Crash Boom Bang!

Crash Boom Bang!, known in Japan as Crash Bandicoot Festival, is a party video game developed by Dimps and published by Vivendi Universal Games for the Nintendo DS. It was released in Japan in July 2006, North America and Europe in October 2006 and Australia in November 2006; the international releases were published under the Sierra Entertainment brand.

Crash Boom Bang! is the first Crash game to be released for the Nintendo DS, and the second party game of the series, after Crash Bash. The game's story centers on a multi-millionaire who uses the characters of the series to unearth a powerful object dubbed the "Super Big Power Crystal". The game was met with largely negative reviews for having unoriginal, dull gameplay and poor controls.

Gameplay


Crash Boom Bang! ' s stages resemble board games, as each play area is split into a number of squares. The game takes place among four players, with the computer assigned to spare players. All players simultaneously roll dice. The number each player rolls is the number of squares they move forward. Depending on the type of square that the player lands on, Wumpa Fruit (which is used as points during the race) can be won or lost, an item can be obtained, a special event might be triggered, or a mini-game might commence. If a player lands on a fork in the road, the player will have to select the desired direction with either the stylus or the control pad.

In the Adventure Mode, the characters compete in a race for the Super Big Power Crystal. This race is made up of six stages, each containing smaller sub-maps. The host of the race, the Viscount, sets a task for each stage. This task must be completed before the player can continue to another map. The player with the most points is the winner of the stage. The overall winner of all the stages is the winner of the Viscount's race. In the Festival Mode, the gameplay is fundamentally the same as in the Adventure Mode, with the exception of the ability to select stages to play freely. In the My Room mode, the player's character has his or her own private room in which the player can play minigames that have been collected in Adventure Mode, view a collection of items obtained in Adventure Mode, or create a Motion Panel, a unique in-game communication tool can allow customized messages to be sent mid-game to help friends or distract other players' gameplay. The decorations in My Room are different for each character.

Crash Boom Bang! features forty mini-games that can be played alone or remotely against friends. Balance, timing, and intelligence are required to win these mini-games. Players not taking part in a mini-game can bet Wumpa Fruit on the winner. Betting players can assist or obstruct players in the mini-game by using the Motion Panel. If a player has a special item, the player can access the Shop screen from the Bet screen and buy or sell items.

Characters


A number of characters from past Crash Bandicoot games return in Crash Boom Bang!, though only eight are playable. The playable characters include Crash Bandicoot, Coco Bandicoot, Crunch Bandicoot, Pura, Doctor Neo Cortex, Tawna, Pinstripe Potoroo, and Fake Crash. All of the characters physically appear as they do in official Japanese Crash Bandicoot artwork and promotions (making the game the only Sierra Entertainment entry in the series to use the Japanese artwork and promotions), though Crash's model was altered for the non-Japanese releases to closer resemble his Crash Twinsanity model. The host of the party, the Viscount, is an original character designed specifically for the game. His name in the original Japanese version is "Viscount Devil", a reference to the Tasmanian devil native to Australia.

Story
While developing a resort in Tasmania, the Viscount finds a map of an ancient city containing the fabled Super Big Power Crystal. He attempts to find it himself, but due to the large amount of puzzles, he fails miserably. In the resort, the Viscount decides to gather up the world's cleverest and strongest bunch of characters and con them into finding the Crystal for him. He sends an invitation to Coco Bandicoot, inviting her and Crash to the World Cannonball Race, where the winner earns $100 million.

The race starts in a Port Town, with the winners traveling in a boat to a large desert. Legend has it that four stone tablets are buried somewhere in the desert, and the contestants are sent out to dig for them and bring them to the Viscount. According to the stone tablets, the actual location of the Crystal is hidden somewhere on the ancient map. Before he can investigate the matter further, Doctor Neo Cortex swoops in and snatches the map. As the two struggle for the map, the map is torn to shreds.

Cortex sends his loyal Lab Assistants to find the pieces of the map scattered throughout the big City and bring them to him. Now that the contestants know about the map, the Viscount decides to reveal his true intentions: the Super Big Power Crystal can grant a single wish who whoever obtains it, and the Viscount is willing to give a large sum of money to those who help him find it. Finding the Power Crystal is impossible without the Final Key, so the Viscount boards his plane to travel to the North Atlantic Ocean in search for the Final Key. But the plane is full, and only a select number of the contestants are able to board. Propelled to the skies by an explosive volcano, the contestants are able to board the Viscount's plane.

On the Viscount's ship, the Viscount tells the group the story of an explorer who found the Final Key, but was unable to find the Power Crystal. That explorer was the Viscount's grandfather. As the explorer sailed back to his homeland to recollect his thoughts, his ship crashed into an iceberg and sank, taking the Viscount's grandfather to a watery grave. "Sounds like a movie", remarks one of the attendees. The Viscount tells them to dive to the sunken ship and retrieve the Final Key, much to their shock, considering the near-freezing temperatures. Despite this, the group is able to find the Final Key before freezing to death. With all the pieces of the puzzle at hand, the Viscount victoriously enters the Tower, where the Super Big Power Crystal awaits its owner. Just as the Viscount is about to make his wish, Crash steps forward and makes his wish of a large pile of Wumpa Fruit, much to the Viscount's grief. "May peace prevail on Earth", says Coco.

