Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced - Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, Zero Good Bosses

26/01/25

Honestly, I think the biggest victim of the loss of handheld consoles in the vein of Nintendo’s Game Boy/DS and Sony’s PSP and Vita is the ‘handheld port’. Games that are ostensibly ports of a console title, but stripped down due to obvious gameplay and graphical limitations. Over two and a half years ago I played Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, a 2D platformer that perfectly captures the essence of its PS1 parentage, even if it had a level of jankiness and issues with level variety and the level of zoom employed. It was the perfect example of translating a 3D platformer to 2D, warts and all, and I’m happy to say its follow-up - whilst not as successful as its prequel in certain areas - is an even greater translation of Crash Bandicoot on the go.

Considering how quickly N-Tranced came out after its predecessor - little more than a year - I’m kind of amazed they didn’t just pump out GBA Crash games like this ad nauseum. Sure, there were two more major Crash games on the GBA - Crash Nitro Kart and Crash of the Titans - but this was the last one that felt like an extension of the console series. Few games translate so well from console to handheld than how Vicarious Visions handled Crash Bandicoot, and with a little more iterative design, a little more spit and polish, these games could’ve been some of the best platformers this side of Nintendo. It’s a shame, really. Of course, this isn’t to say that N-Tranced is a bad game, oh no. It’s got its issues, here and there, but at its core, it’s still a damn satisfying Crash game.

Whilst the story is still very ancillary to the overall experience, there’s a little more to it than The Huge Adventure; following Cortex’s utter failure to CRUSH THE WORLD IN HIS HAND, Uka Uka enlists N.Tropy to defeat Crash, who in turns recruits N.Trance - genuinely one of the most hilariously ugliest characters in the Crash canon - to hypnotize Coco and Crunch and turn them against Crash. Crash, the sole escapee of the ploy, journeys through a number of worlds to free Coco and Crunch and defeat Uka Uka’s forces. Plot is almost always the least important element of Crash games, but what’s here is solid enough and it’s a good enough framing to show why Crash is wandering around in the world of Arabian Nights. And, at the very least, it doesn’t start with the villains literally holding the bandicoots in the palm of his hand and… doing nothing. Thanks, Cortex. Also, it has Fake Crash in an actual role! Fake Crash rules!

On that note, it’s interesting that Cortex is simply not in this game - normally, even with Uka Uka in command, Cortex the Big Bad Henchmen, but instead it’s just N.Tropy and N.Trance taking his role. Surprising, considering how he was the key big bad in every game before, and remains so in pretty much every game since.

At its heart, N-Tranced is fairly close to its predecessor, utilizing a side-scrolling viewpoint for the entirety of its platforming sections. The PS1 entries would occasionally utilize a 2D perspective, usually for its bonus stages, but like the first GBA entry, here it’s the norm and it works delightfully, both blazing its own path whilst still honouring its parent series. As Crash, you’ll be doing what he does in every (good) Crash game - spinning a lot of boxes, leaping and climbing across pits, jumping on fools and generally trying to avoid dying in a variety of horrible ways. It’s got a touch more going on in complexity as compared to most GBA platformers, nowhere near the level of the PS1 versions, but as someone who is sick to death of mediocre, run of the mill platformers, N-Tranced was a breath of fresh air.

Collectibles, always a key part of the greater Crash Bandicoot experience, are pretty stock standard - you’ll need to nab the purple crystals to ‘complete’ the levels, but they’re almost always unmissable, and you’ve got the classic clear games for us resident box hunters. Additionally, for the crazy completionists, you’ve got the Time Trial Relics, which thankfully aren’t a requirement this time around for the true ending of the game. Like with most Crash Bandicoot games, you’ll unlock a number of upgrades after each world, which are fairly middling in usefulness. Stuff like the super jump or whirlwind spin do have their uses, but really only come into play if you’re hunting for every box in a level, or trying to earn the Time Trial relics. They just never really feel as actively useful as the upgrades in Crash 3, for example.

Ultimately it’s a very foundational game, with practically no major additions to the core Crash Bandicoot formula, but that’s not a bad thing! Crash Bandicoot was at its best in it’s beautiful simplicity; in a time where it felt every game was making gigantic mechanical and graphical leaps, Crash Bandicoot was fun for the sake of fun, and the GBA entries - especially N-Tranced - are very much adhering to that feeling. I won’t go on about it, since much of my opinion of the base gameplay is in-line with my Huge Adventure review. It’s everything that the PS1 titles are, which isn’t surprising as this was made by Vicarious Visions, who would later go on to make the excellent Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

The game starts off fairly easy, with generally foundational platforming at first with a lack of bottomless pits or anything notably brutal to contend with, but around the halfway mark it ramps up in difficulty just from the sheer amount of obstacles they throw at you. Dudes throwing fire. Various bugs. Volcanos that make me wish to pull my hair out. The works! To be fair, many of these obstacles aren’t *too* difficult to combat, but much like with The Huge Adventure, a lot of the game’s difficulty comes from the jankiness of the controls. There were innumerable times where the game would just eat my inputs, cancelling jumps and sending me into the abyss without warning. Certain enemy hitboxes feel gigantic, and in the last set of levels, the margin for error - unless you’ve died enough to have several Aku-Aku shields - is razor thin. Thankfully, even with the imprecise controls, outside of some boss fights I very rarely felt utterly frustrated with the game, and the fact you have some control of which order you play each world’s levels helped me if I was getting too annoyed with a certain level. Also, I don’t know why, but I felt like the Arabian Nights themed levels were waaaay more brutal than the other two main level themes. I blame the amount of fire, personally.

