Midnight Run

Midnight Run is the tenth level in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. The darker, more controversial sequel to Orient Express, this level once again features Coco riding her beloved hi-speed kitten device along the Great Wall of China, still under construction in the distant past. Compared to her last visit, the dragons change up their flight patterns a bit, and the Lab Assistants have learned how to jog while carrying baskets of coal balanced on a stick (a popular form of Chinese entertainment analogous to American street magicians), but the only major difficulty spike comes from the newfound midnighty darkness, which makes it slightly harder to see ahead and, thus, requires slightly better reflexes from the player.

Trivia

 * This stage's name might be a reference to the 1988 action-comedy theatrical film of the same name, directed by Martin Brest and starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. This is important, as Grodin also played the titular role in the 1992 family-comedy Beethoven, where he portrayed the nervous patriarch of a lovely suburban family who unwittingly ends up adopting a lovable St. Bernard Dog. If memory serves, at some point in that movie, someone or something ended up riding on the dog's back, exactly like how Coco rides Pura in this stage. In fact, Beethoven also features a murderous professional scientist, too, just like this game! Played by Dean Jones, Doctor H. Varnick was a professional veterinary dog scientist, to be specific.
 * More likely, the stage's name is based on the fact that Pura is running at night. Some fans speculate that it takes place at approximately 11:45pm Chinese time, which is very close to making this a midnight run.
 * This is the second and final animal-riding stage in Warped. Fans have been eternally puzzled as to why there are so many fewer Pura levels than there were Polar levels in Cortex Strikes Back. It is possible that Naughty Dog had simply gotten tired of this level archetype, which might explain why it didn't appear at all in Crash Team Racing. At any rate, it is interesting to note that this is not Pura's final appearance in the game - presumably because they went through the trouble of creating a character model and they didn't want their hard work to go to waste, Pura also shows up to aid Coco in the space-shooter-styled boss fight against Doctor Napoleon Gin.