Piston It Away

Piston It Away (ピストン はつでんしょ lit. Piston Power Plant in Japanese) 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 and sparky tentaclebot units in order to survive.

Obtaining the clear gem for breaking all 69 crates is considered by many to be one of the most difficult tasks in the game, because backtracking is necessary. 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. However, leaving the sparky tentaclebot is not necessary, as it's possible to jump out of the map and back again and thereby avoiding the trouble of saving the tentaclebot. From here, all that separates the player from his rewards - the death route gem and, if he does not mess anything up, the crate gem - is a series of tricky platforming challenges involving awkwardly placed pistons, awkwardly placed shrink rays, and conveniently 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.

Types of crates

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

Translation of Aku Aku Hints in the Japanese Version

 * Enemies that can only be defeated by sliding seem to exist here. Hmm.
 * So, in Hanging in the Underpass, after you enter the wide water, try to go backwards?
 * The flowers that spit exploding seeds can be defeated by body press. in Warning: Explosive Pollen, try this until the end, eh?

Trivia

 * There are no multi-numbered wumpa fruit crates. All such boxes in this level only have one wumpa fruit.
 * The general scenery of this level (and its successor, Spaced Out) is very similar to the scenery in Heavy Machinery and Castle Machinery in the first game.
 * In the beta version, it's impossible to get the two gems of the level except with cheats as a coding error causes the game to freeze right before the death route gem.
 * "Dynamo" was one of the earliest names given to this level.
 * This level's title is a play on the phrase "Pissing It Away" in reference to the sheer amount of lives that the average player will lose (in essence, "piss away") on this level.
 * If Crash gets hit by the shrink ray without an Aku-Aku mask, he will shrink before actually dying, and can even die a second time if he gets hit by an enemy (but only one life is lost). If he enters the bonus round while shrinking, he'll be counted as dying in the bonus round and won't lose a life.
 * It seems that the shrink ray must be dodged, but in fact it can be spun away.