Honestly the talk about too many ball moves is kind of missing the point of Sonic. Curling up into a ball is his most reliable form of attacking, kind of like how Crash's most reliable form of attack is spinning but I digress.
In my mind, the Crash spin should be a normal attack because again it's his most reliable way of attacking. It'd act more like a "get off me" tool than a combo starter. It would work much like Megaman, Min Min and Steve's neutral and side tilt where you can attack while walking which would be faithful to the trilogy. The down tilt slide kick should be cancelled by jumping which would make him perform the Super jump. Down aerial would be his body slam but it wouldn't act like a stall n' fall, he would rise a few inches then gradually fall much like in the trilogy.
For his specials, I'd set up so Crash would use all the Power ups he would unlock in Warped (Minus the Crash Dash)
Neutral Special has to be Fruit Bazooka so the special button can be held down to control the crosshair and then let go to fire a Wumpa Fruit, It also makes it pretty faithful to the trilogy.
Side Special would be the Death Tornado spin as it is usually used to extend Crash's air time to perform trickier jumps. I know this would lead to the same complaints about Sonic and it's not exactly faithful to the trilogy but it fits well for what it's used for.
Down Special is the Super Charged Body Slam which would be a regular stall n' fall.
But yeah that's how I'd imagine Crash Bandicoot would work.
The "too many ball moves" criticism comes mostly from two different camps: A) those with a gameplay perspective (me included) - a lot of Sonics (especially online) play campy Sonics. The campy Sonic playstyle rely on Side B or Down B, frequently fake out approaches and when he actually comes close he'll try to Cherry Tap damage or KOs on the opponent. It becomes extra aggravating in two scenarios 1) when the camper's a stock ahead, or 2) in Quickplay, when the camper comes back and forces Sudden Death. I'd go so far to say that the campy Sonic contributed heavily to the #FixUltimateOnline uproar, since Ultimate's bad online leaves much less time for the opponent to react to Side B or Down B.
The other camp is the one that wishes that Sonic had a more original / true-to-the-text moveset. There's a lot of attacks Sonic could use - the Insta-Shield jump from Sonic 3, Light Speed Dash from the Adventure games or the Boost etc. And some people want Sonic changed for both reasons listed.
As for my opinion: By changing Side B into something else, he could still have curling up into a ball could as his main ground attack while also discouraging the campy Sonic.
As for Crash, yeah that could work. Crash wouldn't exactly have that same problem since the Spin is more comittal than Spin Dashes are. Would the Death Tornado spin slow down after a while? If so that could make it a different enough from the regular Spin (aside from adding lets say a different visual cue to the Death Tornado so it is clearly visible what he's using).
As for other stuff, I'm kinda thinking that he should be able to turn quickly after Slide Jumping. I'm saying comittal for the first frame of a Slide Jump since the Slide's rather quick in the Crash games to begin with - the very act of Slide Jumping is kind of comittal due to the momentum. It's certainly quicker than Cloud's and Joker's slides.
As for the weakness of the Slide, well, it could be really unsafe on shield (as well as several of Crash's aerials) and have some endlag to it. Whenever Cloud's D-Tilt hits a shield and doesn't send the opponent flying, I'm like "Aaah ****".
Slide Jumping would allow for momentum into his double jump (assuming the Slide Jump retains the double jump) and it would allow the Crash player to follow up a Slide Attack -> Slide Jump -> Aerial or Death Tornado. Crash would mostly be focused on knockback (especially the Spin) so if he has at least one do-able combo it helps him vary his offense. If one really labs Crash he'd benefit heavily IDJ (Instant Double Jump, tech that allows aerials to come out quicker) and extending the chain I mentioned above further before ending it with Death Tornado or Bazooka.
, so it's likely Sakurai and Nintendo Japan's higher-ups may not even know that it exists.
I kinda doubt that - not just due to 2, 3 and Trilogy, but Mortal Kombat is also one of the main indirect reasons the ESRB was formed (together with Night Trap). Nintendo's higher ups would not forget the congressional hearings in America - especially not when CERO was created in 2002 and used the ESRB as a model.
Edit:
GTA III did lead to CERO introducing the Z rating after a similar bout of controversy.