Crash Bandicoot
“Crash Bandicoot was the greatest orange thing that could spin since the basketball was invented on Sir Kobe Bryant's fingertip.”
Crash Bandicoot (born August 31, 1994) is an Australian mutant animal aborigine who freed himself from the chains of his human supremacist creator/arch-nemesis Dr. Neo Cortex. There have been various Crash video games licensed by Sony, featuring his struggle to defeat Cortex and save the world. His original PS1 games, being developer Naughty Dog's answer to the ever-popular Bubsy the Bobcat, were big hits that provided Crash a lot of cash, and he was even the PlayStation's mascot at that time. Eventually Crash left Sony due to a pay dispute and faded into obscurity, being replaced by Nathan Drake as the PlayStation's mascot.
Early life[edit]
It all started one summer in 1996, somewhere off Australia's east coast near Tasmania, when demented mad scientist Dr. Neo Cortex and his eccentric slave Dr. Nitrus Brio were licking wumpa fruit and came up with the idea of building a large laser thing to zap animals with to fetch them more wumpa. However, somewhere along the way, the textbooks got rewritten to say that Cortex and his niece Nina were in some jungle and used a raygun to shoot a bunny which somehow grew pants and became Crash.
At a young age, Crash and his nerdy sister Coco were captured from their jungle home on N. Sanity Island and taken in as experiments of Dr. Cortex. Cortex dreamt of world domination, and planned to create an army of super-animals as his plan to conquer all. Animal soldiers that had no minds of their owns, and did not question, feel pain, or show mercy to their enemies. But Crash was different from the other soldiers in Cortex's army, as he had a mind of his own.
Arriving in Cortex's castle of lust, Crash was locked away in a dark damp dungeon to live out the rest of his days. He became a tester of Cortex's Evolvo-Ray, which messed with his brain and anthropomorphized him into being human-like. Cortex intended for Crash to lead his Cortex Commandos, and attempted to brainwash him with the Cortex Vortex mind controller. However, the experiment backfired when the Vortex rejected Crash for being too nice, sparing Crash his own mind. Upon discovering this, Cortex chased after Crash as the rebellious marsupial fled the castle by smash out a window into the ocean. Cortex then prepared Crash's busty girlfriend Tawna for experimentation.
Crashing the Wumpa Islands[edit]
Crash ended up drifting around the ocean for a while before he washed up on N. Sanity Beach naked. As Crash got used to his surroundings, he came across a billabong store and purchased some blue jeans, but never bothered buying a shirt. This was the first time Crash was out in the real world since being evolved, and basic instinct kicked in. Crash was constantly spinning each animal he came across; he would first stun the creatures by spinning around in a circle at 300 miles an hour and lunging into his prey (a side affect of spinning into skunks resulted in Crash smelling stinky, but this was cured after a day in the washing machine). This was a trick Crash learned from his floating witch doctor mask friend, Aku Aku, while they snacked on some wumpa. As Crash moved through the jungles of the island, he encountered many unusual things, including climbing a 200ft wall, spinning into skunks, spiders, turtles, and monkeys (oh my), getting swallowed by sharp-toothed plants, and going doggystyle on a warthog.
Crash came to a realization that soon he would have to leave this island as he ate almost all the wumpa fruit there. As he continued his journey, he ventured into a hut housing the morbidly obese Native Aborigine chief Papu Papu. Crash tried to tiptoe around the fat man, but awoke him by falling over his humongous dangling staff. Understandably, the man was rather upset with Crash breaking in, and attempted to beat the shit out of Crash with his humongous dangling staff. Crash's agile body and stamina got the best of the fatty, and Crash gutted him alive with his staff.
After defeating Papu Papu, Crash used his innards as rope to bound bits of wood from the man's hut. With a raft constructed, Crash set sail without a clue what direction he was heading in. Allegedly he was on the raft for almost a week, floating aimlessly before he arrived on the second island, Wumpa Island. He managed to defeat two of Cortex's minions, straightjacket-bound homicidal freak Ripper Roo and steroid-addicted crowd-shy bodybuilder Koala Kong, then floated with one of Koala Kong's boulders over to the third island. Crash arrived on the island with high hopes, but his dreams were crushed when he found that the Third Mile Island he had seen in old history book was no longer a utopia; instead it was now a polluted Cortex Island dictatorship under the Doctor's tyrannical rule.
Crash entered the Cortex Power station and battled the cackling sadistic gangster Pinstripe Potoroo. Crash spun into Pinstripe, causing him to get dizzy and accidentally fire his Tommy gun at the station's reactor core, stopping Cortex's stream of island pollution. Arriving at Cortex Castle, Crash confronted N. Brio, who used his mutagen to mutate himself into a Hulk-like monster. Crash defeated Brio by bouncing on his head, causing him to get a headache and collapse. Brio fell down onto his table of potions, setting the castle alight; Crash escaped to Cortex's blimp, where he confronted the Doctor himself, but defeated him easily by spinning back his stupidly-deflectable raygun shots, destroying Cortex's hoverboard and causing him to plummet. Crash reunited with Tawna and had a wide grin on his face as they flew away on the blimp, knowing he was getting the good stuff tonight. The Evolvo-War had begun. Humans against animals. Natives against immigrants. Nature against unnature. Fur against rogaine.
