Neo Cortex

''"You fool! Do you think I'm unaware of this situation? If we don't have any friends left on the surface, then we need to find... an enemy..." - Doctor Neo Cortex; Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back''

Doctor Neo Cortex is a professional scientist and the main villain of the Crash Bandicoot series. He is known as the creator of his nemisis: Crash Bandicoot. In Crash Bandicoot, he is voiced by Brendan O'Brien, along with all the other characters. From Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back to Crash Nitro Kart, he is voiced by Clancy Brown. And from Crash Twinsanity through to Crash: Mind over Mutant he has been voiced by Lex Lang. In almost all games Cortex is usually the final boss.

Personality
Cortex is very impulsive and obviously wants to get rid of Crash Bandicoot. He is also cruel to N. Gin, as shown in Crash of the Titans when Cortex spits scalding tea in N. Gin's eyes. He seems to be very grumpy and grouchy in his mutant form in Crash: Mind Over Mutant. At the beginning of the Crash series, he was a pure evil genius, but slowly turned into a clumsy failure. In Crash Twinsanity he is shown to be a coward and is not very bright as he seems. He seems to be easily startled, as seen in Crash Tag Team Racing when Willie Wumpa Cheeks pops out for the first time and Cortex hides behind N. Gin.

Appearance
Unlike normal humans in the real world, Cortex has yellow skin. His head is also hammer-like in shape that became useful in Twinsanity. He has an N stamped on his forehead standing for his first name Neo. He also has a small stature which he does not like. In the series he wears a lab coat, gloves and boots that change colour throughout. In Crash Tag Team Racing Cortex thinks he is pretty and wants to know how his backside looks.

Crash Bandicoot
Prior to Crash Bandicoot, Dr. Cortex planned to take over the world (and make the people who mocked him shut up) by creating an army of superanimals nicknamed Cortex Commandoes. So to evolve animals, he planned to make a machine called Evolvo-Ray that would do just that. He also wanted to make an evil brain washing machine named the Cortex Vortex. Cortex later joined forces with another mad doctor, Doctor Nitrus Brio and told him to make these dastardly inventions. Although it was actully N. Brio that invented them, his lack of self-esteem let his boss take the credit. Together, the doctors began experementing with the animals and plants from the surrounding islands some of them were not so sucessfull like Ripper Roo an insane creation gone wrong. But none of them compare to possibly Cortex's greatest mistake ever - Crash Bandicoot. One quiet evening at Cortex Castle, Dr. Cortex had just captured two eastern barred bandicoot's one male and one female. Cortex plans to have the male be the general of his army. The male is the first to get zapped by the Evolvo-Ray getting evolved. It is then rasied into the Cortex Vortex as Brio insists that the Cortex Vortex is not ready. It turns out he was right as the male, Crash gets rejected by the machine and Cortex is not happy as he gives chase trying to catch the freed bandicoot. Crash escapes by falling out the window but he left his bandicoot girlfriend (the female) in the clutches of Cortex's henchmen. The female, Tawna is used as a lure by Cortex in order to get Crash back.

He does not appear again (excluding bonus rounds) until the end where he and Crash have their confrontation at sunset on Cortex's Airship and flying on his Hoverboard with his castle burning in the background. He loses and gets shot down into the castle below in a dark cavern where he finds a well hidden Crystal, Cortex starts laughing menacingly at least until his match burns out...

Note: In the secret ending it is said that Cortex had vanished as Crash never fought him meaning he did not find the Crystal hence Crash 2 never happened.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
One year later, Cortex got a new partner, a half man half machine called Doctor N. Gin and has just finished building a new Cortex Vortex in space. The Crystal, Cortex found turned out to be a Master Crystal but N. Gin informs him that they will need 25 Slave Crystals to power the Cortex Vortex which Cortex plans to blast Earth with it turning everyone into brainless slaves. None of his former henchmen on Earth help him now, so he locates Crash and warps him to a Warp Room where Cortex (as a hologram) tricks Crash into getting the crystals for him with a promise that he is using it for good purposes. He sometimes drops hints of his real plan as Coco Bandicoot starts hacking into the hologram and tries to tell Crash what's really going on. By the timeCoco finally tells Crash, he already gave the crystals to Cortex. So the final battle takes place in space in jet packs and Crash has to stop Cortex before he gets to the Cortex Vortex. He loses once again and blasts off to outer space saying his final words "You haven't seen the last of me, Crash Bandicoot!" However the Cortex Vortex is still in space so after Crash collects all the Gem's, Dr. Nitrus Brio helps blow it up with a plasma cannon. However a part of it falls towards Earth and smashes a temple freeing an evil mask- Uka Uka.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
It is revealed that Cortex was working on the orders of Uka Uka, a legendary powerful witchdoctor whose soul was placed in a mask much alike his brother Aku Aku. Cortex is joined by Dr N. Tropy who bends time in order to gather Crystals. Crash and Coco Bandicoot intervene however and destroys the Time Twister machine in the process.

