The first Spyro was my favourite of the 3 as well.Regnes said:Well Crash along with Spyro really helped to define the modern platformer, I think they will always hold a considerable degree of prestige, even if they're not as instantly recognizable as Mario for example.
My favourite Crash game was probably Crash 2 followed closely by Crash 1. Crash Bandicoot 3 was a good game, but I really hated all the specialty levels. The controls were awkward in underwater levels, and downright wretched in the flying/boating levels, the biking levels also felt gimmicky and mediocre in design.
These days Crash doesn't enjoy a lot of modern popularity, mostly since the series was carried by Naughty Dog, when Naughty Dog put the series up for adoption, it just went downhill. Just like Insomniac with Spyro.
Going a little off topic, contrary to the popular opinion, I think Spyro 1 was superior to 2 & 3. I had trouble calling Ripto's Rage and Year of the Dragon platformers since there was very little platform jumping required, and when there was your way forward was always very obvious. They seemed to rely on mini-games for content rather than the genre's core gameplay. Nothing was really even challenging about the mini-games either.
In Spyro 1 the challenge was from finding each and every secret in the levels. Many levels you really had to wrack your brains to figure out how to reach certain platforms. Like in the Tree Tops level where you had to do two sequential loops around the supercharge track to get the airtime to reach this one distant island. You really had to struggle to figure that out.
It just had this charm that the later games lacked.
I can't put my finger on it though...