Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure

Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, also known as Crash Bandicoot XS (a shortening of "extra small") in Europe, is a platform game released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002. It was developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Universal Interactive in North America, Europe, and Australia and Konami in Japan. It is the first Crash Bandicoot game that was released for a handheld, excluding Tiger Electronics' 99x Games from the 1990s. Since its release, Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure has been included on some Crash Superpack carts. In 2003, the game received a direct sequel, Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced.

Story
In a Space Station orbiting Earth, Uka Uka is mad at Dr. Cortex for constantly failing at his evil plans. Cortex begs for mercy and explains that he wasted years of trying to get rid of Crash Bandicoot. Cortex dismisses Crash as unimportant and chooses to pursue a new and different goal—conquering Earth. Cortex tells Uka Uka that his plan is to shrink the entire planet.

Once Cortex completes the Planetary Minimizer, he uses it to shrink Earth to the size of a grapefruit. Dr. Cortex televises himself, taunting the entire planet and proclaiming himself as their new ruler. Aku informs Crash and Coco about the event and tells them that the planet needs their help. Coco figures out that Cortex is using crystals as the power source for the Planet Minimizer. Coco tells Crash to find the crystals so that she can try and make a device that returns Earth to its original size. Aku wishes luck to Crash as he begins his adventure.

Crash accesses the levels from the Warp Room using portals. He encounters three of Cortex's henchmen along the way, Dingodile, N. Gin, and Tiny Tiger. Crash eventually reaches the Space Station, where he encounters Cortex. He tries to shrink Crash with the Planetary Minimizer, but Crash tricks Cortex into firing the colored gems that stabilize the machine. This causes the Planetary Minimizer to malfunction.

There are two endings for game. If Crash has not collected every gem and relic, the Planetary Minimizer breaks down but is not entirely destroyed. Coco uses all 20 crystals to power her machine, and meanwhile, as Earth returns to its original size, Crash rides a motorcycle-like vehicle in space and re-enters Earth. Back at home, Aku warns Crash that Cortex is still an active threat because the machine is not completely destroyed. In the 100% ending, the Planetary Minimizer is destroyed entirely, and its unrestrained effects fuse Cortex and the previous bosses into a single monster named Mega-Mix. Crash runs down the space station's hallway while being chased by Mega-Mix. Like the unfinished ending, Crash escapes from the Space Station on a motorcycle-like vehicle and returns to Earth on time, when Coco uses her machine to reverse its effects. The Space Station explodes, but Cortex and the other bosses escape in an escape pod as the text "The End?!" is shown on-screen.

Chronology placement
Since the game has extreme similarities with the earlier games from Naughty Dog, in gameplay and story aspect, The Huge Adventure seemingly takes place after the events of Warped. However, its sequel N-Tranced has a character named Crunch Bandicoot, who appeared earlier in The Wrath of Cortex. N-Tranced iteration is presumably the same one from the former game. Due to possible plot changes and circumstances, The Huge Adventure and N-Tranced do not precede other mainline games like Twinsanity (despite featuring Crunch's cameo in the game), thus creating an alternative narrative to the first four games from the main series.

Gameplay
Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure plays like a traditional 2D platformer, although the sky levels and chase areas within ice caverns are 2.5D environments. The game plays similarly to the first three Crash Bandicoot games for the PlayStation.

The levels are accessed from the Warp Room, which consists of four hubs. Each hub has five levels, which can be completed in any order. The levels are accessed from individual portals, each numbered 1-5, from left to right. After completing a level, Crash unlocks a Time Trial mode for that level. The boss portal is unlocked when all five levels of the hub is completed. Instead of a number, boss portals depict an icon of the boss fought. When Crash defeats a boss for the first time, he unlocks the next hub. In the Warp Room, Crash is always standing on a circular stone platform, which moves him between the level portals. The stone platform can also move Crash up to the next hub or back down to the previous one.

