Video Game / Crash Bash

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Crash Bash (Crash Bandicoot Carnival in Japanese) is the fifth and last Crash Bandicoot game on the PlayStation 1 and the first that was not developed by Naughty Dog, who produced the original trilogy as well as Crash Team Racing. Crash Bash was the only Crash game developed by Eurocom, and since then the franchise has seen many developers and publishers. This was also the last Crash Bandicoot game to be exclusive to Sony before going multi-platform in the sixth generation of consoles.

Like how Crash Team Racing is the Crash version of Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing, Crash Bash is Crash's answer to the Mario Party series. Unlike Mario Party, Crash Bash has no boards, and the vs style of play consists of playing game after game and then tallying up the points, similar to Mario Kart. There are 28 mini-games, though most of them can be clumped into groups of four. For example, there are four different games that play like four-way pong, each with different tools or obstacles. Every game can be played in either free-for-all or 2-vs-2 matchups.

There's also an adventure mode where one or two players cooperatively take on computer opponents in each of the games, and a few added boss levels. The story revolves around mask brothers Aku Aku and Uka Uka in an ongoing dispute on whose side reigns supreme. To resolve this, they summon their closest allies in a tournament to settle whether good or evil triumphs over the other. In typical Crash tradition, playing a level again lets you get more prizes. In this case, Gems are awarded for winning a handicap match (the Cheating Bastards start with more points than you), Crystals for a special match where the game is changed in some way, usually tilting the odds in favour of the Cheating Bastards, and Relics for winning 2 or 3 games in a row against Cheating Bastards. Playing adventure mode unlocks more minigames for you to play.

The minigame types are:

• Ballistix: Where players on mini hovercrafts must defend their goals from iron balls. Players have limited amount of life points, and if one ball passes through their goals, one point goes down; a player will die if their life point reach zero. The last man standing wins.
• Polar Push: Where players ride polar bears on icy platforms to try to push others off the edge. The last man standing wins.
• Pogo Pandemonium: Where players jump around on pogo sticks to color squares with their hopping and then score points. The one who scores the most under the time limit wins.
• Crate Crush: Where players throw/kick crates at each other to damage them until they die. The last man standing, or the man with most HP when the time's up, wins.
• Tank Wars: Where players on tanks must shoot at each other, or drop powerful mines. The last man standing, or the man with most HP when the time's up, wins.
• Crash Dash: Where players on mini hovercrafts race on circular tracks in a number of laps. The first one to complete the laps wins.
• Medieval Mayhem: The mechanics are different in each minigame, but they're all about scoring points and all medieval-themed. The one who scores the most under the time limit wins.

It was rereleased under the Sony Playstation "Greatest Hits" series, but this version was only released on the PlayStation Network in Japan, so only the PSOne discs and emulated versions exist for North American & European regions.

Distantly followed by Crash Boom Bang! for the Nintendo DS in 2006, though the preceding Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage on the Game Boy Advance heavily used varied mini-games within its story mode.

Crash Bash contains examples of:

• 100% Completion: The Relics are insanely hard to get, especially in single-player, but they can boost completion all the way to 200%. Essentially, for Gold Relics you must face a perfectly calibrated CPU team of the best balanced characters for a particular game... and win twice in a row. Then there are Platinum Relics which require you to win three times in a row. To preserve some gamers' time (and sanity), there is no reward whatsoever for getting 200% completion.
  • The NTSC version specifically goes up to 201%. However, this requires completing the game in 2-player mode with characters from opposing teams. The final minigame to determine the ending will grant the extra 1%, regardless of who wins.
• Alignment-Based Endings: There are two different endings for the two sets of four characters. For the "Good side" characters (Crash, Coco, Tiny, and Dingodile), Aku Aku wins the Crystals, stores them away safely, and calls upon the ancients to banish Uka Uka into hyperspace. For the "Evil side" characters (Cortex, N. Brio, Koala Kong, and Rilla Roo), Uka Uka wins the Crystals, and proudly declares his intent to take over the world, while Aku Aku beckons Crash and Coco to hide from the evil mask's wrath while he contemplates if he was foolish to believe that The Good Guys Always Win.
