Nineties icon Crash Bandicoot appears to have finally put his personal problems behind him and, after spending six months in rehab, has returned to public life with a brand-new game – Crash Bandicoot: It’s About Time.
A huge figure in the nineties, Crash was one of the most famous marsupials on the planet, even eclipsing Skippy the kangaroo.
However, with that fame came a hedonistic hard-partying lifestyle that saw Crash spiral out of control.
He first arrived on the scene with his eponymous game in 1996 and was immediately caught up in the Britpop/Cool Britannia scene in Britain where he could often be found backstage at Blur gigs and is even rumoured to have sung backing vocals on their third album The Great Escape.
However, it was the release of his third game – Warped – in 1998 that saw his private life become a concern to friends and family.
“It was that News of the World cover story with about the Spice Girls that really told me something was wrong with our Crash,” explained Coco Bandicoot, Crash’s sister, referring to the infamous pictures of Crash and two of the Spice Girls in a hotel room in Las Vegas.
“I mean, the Crash I knew was just a quiet marsupial who just wanted to spend his time spinning through wooden boxes in the jungle, now here he was in Vegas with the Spice Girls? I was worried, we all were.”
Sure enough, several weeks later, Crash was arrested driving through the suburbs of Las Vegas wearing just his underwear with a gun and half a kilogram of cocaine on the back seat.
He was ordered into rehab but, after only two weeks, Crash was seen in clubs in New York.
A cycle of binge and rehab followed for ten years, after which he fell out of public consciousness before returning in 2017 with a remastered collection of his games. Sadly, that saw the bandicoot return to his wild ways – spending a drunken weekend with several Victoria Secret models and promoting the Fyre Festival.
However, after spending six months in rehab and a following six months clean and sober ready for his new game – It’s About Time – fans can only hope he’s put his wild lifestyle behind him once and for all.
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(Image by William Tung. Cropped. Licence details)
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