Cortex Strikes Back[edit]
Where we last left off, Cortex fell from the sky down into hidden underground catacombs filled with Power Crystals. Cortex took a crystal and returned to his lab to scan it, but not before his lit match flickered out as he let out a "D'oh!". Cortex's animal slaves were then rounded up and forced to work on constructing on a new Cortex Vortex space station, which at a later date would be presented to the dictator as a gift. These unfortunate critters grew angry with the treatment being handed out to them, leading of a series of worker strikes that were initially repressed by the Cortex Commandos, but soon even the Commandos left Cortex because he didn't give them their pensions as promised. At this time N. Brio had abandoned Cortex due to him stealing all the credit for his inventions, and stole copies of the Vortex blueprints and hid them in his shoe. Brio then joined up with the animal rebels on the abandoned ruins of the Cortex Castle, where they plotted to defeat the Doctor.
One year later, Cortex had a new assistant who he found at a staple factory, Dr. N. Gin, who suffered from plastic surgery, Frankenstein-esque skin, and a missile lodged in his head, but still looked more human than most supermodels. The two were solar-sailing on the completed, crystal-powered new Cortex Vortex in outer space, where N. Gin said that in addition to their Master Crystal they possessed, they also needed 25 "Slave Crystals" to reach the Vortex's maximum capacity and brainwash everyone on Earth. N. Gin pointed out to Cortex that they no longer had any friends left on Earth, but Cortex countered N. Gin by saying they needed not a friend, but an enemy to help them.
Meanwhile, Crash now lived with his long-lost sister Coco, as Tawna dumped him for Pinstripe. Coco, who was addicted to her laptop, ordered her slave Crash to go home and fetch a new battery for it. As Crash headed home smashing through the boundaries, lunacy found him, and the battery-questing was stopped; he was suddenly warped in a beam of light and teleported to a Warp Room, where Crash met Cortex's giant floating head. Cortex told Crash that he had turned over a new leaf, and ordered him to go through the different warp portals and bring the crystals to him, to prevent some solar flux of all thirteen planets or something. In-between warp sessions, Brio also appeared on the holograms and warned Crash about the dangers of crystals, and that collecting gems instead would help him harness some sort of alternative energy to defeat Cortex. Not knowing who to believe, Crash decided to collect both crystals and gems, while also battling Cortex and Brio's minions along the way: the sword-wielding Komodo Bros., the slow-witted brute Tiny Tiger, and the mech-loving N. Gin.
Finally, Coco hacked into Cortex's holograms and woke Crash up to the fact that Cortex would use the collected crystals to do bad stuff. On his jetpack, Crash pursued an escaping Cortex in space and defeated him in a few seconds, with Cortex apparently being too chicken to fire return shots. Unfortunately, the Cortex Vortex was still up there. Suddenly remembering that he had also collected gems, Crash met with N. Brio and gave him the gems. A vengeful Brio then used the gems to buy some TNT crates from the ACME store, and supplied them to Crash. As part of the plan, Crash would place TNT crates on the Cortex Vortex and detonate them.
In the dead of night, Crash slipped onto the Cortex Vortex to carry out his plan. He managed to sneak past security and placed the TNT crates, one under Cortex's throne and the rest under the deck. However, when Crash attempted to escape the doomed station, he found that he had been locked inside, and being an idiot, he also set the TNT to go off prematurely. The crates detonated and engulfed the space station and Crash in a great ball of fire and smoke, reducing Crash to a pile of smoldering ash.
Warping Through Time[edit]
“He just won't die!”
“...”
Meanwhile, it seemed Crash had one extra life left, as he respawned from his ashes. He popped out of nowhere (like heroes always do in thriller action movies) and moved, but his face was stuck. His whole body was stuck. It had seemed Crash was in a coffin. After weeks of destroying his own teeth like an crazy hobo was to get out of a coffin, he bit so hard that his jaw broke, and gave up. Just then Crash realized he could spin, and escaped by spinning apart the coffin. Crash wandered, hungry and thirsty, for many days across the outback. Eventually he collapsed exhausted as buzzards circled overhead, but Aku Aku revitalized him with voodoo magic, allowing him to charge back home invincibly.
Elsewhere, the space-junk of the Cortex Vortex crash-landed onto a temple on Wumpa Island, freeing Cortex's boss/Aku Aku's twin brother Uka Uka. A vengeful Uka Uka scolded Cortex for screwing up twice and recruited Dr. Nefarious Tropy, a posh Bond Villain type with the ability to warp time, to construct a Time Twister that could be used to collect the crystal and gem McGuffins scattered throughout time (apparently the gems and crystals got scattered after they were used in the last game). Meanwhile, Crash and Coco were relaxing at home, when Aku Aku sensed that an ancient evil had awakened and told the bandicoots it was time to save the world again. Knowing that Cortex was attempting global domination again, Coco shouted "To the Crashmobile!" and hobbled off to the Crashmobile with her dumb brother.
