Completely agree about the Strategy Guide nature of those crash games. Some of the levels you'd have to go all the way to the end, just to run all the way back to the beginning.
In a linear game like crash, often with one way ledges, I wouldn't have even considered going backwards most times.
Nonetheless, Naughty Dog always puts out hits
Its a meta property in the HTML. Viisible to software, but not shown in the article.