This is a game very near to my heart. One of the first games I ever played as a child. My older brother Blake used to set up our playstation and we'd all take turns doing the levels and trying to get as far as we could before our lives ran out. Released almost 20 years ago (1996), Crash Bandicoot is still one of my most favourite games of all time.
Loading up the game you enter into the home screen where you are given the options to play, load game, enter a password, or go into options. I know that in our house we lost memory cards all the time and for a long while we couldn't save our games (which if you used a PlayStation 1 you know that when you enter the load game screen, you can see all saves from all games. Kind of cool). The password option is something a little different from what we would normally define it as today. Whilst playing the levels you can collect these cards of Tawna's head. Collect all three and you go to a little side level where you navigate your way across tnt's, metal, and wooden boxes. A few containing extra lives. Once you've completed the side level, you get a password code consisting of the triangle, x, circle, and square. There is a mega password you can use to unlock all the levels and gems and keys. But using this is a little less challenging.
The purpose of the game is to get Crash Bandicoot safely through 3 islands containing 32 levels in total to rescue his, what I assume to be girlfriend, Tawna from the evil Dr. Neo Cortex. On each island you will have to get passed his henchmen, or bosses. As you progress you will find each boss gets harder and harder and become more frequent. I wont spoil the ending of the game for you (you can youtube that yourselves) but I found it to be a huge relief, and then annoying as the credits took forever. 
I would recommend this game to everyone and anyone. It's a big nostalgia trip for a lot of people. The music and levels. Bosses. Not to mention this is the flagship game for the franchise. Getting your hands on a cd copy isn't easy but you can purchase the games on the PlayStation Network for around $4.99AUD.For those who disagree and say it's actually Coco Bandicoot in the first game, it isn't. Tawna is the girlfriend of Crash Bandicoot and after releasing the first game, she was removed for being represented as a basic sexual stereotype. Coco Bandicoot was then introduced as Crash Bandicoots little sister, also genetically engineered by Dr. Neo Cortex and Dr. Nitrus Brio (who is an annoy boss to beat)
