Night Fight

Night Fight is the twenty-third level in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. Crash returns to the jungle, for the first time since Turtle Woods and The Pits from the first Warp Chamber Room Area, but this time, it's almost unfathomably dark! Too dark, in fact, for him to see....without the assistance of the fireflies scattered throughout the level! Each firefly's light only lasts for a limited time, so players must make haste in traversing the level, lest they be left to navigate pure pitch blackness. (In this respect, it is a modified form of the level format used in Lights Out and Fumbling in the Dark, from the original game.) Along the way, he'll have to dodge weird possum things, weird lizard things, and Cortex's patented Hover-O-Spike-O-Periscope-O-Pods.

The level design itself is a mostly straightforward affair, complicated slightly by a split path after the first Checkpoint. The right path continues the main level path, but on the left, if the player is not inept, will be a special and exciting Death Route! A relatively simple series of platforming challenges will bring the player to a quasi-hidden Clear Gem. Later, very near the end of the path, are a pair of crates, necessary to getting the other Clear Gem, obviously, but finishing off the Death Route will have skipped a bunch of crates on the right route. Instead, the easiest way to get the crate Gem is to take the right path, and then at the end where the two paths rejoin, backtrack a bit on the left path until the player reaches the crates and, conveniently, a waiting firefly. (On another note, even the Bonus Round in this stage involves the firefly mechanic. It shouldn't be too hard if the player hurries enough, though it is helpful to clear out the pair of Bounce Crates before taking the second firefly, unless the player likes blind jumping and, mayhap, dying.)