Day 68 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: South Park

When a new console or highly anticipated game is on the horizon you're pretty much guaranteed South Park will put on a great episode. I thought I'd share 3 of my favourite gaming related episodes for this Happy Gaming Day, and just in case you haven't watched these before...SPOILER ALERT!!! 

Go God Go- in this two part episode the Nintendo Wii is due out within a matter of weeks, but Cartman would rather risk death than wait, so he freezes himself to make the passage of time seem instantaneous. Unfortunately he ends up frozen for over 500 years, so begins an epic quest across time to play Nintendo Wii.

Best Friends Forever- A war is looming between heaven and hell, so to ensure victory God searches for 'the one' to help heaven in its hour of need. Behold! The PSP has just been released and is running a heaven and hell battle sim, who will the one to guide heavens forces and defeat the armies of darkness?!

Tooth Fairy Tats- The tooth fairy has suddenly been leaving Cartman ridiculous amounts of cash for any tooth he puts under his pillow. So the boys plot a ridiculous scheme to raise money using the tooth fairy, all for a SEGA DREAMCAST! 

Day 45 of 100 Happy Gaming Days: Crash Bandicoot

Back when the Playstation was in it's infancy, mascots were still considered an integral part of what made a console successful. Nintendo had Mario and Sega had Sonic, but Sony needed a mascot of their own to market their new console to the younger audience. They flitted between many mascots over the years however, Crash Bandicoot was the first in line and he arrived with this great 3D platform game.

The evil Dr Neo Cortex is building an army of animal soldiers to conquer the world, and he's even taken Crash's girlfriend for his dastardly experiments. So Crash has to journey to the lair of Dr Cortex to save her, expect lot's of jumping, spinning and funky music ahead.

The levels were very linear, as 3D platform games were also in their infancy (like the Playstation), so Crash was made to wander along winding pathways within jungles, temples and factories. Naughty Dog mixed things up by incorporating temple-run style levels and some 2D/3D platforming as well, so there was some nice variety that made Crash Bandicoot stand out from the crowd.

Crash had only one power up, a Tiki mask that would allow Crash to take a couple more hits from enemies, but collecting 3 of them gave Crash temporary invincibility. There was also hidden gems to find throughout the game, collecting them all would reveal a secret ending, so there was plenty replay value as finding every gem was certainly no easy task.

Everyone would love to see Crash back with his original owners, after spending many years appearing in terrible cross-platform titles, so hopefully we'll soon get to see some quality gaming with Crash just like the old days.