hink that this title and its sister cartridge, Spyro Orange, are strange amalgamations of really divergent gaming themes. The platforming levels are derivative and uninspired. Though dull, these sections are broken up frequently by minigames that, more so than in Spyro Orange, are frustrating and not very much fun at all.

Certainly, you can play this wide variety of single-level minigames with friends, but the bite-sized bits of classic gaming concepts are poorly executed with inconsistent controls and wildly varying levels of difficulty. Why not just play the originals?

Perhaps, instead, you’d like to take a chance with the card game. Well, it’s not really a game, but you can collect over 100 cards and trade with your friends that also has one of these two titles. What happens when you trade? Certain "special" cards unlock new characters that can be played in multiplayer minigames. Whee.

Unfortunately for each of these platforming stars, this cross-franchise experiment tries to go too many directions at once and ends up being stuck in mediocreland on all counts.  

MATT HELGESON   6 The Bandicoot suffers worse than Spyro in Crash Purple (which shares ties with Spyro Orange), if only for the fact that his last couple of GBA adventures were actually pretty great, and managed to approximate the gameplay of Naughty Dog’s PSone Crash classics. In hopes of keeping the two titles’ gameplay and design similar, Crash Purple now just feels like another watered-down platformer with some mildly amusing minigames.