It doesn’t take much to get die-hard fans of a much loved game series going these days, and it seems this week it was the turn of Crash Bandicoot obsessives, with NECA Toys Director Randy Falks telling YouTube’s PixelDan “I see they’re bringing Crash Bandicoot back, so there’s some great stuff there” being enough for an explosion of fan art, mock ups, gifs and memes all stating with varying degrees of certainty/hope that a new Crash Bandicoot game is coming soon, perhaps to be announced to at E3 2016.
What all us #Crashbandicoot fans will be like when we all see the king of Playstation rise again. pic.twitter.com/jODOspdpWY
— Darren Stewart (@DarrenStewart94) February 14, 2016
Sadly, this near-ecstatic buzz lasted for a mere few hours, with NECA Toys quickly issuing a statement that explained Mr Falks had seen a faked fan-made image on Twitter and had assumed that the series was therefore coming back, and was discussing the potential opportunities if it did come back.
In short, it’s a classic case of Twitter buzz generates apparently official confirmation which then generates even more twitter buzz, a phenomenon that we should probably call the cycle of Twitter bullshit, and which was brought swiftly to an end when the truth inconveniently intervened.
One can see the mindset of these truly obsessive fans, if Shenmue can come back after so long and The Last Guardian can emerge unscathed from its prolonged missing presumed dead period. The games industry has however moved on immeasurably since 1996 (suggestions that Naughty Dog would publish a new Crash Bandicoot entry seemed particularly outlandish given the studio’s recent canon) and even platform games are now banished to mobiles and Nintendo consoles, let alone ones starring a cartoon marsupial. The best diehard Crash fans can hope for is probably a new iPhone platformer, and even that doesn’t look like it’s on the cards anytime soon.