Ever since the former Activision Blizzard studio, Toys for Bob, announced they were going independent in February, there has been speculation about what their next project will be. In their statement, they did say that the studio behind Crash 4: It’s About Time and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy were confident they would continue to work closely with Microsoft and Activision in the future.
That makes sense. Toys for Bob is an extremely talented studio and is renowned for breathing fresh life into forgotten IPs, especially mascot platformers. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro have found a new lease of life from TFB games, Crash Team Rumble notwithstanding!
This week, Toys for Bob replaced their website content with an image on a black background of a purple tiki head, indicating a game announcement could be on the horizon. The image is merely titled “TFB_LogoVector_TikiMask-purple.png”, giving little away. Could this just be a rebrand? Maybe, but it seems unlikely.
So what is next? We don’t know. Here are my most likely picks.
Possibly the least likely of my options. We know TFB has a knack for revitalizing older games, updating them, and making them playable on modern consoles. Crash Twinsanity could use that treatment. The PS2 era game suffered from arduous loading screens, janky controls, and unwelcome free-roam hub areas to explore. It wasn’t good.
But could it become good? If the right care and affection is given to it? Perhaps. The tiki mask logo suggests a Crash Bandicoot link to me, and Twinsanity seems to make the most sense.
Please not Crash Bash, though!
Don’t shout at me! I know there’s been more than four Spyro games, but the first three are so beloved that most people ignore the subsequent, kinda-meh entries like Enter the Dragonfly. It’s been almost 25 years since Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon, so what better way to celebrate an anniversary.
The purple in the new TFB logo SCREAMS Spyro the Dragon. If they can do anything close to what they did in Crash 4 with a new Spyro game, then we’re going to be in for a great time!
We haven’t seen an original IP from Toys for Bob since they worked on the Skylanders franchise. The last mainline entry into the Skylanders was in 2016, so it’s been eight long years since TFB released anything they could call their own.
As an extremely talented studio, think about how much creativity they have been bottling up over all this time! I want to see that explosion of awesomeness coming to consoles in the near future. Will we get a new mascot platformer? Or will it be something COMPLETELY different? Time will tell!
This is my favorite choice and the one my tin-foil hat has latched onto. The tiki mask is unmistakably Crash Bandicoot in design. However, it’s the shape of the logo and the teeth that drew my attention. Why do the teeth look a bit like tire tread? Why is the underlying shape an ovoid, like you’re looking head-on at a motorcycle?
Crash Team Racing was one of the games I played incessantly growing up, and I for one, would be stoked to see a new kart game from the manic marsupial! Unfortunately, this is unlikely because Nitro-Fueled, the CTR remake, was developed by Beenox.
Questions questions questions.
We may have to wait a while for answers. Although there’s a chance there will be an announcement during Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest event in June…
Either way, I’m hyped for whatever TFB do next!