Arriving at the Time Twister, Crash raced against time in collecting the crystals and gems before the villains did. He battled most of the same bosses from last time, with the exception of new recruit, the pyromaniac Dingodile. Finally, Crash confronted Cortex and Uka Uka in the Time Twister and it imploded upon their defeat, trapping them and Tropy in perpetual toddlerhood. The villains apparently later grew back into their normal ages or something.
Team Racing[edit]
In his fourth and final canonical adventure, Crash along with his friends and enemies were captured and held hostage by Nitros Oxide, a hoverchair-bound disabled alien who sucked at racing. The good and bad guys were split into two teams and forced to race for Oxide's amusement, or else the Earth would be turned into a parking lot. In the end, Crash defeated the decrepit old green bastard by racing really fast in his Crashmobile, and Oxide kept his promise and left Earth, only to get into a unicycle accident later on.
Later adventures[edit]
Crash had a number of later, less-important adventures. He saved his cousin Crunch "The Hammer" Bandicoot from Cortex's brainwashing, and battled weather-condition masks known as the Elementals. Later, Crash temporarily teamed up with Dr. Cortex to defeat a greater evil, the Evil Twins, parakeets with oversized brains who were created by Cortex when he was a kid. At one point, Uka Uka got so pissed at Cortex that he fired him, and Crash now had to battle N. Trance, the ultimate N. Tropy ripoff, who was a pink egg in a child's walker that liked to screech loudly.
Game series[edit]
Later, the disturbingly-titled Naughty Dog created a series of Crash Bandicoot video games loosely based on Crash's life. This metaphorical bandicoot metaphorically escaped the metaphorical local zoo and ran into the metaphorical hearts and homes of millions, young and old, through way of the Sony PlayStation. The games involve our bodacious little bandicoot Crash, who's quest it is to collect strange apples, power crystals, and gems, while also breaking shipping boxes. With some kick-ass gameplay, Crash became the ultimate anthropomorphic hero to '90s kids. He even outshined Mario and Sonic at one point, not to mention having that Star Fox guy as a maid.
The Crash games were originally promoted by doctors to educate children on the benefits of eating fruit. Whenever Crash eats 100 faux-apples (wumpa fruit), he gains a life, which lead to millions of kids eating apples. However, when 35 kids ate themselves to death trying to get another life, the American Doctor's Association of America cut off all ties to the series. Crash games also taught kids that violence is good by rewarding the children with weapons the farther they got into the game. Upon beating Warped, Crash is awarded a wumpa bazooka; while shouting "Say hello to my little friend", it is possible to kill anyone with the bazooka, even Cortex. While there was no actual rise in violence, the Crash games did lead to many kids thinking that bandicoots actually run around, wear pants and shoes, and kick the crap out of yellow bad guys with giant Ns tattooed on their foreheads. Reviewers also noted that no one actually knows what the games' plots are, encouraging creativity by leaving players to make up plots themselves.
Personality and powers[edit]
“Whoa!”
Crash is a mutant creature with the powers of spinning, throwing up after spinning, jumping like Mario, eating a whole lot of wumpa fruit, and inexplicably knowing how to pilot planes, mechs, and go-karts. He is protected by a floating witch doctor/Halloween mask called Aku Aku, who is set free and shouts "OODIBIGAH" when Crash breaks one of the many boxes that mysteriously appear everywhere he goes. He is a wanted criminal for attempted murder on Dr. Neo Cortex and his associates and also for destroying boxes belonging to various people. He has also been caught on numerous occasions stealing go-karts and forcing Dr. Cortex and his associates into races.
Because of his unnatural beginning in life, Crash is forced to survive by collecting "wumpa fruit", floating apples that seem to grow almost everywhere on the islands where he lives. Crash also claims to be working for a floating wooden mask witch doctor named Aku Aku, leading people to question his sanity. Crash's current residence is the Rapid Treatment and Fresh Wumpa for All Those Who Have More Than 50% of Their Body Covered in Fur Institute. In his free time, he likes to aid the needy by helping in a wumpa soup kitchen, and has an extensive collection of old Wumpa-Cola bottles.
Relationships[edit]
It is claimed that Crash foils Cortex's plans because Cortex wants to take over the world and turn it into a giant chemical dump. However, Cortex is actually a very nice man who is often a victim to Crash's crimes, being attacked and beaten by Crash through no fault of his own. He has gone quite insane because of Crash's attacks and is also found being beaten by his niece Nina. In order to stop the pain, Neo often sniffs glue whilst being beaten.
Over the years, Crash has proven himself to be more than a lady's greatest dream, rivaling that of Captain Kirk or Ellen DeGeneres. He's had a busty girlfriend Tawna (later stolen by Pinstripe) who's twice his height, a cute "sister" Coco living with him, and four trophy girl beeyotches.