User:Thaswordster/Piston it Away

Piston It Away is the twenty-first level and is the first level of the fifth warp room in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. Set in Dr. Cortex's space station, Crash is required to avoid giant pistons, shrink rays, sparky tentaclebot units, and robotic lizards in order to survive.

There is a floating mask right at the start of the level, as there will be only one more, at the end of the level's main path replacing the box counter. Checkpoints are not very abundant either, being there only four: 2 on the main path and 2 on the death route.

This level contains a death route, but if the player takes it and finishes it right when they first encounter it, they will miss out on a number of crates past it on the main path. Instead, they are expected to take the main path to the end first - leaving one sparky tentaclebot alive and then they can be able to successfully backtrack all the way through the level to the death route. From here, all that separates the player from their rewards - the death route gem and, if they didn't screw anything up, the crate gem - is a series of tricky platforming challenges involving awkwardly placed pistons, awkwardly placed shrink rays, and inconveniently placed floating sparky tentaclebot units. Interestingly, even this level's bonus round embodies this spirit of backtracking, requiring the player to leave enough boxes intact to allow them to backtrack after activating a ! crate.

The death route is supposedly one of the hardest in the game, as it contains almost pixel-perfect Nitro Crate puzzles, horribly-placed pistons and awfully located lizards.

Types of crates

 * Aku Aku Crate
 * Arrow Crate - wooden
 * Basic Crate
 * Bounce Crate
 * Checkpoint Crate
 * Crash Crate
 * ! Crate
 * Nitro Crate
 * Nitro Switch Crate (in the death route)
 * Outline Crate
 * ? Crate