in the same year as Super Mario World setting the new bar for SNES? Crash Bandicoot would probably still be the household name it was at the time if it had been THAT ahead of the curve.

Which would have blown my mind: a mid-90's platformer for the original Playstation, or this HD super detailed 60fps amazing looking platformer from way farther in the future?

In an era dominated by megahertz obsession and bit wars, Crash Bandicoot stands no chance against a product from our age. It doesn't matter that Crash has polygons because Rayman Origins simply looks better thanks to better tech.

@stepside:

Yeah I have no concept of the average age of the forum goer here; I don't post often. I think GB's fanbase in general is a little older than that of the typical game site, but I have nothing to back that up.

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Bit wars, heh. Kid me would never believe that Rayman was running on a system that's "only" 32-bit; I'd be like, "that must be 200-bits at least!"

Okay, rather than giving myself the benefit of the doubt (I was -2 in 1990, but I can assess this as a thought experiment as though I were my age now,) I'm willing to say that Rayman would have been more impressive to me. Crash would've seemed exciting and interesting, but as an experiment; Rayman would seem like perfect execution on my favorite kind of game.

Crash is just too early for the 3D to be all that meaningful. All of the game's best moments are designed in the style of a 2D platformer; its 3D is kind of a gimmick. An exciting one, but the gameplay would make 3D games seem like a far-off dream. 3D games wouldn't come into their own until Mario 64, which would probably top Rayman; I lost my goddamn MIND the first time I saw video of Mario 64. (I'd been playing the NES Mario games for a while when the N64 came out, both on the actual NES and the SNES Mario All-Stars cart. Somehow never got Super Mario World, but did wind up with Yoshi's Island? I dunno.)

I've never been more excited for an E3 demo than the first time I saw Rayman Origins demoed in 2011, though. Everything about it made me SO HAPPY. Even MGS4 came with more misgivings, I think.

That's a great question. Quite the conundrum indeed. On the one hand, it'd be what we've known, just so much prettier. Or it's something completely new, playing from a perspective we've not yet known before.

I do remember the magic of the first polygonal graphics like Star Fox, so I think it'd still have been Crash Bandicoot, but honestly I don't know how Rayman Legends would have hit me back then. The closest thing animation-wise must have been Earthworm Jim. Edit: Dang, 1990 is still pretty much NES era...

Nah, I'm pretty sure the novelty and innovation of polygonal 3D graphics would beat Ubisoft's trademark 2D engine impressions-wise back then. Even if just for a bit. The SNES was barely out by 1990.

I was like a month old, so probably anything that moved and was colorful would have blown my mind.

I love how its like "Ah fuck it, we'll just forget all the other old Rayman games. You know, the ones that were actually akin to the gameplay stylings of Crash and on PS1 and 2. So I'll just rather choose this other HD bad ass game and put it against this PS1 thing, heahh.., and now which is better if I was like 1?"

You're crazy! You can't imagine how a platformer could look better than Rayman Origins/Legends? How about a platformer with Disney-quality hand drawn frame by frame 48fps animation instead of the tweening they use for most of it right now?

I mean, I agree those games look fantastic, but it's easy to imagine how they could look better.

Rayman because I was obsessed with cartoons as a kid (and still kinda am). Rayman looks better than anything that was on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network back then (and a lot of stuff now). It would have shaken the foundation of my very being.

Basically, Cartoons for me is a religion, and Rayman Origins is the shit. (I hope people still get this reference.)

Probably Rayman Origins because I remember back in the day I was so impressed by The Curse of Monkey Island way more than any 3D game I've seen. It looked like a painting came to life, and that's how Rayman Origins looks.

Isn't this a bit of a dumb question? Rayman Origins looks better than Crash Bandicoot ever has, one came out in 1996, the other 2012.

It's pretty obvious surely? Now if we are talking about a Crash Bandicoot with fresh visuals, then obviously it's a fair comparison.

@sooty: You're a dumb question!

First of all, this thread is for fun, second I explained why I think it's not so cut and dry in my post and the variety of responses and the poll backs that up. If you're under the age of, oh say 26, I understand why you wouldn't really get it since you've never known a time when there weren't 3D (meaning polygonal) video games. Yes Rayman does ultimately look way better than Crash, but it's the imaginable extension of 2D art getting crisper and more detailed with each successive hardware generation in that era. 3D rendering, even if primitive, was unlike anything seen at that point. That's why if the comparison were between Mario 64 and Rayman, there's no question in my mind that Mario would be the more impressive of the two due to the 3D world being more integral to it's gameplay (and therefore novel)- unlike Crash which was rendered in 3D, but still largely played like a 2D game.

@sweetz: Yep. Not to discredit anyone, but I do wonder how many people were around back then to really understand the impact of 3D visuals.

I was the same age as you, like I said, and I was blown away by seeing Street Fighter II for the first time in arcades. But anything in 3D, even if it wasn't artistically impressive, was still a technical achievement (especially looking at it in 1990). Sure, looking back, SNES games age a lot better than PSX games, but there was a reason why we went to 3D.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Crash looks better than Rayman Origins/Legends -- that's fucking stupid -- but it's like you said: Origins/Legends is a prettier version of something we have already been used to; Crash and 3D platformers in the mid-to-late 90's was something else entirely. Standards were different back then.

Honestly, though, I originally chose Crash, but I don't know what I would've thought. I don't want to ignore just how beautiful Origins/Legends looks, even by today's standards

Rayman Origins because it came out in 2011, Crash was like 96.

I'd say Rayman: Origins as 2 year old me would of been fascinated by the big bright colours and weird character models.

Dude, Crash is 3d. THREE DEE! Understand? Fuck that Rayman preschool bullshit.

I'm not looking forward to the near future where there will be career video game historians younger than me talking about this period before they were alive. I don't like being a grumpy old man... I love it!

So, I wasn't really a thing in 1990, but I'd hafta say Crash, 'cause 3d continued to blow my mind well after 1990.

I would have been drawn to Crash. Do people remember what it was like to play games then? Do you remember how blown away you were the first time you saw a game in 3D? In 1990 there was literally nothing else like that. Rayman is definitely the more impressive game now, but back then I still understood that style of gameplay.

Of course, if you put them side to side with Crash playing on a 24" CRT and Rayman on a 60"+ flat screen, that makes the question a lot more complicated.

I was 4 in 1990. I don't think kid me would have had an opinion.

I think it's pretty damn amazing how far technology has advanced in just twenty years when it comes to video game graphics. Fifteen years ago, I was playing Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, and I thought that game looked AMAZING. Now here I am playing games like the Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Crysis, Tomb Raider 2013, and they blow that old tech right out of the water. I think my kid self in the mid 90s, when I played Power Rangers on the SNES would have been blown away to see games that I would see in twenty years.

To answer the question though, I think I would prefer Crash Bandicoot as a kid.