Cortex Chaos

Concept art for the first proposal, which involved several smaller Cortex clones.

Cortex Chaos, also known as The All-New Cortex Show, was the name of a game project from Traveller's Tales Oxford Studio. It never went past the concept phase, and development for it began after Crash Twinsanity was released. As the title implies, it would have starred Dr. Neo Cortex. The project was led by Keith Webb. Everything that is known about the game was posted on Crash Mania in 2006 by Keith Webb.

Concepts

At least three proposals were made for how the game would be.

• The Clones of Cortex:Clones of Cortex, had sort of a Babychild-Bigfriend Situation going on. You'd play as both Dr Cortex and his niece Nina by teaming up, they could unlock new gameplay mechanics, in the same vein as Crash and Cortex Humiliskating. Here's the summary from the pitch document. Quote: "Always let down by his bungling henchmen, Dr. Cortex decides to help himself by creating six clones to run his affairs. But the clones mutate, each more bizarre and wild than the last. When his creations take over his laboratory, the hapless scientist and his niece Nina must use all their cunning and guile to defeat each of the boss clones and recapture the castle." Delving a bit deeper, Paul Gardner said the main new mechanic was Cortex spawning mini-clones of himself called Duplets. You'd herd them around like lemmings for example, by blowing one up, then the other terrified Duplets would run away in the opposite direction. You'd need to get them to the end of an area to trigger a mechanism, so Cortex could teleport there and progress further into a level.

• Trials of Cortex: would've seen the Crash villain standing trial, brought up on charges by his evil scientist peers. He’d ruined their reputation in their eyes by failing to defeat a lowly marsupial. Cortex would argue his point of view as he defends himself in court, all presented in-game as levels from previous Crash games you'd have to play through as Dr Cortex. Interactive flashbacks, essentially. Later, Cortex would have to complete a series of challenges to prove his wickedness, or else he'd lose his License To Do Evil, and be condemned to a life sentence working at a summer camp for excessively cute children. Cortex of course escapes that fate worse than death and gets revenge on his former evil scientist colleagues. N. Trance, N. Brio, N. Gin, N. Oxide, etc.) for associating with Crash Bandicoot. N. Tropy would take over as the new leader of the Evil Scientist league, who would then team up to get revenge on Neo Cortex. Each level would be based on one of the Evil Scientists. At least three new villains were introduced—Doctor N. Tombed, Doctor N. Tertain, and Doctor N. Tangle—the former two being a huge Egyptian mummy-like pharaoh and a clown-like doctor from Las Vegas respectively. In the Crash Mania post, Keith Webb did not completely remember what Doctor N.Tangled would have been but thought it would have plants growing from it.

• There was also a third idea for Cortex Chaos. This one's sort of a failed pitch within a failed pitch an idea document the Twinsanity devs cooked up, but didn't even make it to the publisher meeting. More specifically, it was written by John McCann, who showed us the doc and said: "I really wanted to work on a Zelda-like game, so that's pretty much the basis of my outline: A Zelda-style game starring Cortex and Nina." It's 19 pages, so we'll flash it on-screen for folks who wanna pause and read. But here's the one-minute summary: Dr Cortex's laboratory serves as the hub world. It starts pretty empty because all his world-domination equipment's been stolen, but throughout the game he builds the lab back up, filling it with exciting machines and furniture, and new areas of the lab open up to be explored. Out in the world, he uses a cell phone called the Cortex Communicator, which houses the game's menu, and also acts kinda like Navi from Ocarina of Time. But instead of saying "Hey listen," it sends text messages from his lab's supercomputer, giving Cortex hints and telling him where to go next. It was 2004 -- mobile phones were relatively new and microtransactions didn't exist yet so naturally, players would be able to unlock new ringtones, wallpapers, and casings to customize their Communicator. Cortex of course had his laser and other moves, but could also use a melee weapon and shield. And he had Z-targeting as well. So, yeah, it was like a Cortex-themed Zelda, more or less. Pushing the Select button lets you switch between playing as Cortex and his niece Nina, or you could do a two-player co-op with both characters.

Gallery

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  Artwork for the first proposal

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  Artwork for the second proposal

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  Artwork of N.Tertain & N.Trance

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  Artwork for the unknown proposal

External links

• Crash Mania article