Crash Bandicoot

Battle of the Bandicoots

When he wasn’t practising for gigs, Drew liked to race bandicoots

» Playstation » 1996 » naughty Dog

When i was in sixth form i was in a band, and during the summer i’d head over to my friend tom’s house and we’d spend our free time practicing or writing songs. The thing is, we were still (technically) teenagers, and experts at procrastination – we had it down to a fine art.

One bright summer day, we were all at Tom’s practicing for a gig that took place the next day. During a break, I whipped out my PSP for some Crash Bandicoot. “Whoa, that Crash?” Tom asked. “I’ve got that on my Psone, it was awesome!” – this all took place in 2010, so Crash was retro by this point.

Skip forward five minutes and he’d started a new game on his Playstation and I’d started another new game on my PSP. We were going to race to the finish. Screw the gig; the starting pistol was about to fire for the most important contest of our lives. The rest of the band was enthralled and ready to sub in if Tom or I got too tired, it was on.

Hours rolled by, then we got to Slippery Climb – the game’s infamously difficult level. We were neck and neck on that level for what felt like days – palms sweaty, eyes itchy from not blinking, and all of us forcing that feeling we should be finessing our songs further and further back into our brains.

We never got past that level, though; we got too tired in the early hours of the morning. And the next day we bum-noted our way through our setlist as Crash-addled zombies. Do I regret wasting that fertile practice time, though? Not a chance.