Coco Bandicoot

Coco Bandicoot is Crash Bandicoot's genius younger sister. Beginning with her debut in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Coco has appeared in nearly every Crash Bandicoot game since.

Coco's most notable attribute is her intelligence, and she has an IQ of 164. Coco often aids Crash by building gadgets for him or joining him in his journeys, using self-taught martial arts to defend herself. Like her brother, Coco has a fearless nature and has a tomboyish nature, as she is a fan of martial arts films, wrestling, and NASCAR.

Creation
After the release of the first Crash Bandicoot, Sony Japan wanted a female character that was not as sexualized as Tawna to appear in the sequel, as part of softening the game for Japanese audiences. A drawing was produced by the Japanese artist and handed to the concept artist on the team, Charles Zembillas to refine.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
Coco's debut in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back begins with her relaxing on N. Sanity Island alongside Crash. Coco's laptop battery dies, so she sends Crash to find a replacement.

When Coco discovers that Crash is gathering crystals for Cortex, she decides to hack into Cortex's computer and see what he's up to; what she finds are detailed schematics for an improved Cortex Vortex and a suspicious-looking space station. Just as Crash has gathered all the Crystals, she reveals Cortex's intentions before he can hand them over.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
Crash and Coco are sent by Aku Aku to find all of the crystals through time before Dr. Cortex and Uka Uka are able to. This is the first game where Coco is playable: she pilots Pura, a tiger cub across the Great Wall of China, a jet ski and an airplane. Coco and Pura team up to defeat Dr. N. Gin in a giant robot battle on the moon. She seems to have taken in Pura by the end of the game.

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
When the Elementals wreak havoc on Earth in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Coco activates a new Portal Chamber for Crash to use. She helps Crash gather the Power Crystals needed to stop the Elementals by collecting them in a tsunami-ravaged China and an avalanche zone. She also stops an armada of Cortex's space stations from striking Earth. Near the end, she helps Crash and Crunch escape from Cortex's malfunctioning space station.

Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure
In Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, Coco builds a device that reverses the effects of Cortex's Planetary Minimizer.

Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced
In Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, Coco is abducted by N. Trance and is brainwashed alongside Crunch. Coco battles Crash in a large battleship inside an active volcano, with Crash attacking the craft while it is reloading its weaponry. Upon snapping out of N. Trance's control, Coco becomes a playable character, gathering two Crystals in space while escaping the wrath of a fireball created by N. Tropy.

Crash Twinsanity
In Crash Twinsanity, Coco is ambushed by Doctor Neo Cortex, who disguises himself as her in order to lure Crash into a trap. Many moments later, Coco believes that Cortex kidnapped Crash, and travels to the Iceberg Lab to confront him. With a swift kick, she attacks Cortex and sends the Power Crystals he was holding flying into the Psychetron. The resulting chain reaction leaves Coco paralyzed until the end of the game. In an earlier version of the game, Coco was to have a much larger role, helping Crash and Cortex gain access to the Airship by hacking into the security system of Cortex's old castle in stages that parodied the Matrix series.

The game's concept art gallery shows an evil counterpart for Coco that doesn't appear in the final game.

Crash of the Titans
In Crash of the Titans, Coco is on the verge of creating a device that will be able to recycle butter when she is captured along with Aku Aku by Neo Cortex. When Nina replaces Cortex, Coco is brainwashed and is forced to finish the Doominator. She ends up completing the Doominator, but is rescued by Crash and is able to stop it at the end of the game. In the Nintendo DS version, Coco appears as a vendor selling upgrades for Crash's abilities.

Crash: Mind over Mutant
Coco is a playable character in the cooperation mode of the Wii and Xbox 360 versions of Crash: Mind over Mutant. In the PlayStation 2 version, she is replaced by a white-furred version of her brother named "Carbon Crash" due to technological constraints.

At the beginning of the game, Coco converts the Doominator's eye into an entertainment system. After seeing an infomercial advertising the "NV", a do-anything personal digital assistant, she receives an NV along with Crunch and quickly becomes addicted. Soon enough, the NV transforms her into a ferocious beast who tries to kill Crash using a giant basketball-launching machine. After being defeated and informed (to her disappointment) that the NV had a negative influence on her, she uses the Doominator's eye to access Cortex's blog and learn what Cortex is planning. From that point on, she is the second player's character.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
In the Flashback Tape levels, it's revealed that a month after Crash broke out of Cortex Castle, Dr. Cortex began to train Coco as his next general. A pair of overalls were given to her from Cortex, which were stolen from Dr. N. Brio, originally made by his mother. During her training she showed a fascination with technology as well as a video game addiction, which led Dr. N. Gin took to mentor her in mechanics and computing. Coco later escaped during one of her trials.

Crash Team Racing
Coco is a playable character in Crash Team Racing. In the epilogue, it is shown that Coco opened up her own Internet dating service.

Crash Nitro Kart
Coco is a playable character in Crash Nitro Kart. In one cutscene, she uses her hacking skills to put the hyperactive Nash to sleep.