Development and release
Crash Boom Bang was developed by Dimps under the creative direction of Takeshi Narita, and with Shinji Yoshikawa of Vivendi Universal Games serving as producer. The game was designed by Yuka Niijima, Maiko Azaki and Shiina Suzuki, and was programmed by Kazuteru Suzuki with assistance from Takeshi Kobayashi and Michitoshi Momose. The music was composed and arranged by Kuniyuki Morohashi, while the title theme was composed by Nigorō. Yutaka Shioya served as the game's art director. The voice cast includes Makoto Ishii in the dual role of Crash and Fake Crash, Risa Tsubaki as Coco, Yōsuke Akimoto as Cortex, Asuka Tanii as Pura, Takahiro Yoshino as Pinstripe, Akiko Toda as Tawna, and Shinya Fukumatsu as Crunch.

Crash Boom Bang! was revealed by Vivendi during preparations for E3 2006, where it was publicly announced. It was first released as Crash Bandicoot Festival in Japan on July 20, 2006. This was followed by a North American release on October 10, 2006, a European release on October 27, 2006, and in Australia on November 2, 2006. Crash Boom Bang! was the seventh best-selling game in Australia on the week of June 4 to June 10, 2007.

A version of the game for mobile phones was developed by Vivendi Games Mobile. Producer Elodie Larre described adapting a party game for the mobile phone as a "big challenge". Not wanting to make "another multiplayer game where the players just pass the phone to each other" and hoping to attract both old and new fans of the series, the development team decided to integrate the mobile phone itself into the minigames, creating such minigame gimmicks as playing with one hand behind the back, with one eye closed, playing with the chin, etc. The biggest challenge for the team was keeping the minigames inside the phone's memory, which was deemed slightly inferior to the first PlayStation console. The WarioWare series was cited as an influence in making the game. The game was ultimately released as Crash Bandicoot MiniGames in March 2007.

Reception
Crash Boom Bang! received "generally unfavorable" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic. Andy Myers of Nintendo Power was surprised by the title's perceived staleness in comparison to Dimps' "stellar" work on Sonic Rush. Lesley Smith of Eurogamer remarked that the game "slipped through the cracks in terms of quality control", and suggested it only as a means to "destroy a child's love of videogames". Craig Harris of IGN said that the game "sends the once A-list mascot into an area usually reserved for generic, nameless furry videogame heroes for bargain budgets", and concluded that it was one of the worst games on the Nintendo DS.

The collection of minigames was deemed to be dull and simplistic, with Anthony Dickens of Nintendo Life surmising that they were aimed toward younger players. Myers and GameSpot's Frank Provo considered only a few of the minigames to be interesting or entertaining, which Provo attributed to their comparatively lessened simplicity. Jon Jordan of Pocket Gamer found the opponents' artificial intelligence to be capricious, which rendered most of the minigames unrewarding. Dickens deemed the game's use of the touch screen to be a gimmick, and Luke Van Leuveren of PALGN proposed that some of the minigames would have been better served with controls via the d-pad or shoulder buttons. Smith and GamesRadar+'s PJ Hruschak complained of poor stylus recognition, with Hruschak noting that the touch screen would periodically cease to function during certain minigames, and Smith declared that "Dimps has tried and failed at using the touch-screen and, to be honest, the game would be better off without it". Smith dismissed the betting mechanic as only briefly entertaining, and Harris lambasted the off-screen competition between computer-controlled opponents as "absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable".

The construction of the board game segments was faulted for contributing to erratic pacing, which led to some games lasting for hours; Harris and Van Leuveren added that the issue was exacerbated by the lack of a save function. The gameplay was said to be unintuitive as a result of inadequate instructions, particularly for the use of items, and Jordan considered the selection of items unimaginative. Dickens admitted to personally disliking imitations of board games in video games, and suggested that the game would have worked better with a stage selection system and a wider variety of minigames in lieu of the board games. Harris pointed out that the board games' central action of rolling the dice was performed by a button press despite the user interface being almost entirely touch screen-driven, and cited this as an example of the game's poor planning.

Dickens commended the visual and audio presentation, but claimed that it lured him into a false sense of security. Provo and Van Leuveren complimented the character animation and detail, but felt that the use of the Crash Bandicoot license was purely cosmetic, as the components outside of the characters lacked any resemblance to those of previous installments. Harris said that while the 3D engine was solid, the character animation was robotic and rough. Smith criticized the quality of the character models and the lack of proper scrolling in the introduction. The audio was dismissed as "generic", "boring", "off-putting", and "happy, bippy, but repetitive".