The Crash Bandicoot franchise has seen somewhat of a revival in recent years, with a remastered collection of the first three Crash games, a remaster of Crash Team Racing, as well as a new, canonical fourth installment in the series called Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time coming out 22 years after Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Now, recent efforts to bring Crash back into the mainstream include a brand-new mobile game: Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!
This Crash spin-off released on mobile devices just last week, and is developed by King of Candy Crush Saga notoriety. The free-to-play endless runner sees players smashing crates, collecting Wumpa Fruit, and crafting weapons to fight Doctor Neo Cortex and other classic Crash Bandicoot villains. It seems the mobile game has given Crash Bandicoot 4 a significant boost in sales.
Mat Piscatella, Executive Director and Video Game Industry Advisor for American market research company The NPD Group, revealed on Twitter that NPD's weekly data shows Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time quickly climbing the US charts. Piscatella attributes this to a variety of factors, but most to notably to Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!'s incredible amount of downloads straight out the gate.
Piscatella notes that the new Crash mobile game surpassed eight million downloads within just 24 hours of its initial release. While NPD's weekly chart data is not available to the public, the Industry Advisor noted that Crash Bandicoot 4's boost in sales is likely contributed to a combination of the mobile game's launch, digital promotion, and Crash 4's official launch on Nintendo Switch (as well as other platforms) on March 11. With On the Run's release, it immediately shot to the top Apple's App Store charts, becoming both the number one most-downloaded iPhone game and the number one most-downloaded iPhone app in some countries.
In Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!, players can don different skins for Crash and Coco, gaining them different abilities and perks as well. Skins can be earned or purchased with real-world money used to buy in-game currency. Despite this and the game being free-to-play, it has no loot boxes, as developer King confirmed about a month ahead of Crash: On the Run's launch.
The mobile game initially soft-launched last year in a few Asian countries such as Malaysia, allowing some to get their hands on it fairly early. However, fans around the world are now able to jump in and run with Crash and friends on mobile devices, and it seems to be doing the franchise some good.
Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! is available now on Android and iOS devices.