It’s not a year at Sony Computer Entertainment if they aren’t teasing the return of one of their most iconic characters. PlayStation’s Middle East Twitter account added fuel to the never-ending fire that Crash Bandicoot is coming back to PlayStation soon.

PlayStation Middle East tweeted a poster featuring Crash with the caption “Most Wanted: Where are you Crash?”

We’ve documented the various teases and stories about Crash’s comeback before. Sony teased a Crash return in an Easter Egg in a 2013 holiday ad. PlayStation Brazil and Denmark have posted photos of Crash to their social media accounts. An Activision rep told the press that Sony had bought the rights to Crash but the company scrambled to correct what they called an error though Crash is no longer mentioned on Activision’s website.

The iconic video game marsupial has been absent from gaming since 2008’s release of Crash: Mind over Mutant. Granted, since crash went multiplatform for 2001/2’s Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, he’s effectively disappeared from the collective minds of gamers. Crash was most famously the first great PlayStation exclusive character with four excellent Naughty Dog developed games being highlighting the PS1 library.

If there’s one thing that Sony lacks that Nintendo and Microsoft have is that iconic mascot character. While Sony never owned the rights to Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon (Universal owned the characters), they were the two characters from the PlayStation One era that were most closely associated with the brand, Crash more so than Spyro. While Activision has made piles of money by using Spyro to launch their Skylanders series, Crash has languished in the archives, never to see the light of day.

Sony’s brand identity not being tied around any single or group of characters might not be a bad thing. However, Mario is probably bigger to the Nintendo brand as brand identity than the Nintendo logo. The green of Xbox is instantly recognizable but so is Master Chief. Sony has blue and the PS4 logo but they’ve really been in a constant state of rebranding since the PlayStation launched with new logos, sounds and colour schemes. Maybe this is the start of Sony trying to appeal to a kids market that is lacking for identifiable characters outside of Nintendo.

So would a new Crash Bandicoot game, hopefully developed by Naughty Dog, be something that interests you? Everyone that played those games 20 years ago have grown up a little but would that stop you from pre-ordering Crash Bandicoot 4 or Crash Remastered (CTR HD with online multiplayer please)?

Source: @PlayStation_ME

For more from et geekera, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Steam and RSS.