• Anti-Frustration Features: One small but welcome bit of mercy in an otherwise very difficult game is that if you destroy Komodo Joe and Komodo Moe's base in Big Bad Fox but then lose to the brothers themselves (IE. when they come after you in their own tanks), retrying after starts you at the second part of the battle, allowing you to refill your health and fight the duo on a more even footing.
• Anvil on Head: In the Polar Push and Crate Crush subsections of the minigames, one of the hazards that the player can pick up is an icon resembling a weight (as described on top of this page). If picked up, the icon appears over the player's head, who now has a limited time to pass it onto another player by touching them. When this time (roughly 8 seconds) elapses, a weight marked as being 16 tonnes heavy will drop on the head of the poor sap who's left with it, OHKOing them.
• Artificial Stupidity: Even though the game is hard, it's surprisingly not because the A.I. is very smart. In fact, the A.I. in this game will sometimes do... downright baffling things. One point of notice is that in Crate Crush, the A.I. is quite fond of taunting, which leaves them open to attacks more often than not. Particularly ridiculous though is that they will taunt... while they are carrying a weight. You know, the thing that kills you if you hold onto it for too long?
• Asymmetric Multiplayer: Unlike Mario Party, a few of the games give different attributes to each pair of characters. This is good for variety, but, as usual, some characters will probably be perceived as better than others depending on the game and the players. A good example is Crash and Coco using their spins as a "kick" in the crate war games, which cover all directions with less ending lag than the other kicks. In contrast, heavy characters like Koala Kong and Tiny can hurl crates great distances and do it fast, but cannot kick them far. Another example is Cortex and Brio having a charge move in the Panic (shoving) games that is more powerful but uses their entire charge bar instead of half of one. However, Dingodile and Rilla Roo have a less potent charge, but use less energy to charge their pushes.
• The Bad Guy Wins: An epic variation for completing Adventure Mode as a member of Uka Uka's team, with Aku Aku even begging Crash and Coco to run for their lives upon realizing how dire the situation is.
  Uka Uka: There is nowhere to hide from the wrath of the mighty Uka Uka! BWAHH HA HA HA!
• Battle Royale Game: The Crate Crush, Polar Push, Ballistix and Tank Wars category of minigames are all about free-for-all matches where you have to take down other opponents and be the last man standing. In Crate Crush and Tank Wars, you deplete opponent's HP; in Polar Push, you push your opponents out of the ring; and in Ballistix, you deplete opponents' points by knocking balls into their goal.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In the good ending, Uka Uka yells "I want what is mine!", in reference to the Crystals. Unfortunately for him, Aku Aku is all too happy to give him what he really deserves, being launched into hyperspace as "the penalty for disturbing the Crystals".
• Boom in the Hand: In the Crate Crush category of minigames, if you lift a TNT crate, the countdown will start from 3. If you hold it for too long, it'll go boom and hurt you.
• Boss Arena Urgency:
  • In the boss fight against Bearminator, every time you knock off a third of his health, he'll fire a big shell from his cannon into the arena, blasting off a big chunk to reduce its size to three quarters, then again to half. The arena, by the way, is a Polar Push-type arena that is not just slippery, but also tilting, and with up to three mechanical bears at a time that can launch stunning missiles at you.
  • In a variant, "Melt Panic" has Uka Uka periodically making the stage smaller by, well, melting the ice.
• Bottomless Pits:
  • In the Polar Push and Crash Dash minigames, the edges of the arenas are pits that you can shove other players into. In the former, doing so eliminates them; in the latter, doing so will make them respawn next to their falling place with some time lost.
  • In "Space Bash", Nitro and TNT's explosions may damage the floor, causing holes on them. Falling into the holes results in instant death.
• Breakable Power-Up: In the Pogo Pandemonium, Crate Crush, Crash Dash, and Medieval Mayhem sets of minigames, you'll lose the Power-Up you're currently holding if you get hit.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • N. Brio was last seen in the second game where he helped Crash against Cortex if Crash collected all the Gems. He comes back here, representing Team Evil alongside Cortex. Brio switching between resenting Cortex or begrudgingly rejoining him would become a recurrent character trait with this title.
