Summary
- Crunch Bandicoot, Tiny Tiger, and N.Gin are just a few of Crash's memorable foes throughout his gaming history.
- From Crunch's elemental powers to Tiny's brute strength, Crash's enemies provide challenging boss fights and unique gameplay.
- Dr. Neo Cortex remains Crash's ultimate nemesis, with his mad scientific genius driving the series forward with each new game.
From being the PlayStation’s unofficial mascot to a multi-platform marsupial, Crash Bandicoot has gone through many games. From racers to party games, he’s almost done it all. But they couldn’t outdo the original PS1 trilogy. Or at least not their 2017 remakes in the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy.
Vicarious Visions’ reworking of Naughty Dog’s games finally reached Xbox Game Pass on August 8, 2024, making the trilogy a must-have for people with the subscription service. Whether they do or don’t, they might be curious about just who Crash has been spinning, sliding, and “Woah”-ing against for nearly thirty years. Out of all his different enemies, these are his best foes.
8 Crunch Bandicoot
Crash's Bigger, Badder Brother From Another Mother
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
- M.O: Using the Elementals to fight off Crash with their fire, wind, water, and earth powers
Crunch Bandicoot is one of the few post-Naughty Dog characters to catch on in the series, though he was only a villain in his first game, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. He’s basically what Cortex wanted Crash to be: a giant, strong bandicoot with enough brain cells to manipulate them into doing his bidding.
Just as Crash gains powers from Aku Aku and Crash 4's Quantum Masks, Crunch combines with the Elementals to turn into different super-powered forms in an attempt to crunch Crash. Once he broke free from Cortex’s control, he became a good guy, but he was neat as a dark mirror image of Crash.
7 Tiny Tiger
Ironic Name For A Giant Beast
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
- M.O: Growling, frowning, jumping, chasing, and falling
Before Crunch, there was Tiny Tiger. Like the former marsupial, he’s a big, fearsome brute. Unlike Crunch, he's someone dumber than Crash. With his bulk and fearsome looks, he’s all brute strength and no strategy beyond chasing down Crash. As such, his boss fights often have a simple pattern that savvy players can use against him.
They could lure him into pitfalls in Crash 2, or dodge his leaping trident strikes in Crash: Warped. Yet he fits in well as the archetypal big grunt, having the fierce factor that older heavies like Koala Kong lacked. That is, if fans don’t count his later Crash of the Titans redesign that made him look like a plushy in a military uniform.
6 N.Gin
Mad About Mechs
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
- M.O: Making giant mechanical mechs and rocket ships to threaten his foes, having a missile-turned-life support device in his head, sounding like a robotic Peter Lorre
Every mad scientist needs their Igor, and after working with N.Brio in Crash 1, Dr. Cortex moved on to the notorious N.Gin for Crash 2. He's a famous physicist, though his true passion seems to be engineering, as he loves using various mechs and vehicles against the Bandicoot and his friends.
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He tried to vaporize Crash with one in Crash 2, before finding out it didn’t do so well against Wumpa fruit. His Advanced Mech in Crash: Warped was more resilient with its multiple missiles, though it still got wrecked by Coco, Crash’s sister. Even his Doom Rig and Weapon of Mass Percussion in Crash 4 couldn’t outdo them. Still, he can always be relied on to provide one mechanical menace or another for a boss fight or two.
5 N.Brio
Potion-Mixing Menace
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot (1996)
- M.O: Mixing potions to produce explosive formulas to chuck, to create blob monsters to chase Crash down, or turn himself into a hulking monster
Dr. Nitrus Brio, or N.Brio for short, was Cortex’s original right-hand man before he worked against him in Crash 2. Then he followed N.Tropy in Crash Twinsanity before going back to Cortex for Crash Bash, Crash 4, and Crash: Mind Over Mutant. His allegiances are as volatile as his potions. He’s mostly been overshadowed by N.Gin, as he’s had fewer appearances and his exploding beakers and transformations aren’t quite as worrying as N.Gin’s giant rockets.