Crash Tag Team Racing
Coco is a playable character in Crash Tag Team Racing and her three vehicles are the Nostalginator, Bandibuggy, and Fairy Mobile. In the game's story, Coco discovers the sole clue to whoever stole Motorworld's Power Gems, which is Wumpa Whip. Because of Crash's high consumption of the beverage, she and the others initially assume that Crash is the culprit, despite the fact that Willie Wumpa Cheeks is the park's lone source of Wumpa Whip. At the end of the game, Coco returns the park's deed to its original owner, Von Clutch. In one of Coco's quotes, it is suggested that she has a crush on N. Gin.

Crash Bash
Coco is a playable character in Crash Bash.

Crash Boom Bang!
Coco plays a central role in Crash Boom Bang!, in which she is invited by the Viscount to the World Cannonball Race in his search for the Super Big Power Crystal.

Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage
In Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage, Coco teams up with the Professor to track down Ripto and Doctor Cortex. Later in the game, they're both kidnapped by Doctor Cortex's niece, Nina Cortex, who keeps them locked up in cages. After being freed from her cage, Coco suggests that Crash and Spyro put a tracer on Cortex and Ripto as to allow the heroes to track the villains back to their hideout. Coco's last major contribution to the story is constructing a portal to Cortex's and Ripto's lair.

Physical appearance
In Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back until Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, Coco appears as a humanoid bandicoot with a large head, blonde hair and green eyes. Her hair is worn in a ponytail and is decorated with a pink-purple-blue flower. She wears a white shirt and pink sneakers with baggy overalls, one suspender undone. Her design in Japanese media is noticeably rounder and has black or brown eyes.

Similar designs appear in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled albeit with a pink flower, and Crash: On The Run! with no flower at all.

In Crash Nitro Kart, she is slightly taller and swaps her original clothes for a white crop top with a flower design and sporty teal pants. This carries over into Crash Twinsanity, now gaining a blue trim and Crash Tag Team Racing, although here the flower is replaced with a pink star. In Crash Boom Bang', her top has a pink trim and has blue shorts. In Crash of the Titans and Crash Nitro Kart 2, she has gone back to her original size. Her hair is let down and worn in a bandana. She has a similar crop top as before, with a pink star and blue sleeves, as well as rolled up jeans and a belt.

In Crash: Mind Over Mutant, Coco is at her most tall. She wears her hair in a small ponytail and has small blue goggles. Her shirt is stained with oil and wears a dog tag around her neck, as well as beige pants with protective knee pads and an attached flashlight.

Coco's appearance in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time takes many cues from her original design, with more stylized proportions. She has blue-green eyes in contrast to Crash's yellow-green eyes. She wears large goggles, a pink belt, and overalls with a heart shaped patch on the knee.

Family
Coco shares many traits with her older brother Crash. Physically, they are typically depicted as the same height. In most appearances where they are both playable, they have a similar or identical skill set (spinning, sliding, etc). Outside of adventuring together, they also both love to relax and goof off.

Aku Aku calls Crash and Coco his children, provides protection and guides them across their adventures, and thus could be considered their father figure. Although Dr. Cortex begins to see Crash as his child in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, he never does with Coco.

Crash and Coco aren't shown to consider Crunch their adoptive brother, however they share a bond as well. Crunch began living with them after the events of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, and all three are usually seen together in later appearances.

Friends
Coco knows of Tawna, but they have lost contact. In Crash 4, Crash and Coco meet a Tawna from an alternate universe, who denies their request to join them and leaves. Coco seems upset by this and is comforted by Crash. Tawna accepts their friendship after defeating both Dr. N. Tropys, and at the end of the story play a video game together.

Merchandise
Coco has been featured in two series of Crash Bandicoot action figures produced by the now-defunct Resaurus. For Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Resaurus produced a Coco Bandicoot figure bundled with figures of a penguin and lizard from the game. The Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped series featured two different figures of Coco, including one bundled with Aku Aku and Crash Bandicoot figures.

Critical reception
Coco's inclusion as a playable character in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex was met with a generally lukewarm response among critics. Hilary Goldstein of IGN felt that Coco was a "less powerful" and "less enjoyable" character than Crash and that "she was just not fun the way Crash is". On the subject, Hilary added that "Crash is a silly creature to look at. He's almost absurd, which works great with his various animations. Coco isn't really silly at all. The game isn't called Crash and Coco so why must I be forced to play her? Rather than add variety, Coco detracts from the only real selling point of the game -- Crash Bandicoot." Matthew Gallant of GameSpot noted that "When you play a level as Coco instead of Crash, there's no explanation or warning given--you'll simply enter the level's portal as Crash and come out the other end as Coco. It's not all bad, but compared with (Super Mario) Sunshine, it seems very uneven." Coco's 3D flying stages in Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced have been criticized by Mark MacDonald of Electronic Gaming Monthly as "sloppy".

Voice actors
Vikki Winters – Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back Hynden Walch – Crash Team Racing Debi Derryberry – Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex–present Risa Tsubaki – Crash Boom Bang! Haruna Ikezawa – Japanese dub