  • Koala Kong (who was absent after the first game) is also a playable character, while Komodo Moe rejoins his brother as a boss battle, thus acting as an effective Bus return for all the cast that didn't appear in Crash Team Racing except the "retired" Tawna.
• Button Mashing: Defied for the Kick move in the Ballistix games; if a kick doesn't hit anything, the ability is de-activated for a split-second.
• The Cameo: N. Gin and Ripper Roo are reduced to being this in "N. Ballism" and "El Pogo Loco" respectively.
• Character Check: Brio is randomly working back with Cortex for no stated reason in this game, despite turning on him in his previous appearance in Crash 2. The Japanese epilogue for Brio's campaign, however, notes that Brio still holds a grudge against Cortex and upon winning the tournament, decides to try conquering the world solo.
• Cheat Code: The demo had a code which, when entered, allowed you to play the entire game in debug mode because it was easier to release the debug mode with most features blocked off than make an actual demo. Had this been known at the time, the game's sales would most certainly have flopped.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: In some of the games (such as Pogo Pandemonium and "Ring Ding"), you will be designated to a specific color. Player 1 is yellow, player 2 is red, player 3 is blue, and player 4 is green.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: A big part of what makes the game so ludicrously hard is that it doesn't even attempt to be fair.
  • In Gem, Crystal, and Relic Challenges, the computers have ridiculously beefed up stats compared to the player: they take less damage, do more damage, they weigh a lot more in Polar Push games, and they even get a beefed up kick in Ballistix. Even combined with Artificial Stupidity, this quickly makes things way too difficult.
  • In some of the racing levels, there is a glitch that allows one of your opponents to get a free lap as soon as the race starts. This glitch never benefits you, and it usually occurs during the hard Relic Challenges, making them all the more aggravating.
  • Invoked even more in the Gem Challenges wherein you need more points than they do to win. Also in most of the Crystal Challenges which generally employ a handicap against you, such as restricted controls or being able to suffer a One-Hit Kill in a way the computer can't.
  • In Tank Wars, the A.I. can rotate their turret faster than you. This is because of the fact they have the ability to "lock on" to you, whereas you have to rotate left and right until you get your aim down. Averted in "Swamp Fox", which has Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon instead, and the computer enemies turn their vehicle around in normal speed. Even then, in that game they usually use the force field (exclusive to that minigame) with good timing.
• Continuity Nod: The scenery for the Crystal Challenge of "El Pogo Loco" features a knocked-down alien sign, referencing a secret in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
• Continuity Snarl: The entire reason for Uka Uka and Aku Aku setting up the tournament is because as Aku Aku states in the opening cutscene "the ancients would not allow [us to fight directly]". Yet Aku Aku saw no issue squaring off against his brother during the final battle of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped...
• Cosmetic Award: Platinum Relics are only good for increasing your completion rate and proving your supreme skill (or incredible luck) against computer opponents in that game.
• Crate Expectations: Naturally, for a Crash game. One set of games revolves around throwing and kicking crates at each other.
• Cycle of Hurting: In the Crash Dash minigames, it's pretty easy to get knocked out of the tracks into the pit right after you respawn from it.
• Death from Above:
  • The weight power-up from the Polar Push and Crate Crush minigames, which is passed around in a manner not unlike Hot Potato by hitting opponents while carrying it. Whoever is holding it when its timer runs out is instantly killed.
  • The Crystal Challenge for "Polar Panic" has the satellite being crazy and periodically shooting stunning lightning as it flies around.
  • The Crystal Challenge for "Jungle Bash" has you avoiding the flying Nitros aimed at you.
  • In "Melt Panic", Uka Uka's ray's effects are always negative.
  • The Crystal Challenge for "Metal Fox" has instant kill mines periodically dropping onto battlefield being targeted at you. The helicopters in "Jungle Fox" also sometimes drop an active mine.