But he’s earned a higher spot from his appearance in Crash: Mind Over Mutant. His manic behavior was turned up to eleven in that game, and he had the best lines from realizing what "N.Brio" sounds like, to saying he wrote the Bible. It made him the best character in an otherwise average game. Since then, he's been just as manic, though not quite as wacky as before.
4 Dingodile
Aussie Animal Merc With A Penchant For Blasters
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot: Warped
- M.O: Firing his flamethrower, throwing crates with his gun, poor manners
With Cortex’s interest in marsupials, the Crash games are generally thought to take place in Australia. Or at least close to the Land Down Under, as it has as many Polynesian themes as it does kangaroos and potoroos. That said, only one character has an Aussie accent in the games, and that’s Dingodile.
He’s a dingo-crocodile hybrid who, though thought to be made by Cortex, works for himself. But if someone’s offering him the chance to flame fools with his flamethrower, he’s unlikely to say so. This explains why he briefly allied himself with the Bandicoot in Crash 4. That said, he’s made his name as one of Crash’s most persistent foes, using a variety of blasting weapons to bring his lives down to zero.
3 N.Tropy
Time-Twisting Scientist With A Vain Streak
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot: Warped
- M.O: Traveling through time and different timelines, ripping the fabric of time and space, partnering up with himself.
Nefarious Tropy, or N.Tropy for short, puts the Warped in Crash Bandicoot: Warped in more ways than one. With his Time Twister Machine, he’s the reason Crash and Coco had to travel to different eras to get as many gems and crystals as possible to stop him, Cortex, and Uka Uka from taking over the world in the past, present, and future.
He was essentially Cortex’s more competent rival, to the point where he booted the diminutive doctor in favor of his alternate-timeline female self in Crash 4. It helped him come into his own as a villain as he tried to reset all timelines into one of his own making. Before then, he had sparing appearances, from brainwashing Crash’s friends in the GBA game Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, and as a dual boss fight with N.Brio in Crash Twinsanity.
2 Uka Uka
The True Source Of Evil In Crash's World
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot: Warped
- M.O: Constant frustration, taking control of Cortex to mock the player, having more competent plots than Cortex, scaring young children
Given Crash has a magical mask called Aku Aku, it made sense to make an evil equivalent in Uka Uka. He comes out of the blue, breaking free from his underground prison in Crash: Warped by the fallen Cortex Vortex. It turns out he was the true mastermind behind Cortex’s plans. However, disappointed in his failures, he brings in N.Tropy for his own scheme. Since then, he’s often appeared as the key antagonist, driving one peace-breaking plot or another.
He’s also the closest the series has to a scary villain, with his cruel, growling laughs, and his grim relish whenever a player gets a game over in Crash: Warped and the N.Sane Trilogy. He’s still as cartoony as the rest, though players know things are going to get real when he turns up. That, or he’s about to give the bad guys racing tips in Crash Team Racing.
1 Dr. Neo Cortex
Mad, Bad, And Dangerous To Know
- Debut: Crash Bandicoot (1996)
- M.O: Flying in mechs, stealing crystals, tricking others into gathering crystals, attempting world domination, making regrettable bad decisions.
Still, the best villain in the series has to be Crash’s first and only true nemesis, Dr Neo Cortex. He’s an evil scientific genius who tried mutating animals into his own private army, only to end up creating a wacky bandicoot who’d foil his schemes over and over again. It’s no wonder he ends up feeling so demoralized at the end of Crash: Warped.
Nonetheless, he keeps on trying to take over the world, be it shrinking it down to fit in his hand in Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, or taking control of the Quantum Masks in a last-ditch effort to undo Crash’s creation in Crash 4. Often frustrated, often sad, but always evil, a Crash game without Dr. Cortex would be like making one without Crash himself.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
- Released
- June 30, 2017
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Vicarious Visions
- Genre(s)
- Platformer
