RELATED: Every Main Game In The Crash Bandicoot Series, Ranked By Difficulty
One particular feature that Crash Bandicoot games are well known for - aside from the main series’ corridor-like level design - is the high difficulty level. The games may not be at the difficulty levels of titles like Celeste or Cuphead, though the games do have a few punishingly tough stages for players to tackle.
Updated on September 9th, 2022, by Jack Pursey:The N. Sane Trilogy was an important release in the platform genre’s modern history for two reasons. Firstly, it brought one of the genre’s biggest names back into the limelight, and secondly, it reminded people of how enjoyable a difficult AAA platformer can be at a time when indie gaming was generally the only place to find tough platformers. The remake’s difficulty was no surprise to Crash fans, as the franchise has often pushed its fanbase’s skills to their limit. To shine a spotlight on more tough stages, we’ve updated this list to include a few more of the hardest Crash Bandicoot levels.
13 Orange Asphalt
When Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back was first released, the game was criticized by some for being too similar to its predecessor. To combat this, Naughty Dog added a variety of vehicle sections to the third game in the series, Crash Bandicoot: Warped. The vehicle stages in the game divide opinion, though most people agree that they provide a welcome change of pace.
Orange Asphalt is one of the final stages in Crash Bandicoot: Warped and is one of the game’s motorbike levels that task Crash with finishing first in a race. This is far easier said than done, however, as the opposition gets a comfortable head start on Crash, and the motorbike moves painfully slowly, which can make avoiding the level’s numerous obstacles frustratingly difficult.
12 Whole Hog
Whole Hog is one of two secret stages from the original Crash Bandicoot. To access the stage, players need to obtain a key from the level Sunset Vista by completing the Cortex bonus room, a room that is not only difficult to complete but also difficult to simply access.
Once players have finally unlocked the secret stage, they will find that it’s very similar in design to the level Hog Wild from the same game. However, Whole Hog significantly ramps up the difficulty from Hog Wild, making it one of the hardest levels in the hardest game from the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy.
11 Totally Bear
Like the aforementioned Whole Hog, Totally Bear is a secret level. The level can be found in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and is accessed via the stage Un-Bearable. For players who are yet to find Totally Bear, playthrough Un-Bearable normally until the very end of the level, where the chasing polar bear will fall into a pit. Instead of heading to the exit, jump over the pit where the bear fell and continue moving forward until coming across Polar, which will cause Crash to teleport.
Totally Bear is considerably harder than the other Polar-riding levels in the game. It is a particular nightmare for those gunning for the Platinum time trial relic, which requires some ridiculously tight jumps.
10 Bee-Having
As the name suggests, Bee-Having from Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back differentiates from most other stages in the franchise with its bee enemies. Bee’s may not sound like the most intimidating enemy type on paper, though players will soon change their tune when they are swarmed by an angry mob of stingers that are deceivingly hard to avoid or spin away.
Thankfully, players are able to hide from the bees under the surface, though that isn’t too safe either when a guy with a giant hammer is lurking around trying to kill Crash too. Add to that electric fences and plants that shoot explosives, for some reason, and players have a recipe for an infuriating level.
9 Rush Hour
Like many games from the recently released Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, one of the main challenges of Rush Hour is its length, exemplified by its whopping 441 box count and 3:40.61 Platinum Relic time. The level is also tough as it forces players to complete tricky platforming sequences with Dingodile and Tawna, who are less agile and less familiar to players than Crash.
8 Crate Escape
Crate Escape makes this list for similar reasons as Rush Hour, except this time, players must control Crash’s age-old nemesis, Cortex.
RELATED: Crash Bandicoot: Hardest Platinum Relics From The N. Sane Trilogy
The level’s difficulty peaks when players must take on the platforming challenge pictured above, where Cortex must ascend the side of a building that is full of enemies to avoid and tricky jumps to make. The vertical section isn’t the end, however, as players are then unexpectedly in control of Crash again as they desperately jump between fast-moving platforms to try and reach a moving vehicle.
7 Cold Hard Crash
There are a lot of things that the Crash Bandicoot series gets right, from its charismatic roster of villains to its extra challenges for completionists to its consistently superb linear level design. However, one thing that the franchise has never been able to master, despite many attempts, is ice physics.
As the name suggests, Cold Hard Crash is full of ice sections, which make avoiding dropping icicles, Nitro crates, and falling pillars frustratingly challenging. The level is also infamous with completionists, as breaking all the boxes in Cold Hard Crash is one of the Bandicoot franchise’s hardest challenges, mainly due to the infuriating death route.
6 The High Road
The bridge levels in the original Crash Bandicoot are among the most iconic platforming stages of all time. The stages are so difficult, in fact, that many players try to cheese them by running along the ropes, which is an incredibly tough challenge itself.
The High Road is the second bridge level in Crash Bandicoot and, much like its predecessor, tasks players with crossing a bridge that is falling apart. The bridge doesn’t initially look too tough due to how straight and narrow it is, though the game throws a ton of hazards at players, including ice for some cruel reason. It’s also deceivingly difficult to see where Crash is going to land without the marker introduced in Crash 4, causing some infuriating deaths.
5 Toxic Tunnels
Toxic Tunnels is the penultimate main story level in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.
RELATED: Great Platformers With One Bad Level
The level’s cruelty is evidenced in the opening seconds where boxes are hidden behind Crash off-camera and the stage only harder as it goes along with numerous electrical hazards to avoid, fast-moving carts to hop between, and even a brutally hard red gem path for completionists to beat.
4 Slippery Climb
Slippery Climb is another level on this list from the first Crash Bandicoot game, which is by far the hardest game from the original trilogy. The main challenge of the level is that so much of it is moving, whether it be stairs that sporadically turn into slopes, small platforms that stick out for little more than a second or even conveniently placed birds that hover up and down and must be jumped on.
3 Future Tense
Future Tense was the second of two levels added to the N Sane Trilogy that didn’t appear in the original trilogy, with Stormy Ascent being the first (more on that stage later). Future Tense is thematically similar to Future Frenzy and Gone Tomorrow, though it ramps up the difficulty of those levels through the roof with a plethora more hazards to avoid than either of those two stages came close to containing.
RELATED: Crash Bandicoot The Wrath Of Cortex: Hardest Platinum Relics, Ranked
Future Tense was created by Vicarious Visions, and some people suspected - especially retrospectively now that Crash 4 has been released - that the stage may have been something of an audition for the studio to develop the new game. However, the job went to Toys For Bob.
2 Cortex Castle
Cortex Castle is the final main story level in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, and it is fittingly difficult. The stage doesn’t do anything unorthodox; it just chucks a ton of tricky platforming challenges at players to ensure that they have mastered the game’s mechanics by that point.
The most notorious part of the level comes at the very end, where players are forced to quickly transition between mask powers to avoid a series of deadly hazards.
1 Stormy Ascent
The fact that Stormy Ascent was removed from the original Crash Bandicoot for being too difficult says everything that players need to know about the brutally hard stage. Stormy Ascent is thematically the same as Slippery Climb but ramps up the challenge even further with a longer runtime and considerably tougher jumps to land.
Stormy Ascent was added to the N Sane Trilogy post-release, giving fans the chance to finally try the level that was once deemed too tough.
MORE: The Best Crash Bandicoot Games According To Metacritic (& Worst)