• Downer Ending: If you beat Adventure Mode with a member of Uka Uka's team, he assumes complete power from the Crystals and fully intends to devastate the Earth and all its inhabitants. Aku Aku laments his faith in goodness and sends Crash and Coco to run for their lives, ending the game on a sharp dive into The Bad Guy Wins territory.
• Dragon Rider: The "Dragon Drop" minigame has the players riding dragons to get the gems lying around, then throw them to a moving target from a distance to score points.
• Dual Boss: Once you smash the Komodo Brothers' machine, the two of them come out to face you themselves.
• Dueling Player Characters: If playing a two-player adventure with one good and one evil character, the two players must duel each other at the end to decide whether good or evil triumphs. There are no ties, and tiebreakers are given after all games are played.
• Dynamic Difficulty: If you fail boss battles repeatedly, you'll end up doing more damage per attack while they'll do less to you. Also, some challenges like the "Sky Balls" Crystal Challenge will dumb down opponent's reflexes. Rather fortunate considering their difficulty.
• Earn Your Fun: At first, only sixteen games are available to you. In order to unlock the remaining twelve, you have to play Adventure Mode.
• Easy Level Trick: Since a team wins as long as at least one team member completes the required number of laps, the Crash Dash levels can be effectively cheesed in Co-op Mode by having one player prioritize doing the laps while the other player goes round the opposite way and focuses entirely on attacking and otherwise impeding the enemy team. It's a human-controlled reversal of Spiteful A.I..
• Enemy Mine: In the intro, Uka Uka tries to stack the deck in his favor by having six members of his team. Aku Aku forces him to send two to his team to make it fair, and he selects Tiny and Dingodile.
• Enemy Posturing: When you start Papu Papu's boss fight, he's protected by a shield. After you beat his flunkies, he'll start laughing and gloating at you, which will cause his shield to dissolve and leave him open to attack.
• Excuse Plot: Aku Aku and Uka Uka decide to settle their rivalry by having their minions battle it out with the teams determining which alignment is better, since their ancestors' beliefs forbid them from duking it out themselves. This outright ignores the fact that the two already fought each other in the third Crash game.
• Explosive Barrels: Aside from the standard explosive crates (the TNT and Nitro), the game also has radioactive barrels in "Toxic Dash" actual exploding barrels in "Keg Kaboom".
• Extended Gameplay: Adventure Mode stops at the last boss as far as the story is concerned. After that, there are extra games to unlock. There are also challenges to complete, but they can be ignored once you've done the previous two.
• Faction-Specific Endings: Characters are split into two teams. One team represents good, and the other represents evil. The ending you get in adventure mode is dependent on which team your character is on. If playing two-player adventure with the characters being on opposites sides, both players fight each other at the end to determine the ending that is given.
• Fake Longevity:
  • To earn a Trophy, you must win a total of three times against the CPU, who can also win, prolonging the game. In the worst case scenario, you will end up playing the same stage nine times for a single Trophy^note assuming each player (including you) wins twice, and you win the final game. Some minigames (i.e. the pogostick ones) have the timer set to a minute and a half, meaning that it could take almost 15 minutes to get the Trophy.
  • To win the Gems and Crystals, you have to complete the minigames again with additional stipulations (such as having less points at the start, a tighter time limit to defeat the CPU, or being unable to use certain moves or power-ups). After completing the first warp room, Gems and Crystals (as well as Trophies) are mandatory for story completion.
  • The Relics require you to win twice in a row and three times in a row for Gold and Platinum, respectively. You have to battle a CPU that actively does as much as possible to stop you from winning even once, let alone multiple times in a row.
  • All in all, that's three wins for a Trophy, another win for the Gem, yet another win for the Crystal, two more wins for the Gold Relic and three more wins for the Platinum Relic. Assuming you win every time (which is very hard to do, given how hard some of them are to get), that's ten wins for each of the 28 minigames. If each one takes a minute and a half on average, getting full completion would take seven straight hours (not including loading times, cutscenes, bosses, or the time it takes to walk to each one).
