Crash Bandicoot: Fusion GBA

Something of a pseudo mascot for the PlayStation platform for several years, Crash Bandicoot eventually moved on when Vivendi bought the rights to the franchise. Now the orange marsupial knows no boundaries in the world of videogames, and in an effort to pair our hero with Vivendi's Spyro the Dragon, the company has brought us Crash Bandicoot Fusion. One half of a double release (Spyro Fusion is the other 50%) Crash Fusion pits players in a world where Crash's enemy Cortex and Spyro's nemesis Ripto have combined their efforts to take over the universe by flooding both worlds with a veritable bestiary of well known foes. Consequently, Crash's world is filled with Ripto's minions and it's up to you to discover just what has happened and how to put things right. On the face of it, Crash Fusion is merely a scrolling platform game in similar fashion to Crash Bandicoot XS, but there's much more to it than that. As well as negotiating a variety of familiar platforming elements, players must collect fruit in each level in order to unlock and complete various mini-games littered throughout the adventure. The discovery and completion of many of these games rewards players with crystals, which can then be used to progress further. Then there's the ability to link with Spyro Fusion, which benefits players in two ways. The first comes in the form of trading cards. Though players can search for and collect cards in the single player game, they'll often need to trade with players of Spyro Fusion to complete their collection and vice versa. The second comes in the form of multi-player gaming. After unlocking a plethora of simple but addictive mini-games, players can link together with up to three others to partake in a little Mario Party-esque multi-player gaming. Some have players shooting sheep, whilst others involve tank-based warfare. So even though Crash Bandicoot Fusion is fairly detached from Spyro from a solo point-of-view, the game's trading card quest and multi-player games unite the two to give players