Like with every Crash game, there are some levels that divert from the average platforming experience - chiefly, a number of vertical ‘auto-scroller’ levels, one which tasks Crash with running from a shark, the other having Coco flying away from a meteor. Whilst I rather liked the auto-scrolling levels in The Huge Adventure, despite several gnawing issues, these just didn’t do it for me. Coco’s space-faring, drone-dodging escapades have massive depth perception issues, whilst Crash’s surfing extravaganza just feels janky, especially when you’re trying to grab all the boxes. But I can forgive these failings - both for the fact there’s only two of them for each gametype, and for the fact the third alternate game type mode RULES. Pulled from the oft-forgotten and frequently maligned Wrath of Cortex, the Atlasphere is a set of levels where Crash and Crunch roll around inside a ball, which you manipulate and, well, roll throughout momentum-based stages, avoiding drops and nitro alike. The Atlasphere was the absolute highlight of Wrath of Cortex, and seeing it brought back here in a pretty faithful adaptive state was nothing short of a delight. Plus, seeing Crash and Crunch less rolling within the ball and more just… T-Posing never failed to make me giggle like a schoolgirl.

Whilst bosses were a bit of a highlight in The Huge Adventure, sadly here they’re far weaker. Outside of an entertaining encounter with Fake Crash where the two Bandicoots have mirrored movement, most boss fights in N-Tranced are simply boring at best, and frustrating at worst. Which isn’t to say they weren’t incredibly difficult - they’re just ridiculously boring and overlong. Most of my complaints go towards the two final bosses, N.Trance and N.Tropy, two encounters that take minutes to finish with multiple phases, a single mistake sending you back. They aren’t interesting fights, just dodging and countering, so if you die to the last move, it’s just waiting and waiting to get back there. It’s ridiculously poor design, without real challenge beyond basic pattern remembrance, and after how interesting and unique they felt in the first game, it just makes me sad. I would’ve beaten N-Tranced much earlier, if not for the fact I put it down twice after screwing up the N.Tropy at the very end. I’ve… been known for my rage-quitting, yes, but I take no blame here. Boss fights should be quick and epic, not drawn-out and a snoozefest.

Whilst early Crash Bandicoot games have never been the longest games around, this went double for The Huge Adventure, which I wrapped up in around an hour and a half. I was happy to see that N-Tranced does give you a little bit more bang for your buck - both on having longer, more complex levels, and in the path to the true ending. Whilst The Huge Adventure urged you to collect the Time Trial relics to unlock the game’s finale, N-Tranced offers you a similar, but more attainable goal - the coloured gems, the game’s fourth major collectible. Each coloured gem has four segments, hidden across the game’s four worlds, and usually require you to take more dangerous routes that require a greater standard of dexterity; whilst these would occasionally draw a bit of frustration out of me due to the game’s generally imprecise controls, they’re a satisfying collectible to hunt for and I’m over the moon that it’s only these we need to get the true ending. I’m not someone who likes doing Time Trials, pretty much ever, so getting to just play more of what I actually like about this game - solid, box-smashing platforming, left me a very happy chap.

Coming out less than a year after The Huge Adventure, beyond its different aesthetics, the intricacies of N-Tranced looks almost exactly the same as the first GBA entry. Whilst the general aesthetics and theming of the game is quite good, some elements, especially its character and enemy models, look quite rough, especially for a game in the GBA’s third year. This only really tripped me up with how ‘busy’ the game can look due to heavy pixelation, leading me to occasionally miss a box here and there. The game does a good job of maintaining the charm and humour of Crash Bandicoot, even in such a stripped down state - there’s less of them, but you’ve still got a good variety of funny Crash deaths, depending on how he died, and even if it’s not intended, I gotta still say that seeing Crash and Crunch T-Posing in the Atlasphere is a thing of beauty. Also like its predecessor, the game sounds just like a typical Crash game, with the same light, bouncy beats that are so iconic to gaming as a whole.

I don’t think N-Tranced is amazing, and like its predecessor, it doesn’t hold a candle to the iconic PS1 trilogy. But it’s a fantastic encapsulation of taking a solid console title and making it work on a much weaker platform, cutting what’ll never work and going all in on the 2D-styled platforming. Sure, a lot of the alternate game modes don’t hit that hard and it struggles in the boss fight department, but I think the bones of this game’s platforming is a marked improvement over the first GBA title. If you’re looking for Crash on the go, Crash Bandicoot N-Tranced is almost certainly the very best you can hope for, and teething issues can’t distract that this game is just pure fun - when you aren’t getting killed by horrible hitboxes, at least. But the Atlasphere is the greatest thing in all of Crash Bandicoot, so I think I can forgive a few BS deaths.

Thanks for reading my review of Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced! Fun fact - this was actually meant to be Game #80, but somewhere down the line, I mixed things up and I’d already started the Peter Pan review by the time I finished, so… yeah. I’m back to work this week, so I’d expected a week off for the Abyss next time, but I’m excited to continue N-Tranced’s theme of ‘not stock standard platformers’. All I’ll say - it’s time to duel! As always, you can find me over on Bluesky @GameBoyAbyss, the same on Twitch, or email me at mgeorge7003@hotmailcom or cckaiju@gmail.com if you have any requests or questions! Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you next time!