• Family-Unfriendly Death: At the end of his boss fight, Papu Papu gets crushed by a giant stone. Downplayed as there’s nothing graphic shown.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: The first six game types (Ballistix, Polar Push, Pogo Pandemonium, Crate Crush, Tank Wars, and Crash Dash) have four arenas that all play very similarly to each other with usually a gimmick or two unique to each of the specific levels. However, the Medieval Mayhem levels all play completely differently from each other, the only consistent thing between the four being that all of them take place in a circular arena and that they're about scoring points.
• Gang Up on the Human: In standard matches, computer players will target each other as much as they'll target you, while in Gem and Crystal Challenges, you're typically at a disadvantage, but the computer still won't actively target you. In Relic Challenges, however, the trope starts getting played hair-pullingly straight, depending on the game being played:
  • Games like Ballistix, where there's no real way to impede your progress directly, generally avert this, except for the fact that the CPUs are basically inhumanly perfect and insanely difficult to score against.
  • Endurance-based games like Polar Push, Crate Crush, and Tank Wars generally just have all three computer players gang up on you.
  • Point-based games like Pogo Pandemonium and Medieval Mayhem take it to ludicrous extremes, as the A.I. will actively coordinate to take you down. One player will typically focus on racking up as many points as possible, the second will block you off from scoring and obtaining powerups, and the third will act as a bodyguard for the scorer and attack you whenever possible.
  • In Crash Dash, although the A.I. can't actively gang up against you, they still will only use weapons (or the booster dash) on you. This goes for the Pogo Pandemonium levels as well.
  • Something to note, though, is that in some games this can actually end up backfiring against their favor. In the first two Tank Wars games, for example, they will still target the human even at opposing corners, and will shoot their weapon which will cause it to hit them in the face because they're facing a wall. In "Pogo Padlock", this puts them at a disadvantage because they end up never stealing squares from each other.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: None of the game's bosses are given much context by the plot, but the Bearminator stands out due to being the only boss who's not a returning character from previous games (unless you count the giant polar bears that chase you in Crash 2). Aku Aku and Uka Uka don't even mention him in their intro to the battle and instead just instruct the player to defeat "the mechanical bears" (which the Bearminator sends out during the fight).
• Heel–Face Turn: Downplayed. Tiny and Dingodile were originally on Uka Uka's side, but they're moved to Aku Aku's. Though in this case, they don't fully reform and are only on Aku Aku's side to balance each team.
• Hitbox Dissonance: In the Crate Crush games, a player can get hurt if a crate lands near them even if it doesn’t touch the player. Possibly justified as it’s possible that the hitboxes for the characters were made big to fit Dingodile and Rilla Roo’s tails and the developers wanted to make the game fair by giving all characters the same size hitbox.
• Incest Subtext: In the Japanese version's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, Crash makes heart eyes at what he thinks is Tawna, but it turns out to be a holographic projection that Coco created to make herself look older.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: In the Adventure Mode, every time you don't complete a mission, you get a giant "YOU FAIL" pop up, with accompanying voice.
• Jungle Japes: The first Crate Crush arena, "Jungle Bash", is set in a tropical jungle-themed area, hence its name. The Crystal Challenge involves not being hit by the Nitro crates the stone idol sends to you. There's also the first Pogo Pandemonium stage, "Pogo Painter", which is also set in a jungle, and the third Tank Wars stage, "Jungle Fox", which is set in an open area and involves not being crushed by the totem pole.
• Levels Take Flight: "Sky Balls" is a football-esque minigame where you score points by kicking balls in enemy goals in a squared arena, where each goal takes one side, and in this case the whole thing takes place on a platform flying around and powered by jet engines (that fail from time to time, tilting it).
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Individual loading screens are only ~5-10 seconds each, which is about average for the time the game was released. The issue comes from the sheer number of them. There are loading screens for entering each minigame, exiting each minigame, entering each boss fight, exiting each boss fight, and switching between warp rooms. Assuming completing every challenge and boss on the first attempt, you'd encounter a minimum of 293 load screens (1 when initially entering the game, 10 total for entering and exiting each of the five challenges in each of the 28 minigames, 1 for each of the 4 boss battles, and 4 more for having to go back to previous warp rooms to complete the Platinum Relic challenges). At the low end, this would amount to over thirty-five minutes of loading screens, assuming a literally flawless playthrough.