From the start, Crash can perform six basic moves, including Jump, Spin Attack, Slide, High Jump, Body Slam, and Crouch. After defeating a boss, Crash unlocks a Special Move, most of which are an enhancement over a basic move. Crash starts his adventure with five lives. He can earn another life by collecting 100 Wumpa Fruits or breaking open a Crash Crate and collecting the Crash head. If Crash breaks open an Aku Aku Crate, the Aku Aku is freed, and it follows alongside Crash. It gives Crash an extra hit point. If Crash breaks three Aku Aku Crates without losing Aku Aku, he is granted temporary invincibility.

The main collectible item are Crystals, and there are a total of 20, one for each level. Other collectible items are Clear Gems, Colored Gems, and Relics. A Clear Gem is awarded to Crash if he breaks every crate in a level or completes a secret area. A Colored Gem is hidden within certain level, usually in a hard-to-reach location. Crash is awarded a Relic if he completes a level in Time Trial mode. While Crash is standing on a level portal, an icon of him and the world boss are displayed at the top-left corner. The crystal, gem and relic icons to the right of the boss icon indicates that Crash has not yet obtained those items. Items to the right of Crash's icon are those that he already obtained.

There is no multiplayer mode for the game, although the "Load Link Game" option allows two players to use the GBA Game Link Cable to transfer their save files to the other system. The transferred save can then be loaded and saved to one of the four in-game save slots.

Time Trial Mode
In "Time Trial" mode, Crash's objective is to race within the pre-designated time shown before he enters a level (the time beneath it is the player's best time). The Time Trial mode does not immediately start when Crash enters a level, and can be activated if Crash jumps at a golden stopwatch at the start of the level. This causes a timer to appear on the bottom-right corner of the screen. If Crash does not touch the stopwatch, he goes through the level as normal. In the mode, several Time Boxes are scattered throughout the level. They stop the timer for either 1–3 seconds, based on which number appears on the Time Box. If Crash completes a level quickly enough, he earns a colored relic—from longest to shortest time: Sapphire, Gold or Platinum.

Enemies

 * Electric Eel
 * Frog
 * Gecko
 * Jellyfish
 * Lab Assistant
 * Moray Eel
 * Penguin
 * Polar Bear
 * Pufferfish
 * Rat
 * Scrubber
 * Seal
 * Shark
 * Sparky Tentaclebot Unit
 * Spike Lizard
 * Squid
 * Sewer Mech
 * Venus Fly Trap
 * Yeti

Levels
Every level and boss level has a theme. There are six different themes: jungle, underwater, ice cavern, sewers, sky, and outer space.

Development
The game stemmed from an agreement between Universal Interactive Studios and Konami in September 2000. This allowed them to respectively develop and publish a Crash Bandicoot game for next-generation consoles, including the Game Boy Advance, and ended the Crash Bandicoot franchise's exclusivity to Sony consoles.

In December 2000, Vicarious Visions approached Universal and demonstrated some of their technology for the Game Boy Advance. Universal was impressed and commissioned a prototype, which resembled a handheld version of the first three Crash Bandicoot games. Vicarious Visions was then assigned to develop a Crash Bandicoot game for the Game Boy Advance.

The game was tentatively titled Crash Bandicoot Advance and went through the titles Crash Bandicoot X/S and then Crash Bandicoot: The Big Adventure before arriving at its final name, although Crash Bandicoot XS would become the name in PAL territories. The game was developed over the course of nine months from conception to completion. The team working on the game expanded to as much as seven programmers at the height of the game's development. The graphics and animation for the game were created in.

Some of the original animation and textures from Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped were repurposed and used as a basis for the Game Boy Advance game. The audio for the game was supplied by Shin'en Multimedia, with assistance from Universal Sound Studios. Manfred Linzner created the sound effects and Todd Masten composed the music. According to the developers, they have the battery save feature since the start, as a password system would make it very cumbersome to keep track of all the data.

Reception
Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure received generally favorable reviews from critics. The game was praised for its graphics and overall design, but critics also noted that the game had a lack of innovation.