Having covered Spyro’s isometric handheld history, there are two sidescrollers for me to play (not counting the Legend games on GBA and mobile). The first is the famous Crash Bandicoot crossover, Fusion (also known as Spyro Orange). To be quite honest, it’s a miserable slog.
This game and its companion, Crash Fusion/Purple, are the first proper crossover between the two series. There have been cameos before (I noticed that flameable objects in the level Tiki Tropics in Season of Flame made the Aku Aku sound, for example), and Spyro even appeared as a racer in Crash Nitro Kart GBA, but this is a full-blown meeting of worlds. Both games share a plot, and each one sees its respective protagonist visiting locations from both series, with characters and enemies from both showing up. I’d say though that the balance is slightly shifted towards the protagonist’s home series; most of the NPCs here are Spyro natives.
Anyway, the crossover aspect is fine. Cortex and Ripto (yes he’s back, again) play off each other well enough, in the cheap-looking cutscenes. What I appreciated just as much was how many nods there were to Spyro’s whole history. Since this is one of the last games in the original continuity, there’s Riptocs from EtD, Blink from AHT, the friends from YotD, etc. Collecting trading cards (Link Cable trading to the Crash game was supported) was fun, with elements from throughout the series represented, including the much-missed Elora and even stuff that was exclusive to the GBA games.
Now for the slagging off. The majority of the Fusion experience is a cheap minigame collection. The sidescrolling platforming sections seem like just a brief means of getting to the next minigame portal, at which tedium ensues. There’s three types of scrolling shooter, two autoscrollers, a Breakout clone, even simple button-mashing. A few at least use the platforming engine, but a close view and slippery controls hinder time-pressured platforming. I sighed through them to see what new NPCs and trading cards the game would show me next, but my breaking point came upon entering the final world. Up til then I’d beaten each minigame once which let me move to the next area; I was told that to do anything in world five I first had to beat every other minigame up to that point—five of them in each of the four worlds—three times. So backtracking over the entire game world, then 40 more minigames with increased difficulty. I noped out immediately.
The platforming bits were ok. Spyro can’t charge but it wouldn’t suit these levels anyway. He has AHT-style flapping as opposed to gliding. It more-or-less works, despite the screen feeling cramped. The gem economy is strange though; there are different coloured gems as usual, but unusually the red ones (worth 1) respawn, and you regularly get gem prizes from completing minigames or gambling games. Being able to afford entry into the compulsory minigames and collecting trading cards requires grinding, either of the gambling or recollecting the paltry reds. This makes the sidescroller bits seem even more pathetic and subservient to the minigames, when you’re using them only as a means to scrape together the cash to participate in an unfun challenge.
The more I talk about this game the madder I get. There were a scant few bright spots, but it seems such a missed opportunity. Crash and Spyro have a history together, and they’re a good fit for a crossover, but it’s a shame that these paired games are the extent of it, because they’re rubbish.
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