• Long Song, Short Scene: Exploited; some of the lesser-used tracks in Warped are put to greater use in this game, including the N. Gin boss track. A lot of the remixes are truncated significantly, though.
• Minigame Boss: Invoked by design. The player fights the bosses of the various Warp Rooms using mechanics from existing mini-games, the typical point-counters replaced with health points:
  • Papu Papu is fought in a game of Crate Crush.
  • The Bearminator and its minions are fought atop the back of a Polar Push cub.
  • The Komodo Brothers are a Sequential Boss confronted in a game of Tank Wars.
  • Oxide's first phase is an on-rails shooter seen nowhere else, yet his second phase is a game of Ballistix where successful goals lower the opponent's health.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Much like Dingodile who was introduced in Warped, Rilla Roo is a cross between a gorilla and a kangaroo.
• Mood Whiplash: Despite the game upholding the series' usually wacky tone for the most part, the two endings are pretty serious. One has Uka Uka throw an epic tantrum before getting shot into hyperspace, the other has him gain control of all the Crystals "and ALL OF THE POWER", leading Crash and Coco into exile. Naturally, both fall into Canon Discontinuity.
• Moveset Clone: Like in Crash Team Racing, characters are paired by skill (though some of them are rearranged in comparison to the aforementioned game): Crash and Coco, Cortex and N. Brio, Tiny and Koala Kong and Dingodile and Rilla Roo.
• New Resource Midgame: Upon reaching the fourth Warp Room, Relics begin appearing as a fourth collectible for completed games and are retroactively added to the options of the rooms before; their challenges being Harder Than Hard marathons against Perfect Play A.I. (and another set of Relics after the story's beaten and "Mallet Mash"'s Trophy is obtained). Relics serve to unlock two minigames in the final Warp Room and are Bragging Rights Rewards from then on.
• Nostalgia Level: Many of the minigames are based on past levels of the original trilogy. For example, "Space Bash" is based on the future levels in Warped, while its Crystal Challenge is based on the Egyptian levels, also from Warped.
• Not Just a Tournament: Uka Uka proposes the contest as a way to determine if good or evil is stronger, but in reality wants to use it as an opportunity to claim the Crystals. In the cutscene preceding the tiebreaker, Aku Aku even tells the good player that "this has gone beyond a tournament" when Uka Uka runs his mouth and mentions the Crystals.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Crystal Challenges commonly either feature a special stage hazard or modify an existing hazard to instantly kill your character.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Pogo Painter" has mushrooms randomly appearing on multiple squares. You instantly die if you step on one.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "El Pogo Loco" has Ripper Roo creating Nitro squares instead of TNT ones. These instantly kill you if you get hit.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Metal Fox" has yellow- and green-colored mines instead of the normal gray and black ones. These mines both replace the mines normally used by the players and fall from the sky in boxes. You'll take twice as much damage from these as you do from normal mines^note though the CPU only takes half; since normal mines take away half your health to begin with, it equates to instant death for you.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Dot Dash" has the missiles being outright One-Hit Kill for you instead of just slowing you down.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Sky Balls" has some balls being randomly changed into red balls that will kill you (but not the CPU) if you get hit by them. Don't worry, letting them pass through your goals won't reduce your hit points. The boss fight with N. Oxide also features these.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Manic Panic" forces you to start on foot, turning bombs into these (which normally result in the loss of your bear on first hit).
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Drain Bash" has the purple "?" crates, which normally break open with a kick to reveal Wumpa Fruit or special weapon inside, but will instead explode and One-Hit Kill you if you kick them (the opponents naturally can open them normally). There's still a way to open it, though... by throwing the crate.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Ring Ding" will make other colors' balloons (instead of the ones meant for you) kill you if you mistakenly pop them.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Swamp Fox" features a slowly moving torpedo that destroys you on one hit while others just hover merrily over it.
    • The Crystal Challenge for "Keg Kaboom" has a bomb that walks around the edge of the arena, which kills you if you get hit by it.
  • Outside of Crystal Challenges, there's also the weight power-up in Polar Push and Crate Crush levels. When activated, a timer ticks down, and whoever is holding it when said timer expires is instantly killed.
• Padded Sumo Gameplay: The Polar Push games involve shoving everyone else off before the time limit. While just one fall results in elimination, there are times where it's hard for one player to get the decisive shove on another, especially when it's down to two players who are moving conservatively.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Vehicle-wise, Crash rides a blue pogostick, hovercraft and dragon steed while Coco rides pink-colored ones. Oddly enough, "Splash Dash" is the only exception since both bandicoot siblings ride a pink dolphin.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Uka Uka nonchalantly allows Aku Aku to pick two of his squad to even the odds so the contest can go forward.
• Promoted to Playable: Doctor Nitrus Brio and Koala Kong are playable for the first time.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The Japanese version of "Dot Dash", "Oxide Ride", and "Splash Dash" features "The Infernal Galop" as background music.
• Regional Bonus: The Japanese version has Fake Crash as an unlockable player character via a cheat code.
• Remember the New Guy?: Rilla Roo, who just shows up on Team Cortex without anyone batting an eye.
• Remixed Level: The Crystal Challenges actually swap the background of given level. Sometimes it just settles for changing daytime ("Polar Panic", "Sky Balls") or changing background slightly within the same theme ("Manic Panic"), but sometimes it changes completely ("Space Bash", "Dot Dash"). In "Tilt Panic", this also explains the Crystal Challenge itself.
• Rules of the Game: The Crystal Challenges will put restrictions on the human players but not the computers. Some Gem Challenges do this, too.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: While the aforementioned Downer Ending takes a The Bad Guy Wins route, the good ending sees Aku Aku foiling Uka Uka's mad grab for power and preventing his transformation into a cosmic-level threat.
• Series Continuity Error: The opening cutscene of the game establishes that Aku Aku and Uka Uka have to use their allies as vessels for their argument because "the ancients" (who have never been mentioned before or since) won't allow for them to fight directly. Even though they fought each other just fine during the Final Boss battle in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: All of the stages in Polar Push take place in this, in addition to the "Snow Bash" stage, a Crate Crush-type minigame.
• Socialization Bonus: Adventure Mode can be played with two people, and it makes the game so much easier it's laughable. Instead of one player (i.e. YOU) on your side and three against you, you now have 2 vs 2. If one player picks a character from the Good side and one from the Evil side, once you defeat the final boss, you are pitted against each other in a best 3 out of 5 contest to determine the winner of the universe. However, this contest is Crate Crush, which some characters are much better at than others.
• Spectacular Spinning: Crash has his traditional Spin Attack in some games. Coco gains her own version too, as do Dingodile and Rilla Roo.
• Special Effect Branding: In many of the minigames, each type of character would use things themed to them. For example, in the minigame Pogo Pandemonium, Crash and Coco use actual pogos, Dingodile and Rilla Roo use... some kind of modified gas-powered pogo that shoots flames, Tiny and Koala Kong use spring coils attached to their soles, and Neo Cortex and N. Brio use Jump Jetpack.
• Spiteful A.I.: The A.I. doesn't even try to hide it. In a four player match with a single human, the three A.I. opponents^note Especially so in the Gem, Crystal, and Relic challenges, where they also have massively increased stats compared to the player will actively band together to defeat you. At best, they will attack you whenever they get the chance; and at worst, the three computer opponents will actively coordinate their moves together to make sure you lose. If they get a power-up in a minigame, you can guarantee that you're the only one they will hit — unless they happen to miss while aiming for you — they'll corner you if they get the chance, and actively get in your way, but never in each others' way. It's for these reasons that it isn't so much a four player match as it is three versus one; tellingly, the game's difficulty becomes a lot more manageable when you bring a second player with you to even the odds, but it's still very tough regardless.
• Squashed Flat: Papu Papu gets squashed under a pillar block at the end of his boss fight.
• Stock Audio Clip: None of the playable characters actually talk. They either reuse past voice clips (for example, Cortex's laugh from the opening cutscene of Cortex Strikes Back), or have voices comprised completely of stock voice samples. Some are more obvious than others, like Dingodile having a rather unfittingly stupid-sounding laugh and Brio, who's rendered into The Unintelligible.
• Tail Slap: Dingodile and Rilla Roo can do this in Crate Crush games as their "kick" attack.
• Tank Goodness: The Tank Wars mini-game, in which you have to off the other players while riding in tiny tanks.
• Team Rocket Wins: It is possible to win Adventure Mode as Dr. Cortex or one of his cronies, giving a bad ending where Uka Uka gains ownership of all of the Crystals "and all of the POWER!!!" This is done in a more direct sense if you play the Adventure Mode in two player co-op with a good and evil player, allowing access to a hidden deathmatch where the two of you fight to determine the ending, thus get the extra reward of kicking Crash or Coco's ass as one of the Rogues Gallery before taking over the world.
• Took a Level in Badass: Papu Papu, while still the first boss, puts up much more of a fight than in the first game. Not only is he smart enough to position himself where the player cannot conventionally attack, his cane whacks are now powerful enough to cause harmful quakes on the ground and he now seems to possess the ability to voodoo several of his own little mini-Crashes to do his bidding.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Even with Gameplay Roulette in effect. Most bosses are based on existing mini-games, but the first part of the final boss is a 3D space shooter not seen anywhere else in the game.
• The Unintelligible: Even with most characters using pre-arranged audio-samples, Brio's dialog stands out as mad gibberish.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: 99% of the game is a fun minigame collection with an Excuse Plot of a tournament. That remaining 1% is Uka Uka, who spends all of his screentime as the most menacing he ever is in the entire series and comes across as downright terrifying.
• Voodoo Shark: To explain why the masks would go to all this trouble instead of fighting it out themselves, there's a line where Uka Uka attempts to attack Aku Aku, only for Aku Aku to rebuke him and declare that "The Ancients would not allow it!". This raises a lot of questions about who the Ancients are and what power they have over the two masks, since they have never been seen or mentioned in any other game before or since, and contradicts the Final Boss of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, where Aku Aku and Uka Uka do directly fight and the Ancients don't appear or do anything to stop them. For this reason, "The Ancients would not allow it!" has become a meme in the fanbase to Hand Wave away any and all of the series' plot holes.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The Japanese version of the game adds descriptions of what happened to each of the characters.
  • Crash seals away Uka Uka, and to his surprise, he's congratulated by Tawna... or what he thinks is Tawna. It's actually a hologram of a more adult Coco.
  • Coco completes an invention she was working on before the tournament interrupted her. With it, she can scan her body and show a projection of herself as an adult, with the intent of becoming an Idol Singer.
  • Tiny forgets about his past as a servant of Cortex and Uka Uka, and celebrates his victory while holding a big screw, which he unknowingly took from Cortex's latest invention.
  • Dingodile scorches everything with his flamethrower while celebrating his win.
  • Cortex attempts to take over the world again using a big robot, but his plan falls apart due to a missing screw, which Tiny inadvertedly took.
  • N. Brio gets over his feelings of inferiority to Cortex and decides to take over the world by himself. He concocts a plan to combine the DNA of a bandicoot and a kangaroo to create a powerful bandiroo.
  • Koala Kong goes back to Hollywood, but faces a sharp drop in popularity after his participation in the tournament exposed him as being evil.
  • Rilla Roo decides to open a yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurant in Hollywood with Dingodile, and also become Koala Kong's manager.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Any playable character turns into a winged ball of light when they die in the minigames, even the evil ones.
• Wintry Auroral Sky: The "Polar Panic" stage is set on a flat iceberg on the night sea, with auroras in the sky.
• You Have Failed Me: Uka Uka furiously rants this at Cortex and Brio in the Good ending, and for once, is dead serious as he tries to kill them both for their failure.