Crash Team Racing
Cortex later joins the good guys to fend off Nitros Oxide, a racer who plans to turn Earth into a giant parking lot. Nitros Oxide is defeated and Cortex returns to working for Uka Uka. As told in the credits, he returned to scientific research and he found the 117. element "Cortexrulestheworldium". His speed, acceleration and turning is intermediate like Crash.

Crash Bash
[ Cortex]] is later (in the middle of a new scheme) forced to participate on the bad side in a battle of good and evil by Uka Uka and Aku Aku. Cortex is also joined with old henchmen, N. Brio, Koala Kong and newcomer Rilla Roo. In the minigames both the doctors have great stats but also have their weaknesses. In the Crate Crush minigames, whilst Cortex has a terrific throw with the boxes as he has his Ray Gun his kick is very poor. In the Polar minigames, Cortex has a jetpack which pays off nicely but he can only use it once at a time and it takes a while for his boost meter to fill up again. He has the fastest weapon in the tank minigames which is a laser.

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex
Straight after the events of Warped (Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash do not count), he is seen at a meeting with the villains in the series. It is decided that Crash Bandicoot must be eliminated. Cortex unveils his perfect bandicoot warrior, Crunch Bandicoot. However, Crunch is defeated by Crash at every turn even with the assistance of The Elementals on the evil side. Crunch Bandicoot is taken to the good side after Cortex's defeat.

Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure
In a space station orbiting the Earth, Uka Uka is upset with Doctor Neo Cortex for failing him once again, but Cortex promises a plan that will bring Earth's inhabitants down to size. Cortex then introduces his Planetary Minimizer, which he immediately uses to shrink the Earth down to the size of a grapefruit. The situation is brought to Aku Aku's attention when Cortex taunts the now-microscopic people of Earth. Crash eventually manages to return Earth to its normal size, foiling Cortex's plans once again.

Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage
Doctor Neo Cortex and Ripto from the Spyro the Dragon series joined forces to rid themselves of their respective nemesis Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, by genetically modifying Ripto's "Riptoc" minions and disguising them as Crash and Spyro, leading the two protagonists to believe they are against each other. The two heroes eventually discover this and work together to defeat the two evil-doers. Spyro eventually ends up tagging Cortex with a transmitter which leads both Crash and Spyro to Cortex and Ripto's headquarters in outer space where they are defeated.

Crash Twinsanity
Cortex teamed up with Crash once again to help stop his demented former pets Evil Twins: Victor and Moritz (two parakeets he tested his early Evolvo-Ray on, which not only hyper-evolved them into criminal masterminds, but dimensionally displaces them). He often ends up in embarrassing situations, cross-dressing as Coco (and apparently enjoying it), having his brain forcibly removed from his head (while still alive), being captured by Papu Papu, used as a snowboard (and later a skateboard), getting into a pay dispute with former henchmen, trapped in a pipe (before farting in it) and being chased by bees, a bear and Evil Crash.

Crash Of The Titans
In Crash of the Titans, Cortex uses Mojo to mutate the island's residents into Titans. After the Yuktopus failed to kill Crash after the first boss fight, Uka Uka replaces him with Nina. At the end of the game, Nina is defeated and Cortex "forgives" Nina for what she did.

Crash: Mind Over Mutant
In Crash: Mind over Mutant, Cortex has sent Nina to Evil Public School as punishment for betraying him, then reconciles with his old colleague Dr. Nitrus Brio to invent the NV, a personal digital assistant that controls whoever uses it by transmitting bad Mojo, unwillingly supplied by Uka Uka through the use of a milking machine. He later engages in a fight with Crash inside his new Space Head space station, empowering himself with the use of a mutagen formula stolen from N. Brio. Upon losing the fight, Cortex throws a tantrum, causing the Space Head to plummet towards Earth. Returning to normal, he escapes the Space Head in a smaller shuttle with an unnamed Znu.

Alignment

 * In all Games he has been evil except for Crash Twinsanity.
 * After the player defeats him in TwinSanity, he appears to become good but as expected, given his past this is only temporary.
 * The N on his forehead could possibly stand as the first letter of his name which is Neo.

Trivia

 * Crash Bandicoot: N-Tranced is the only game not to feature Cortex because he failed to stop Crash again.
 * Cortex appeared in all Crash games as a final boss except Crash Bandicoot: N-Tranced, Crash Twinsanity, and Crash of the Titans.
 * His name is a pun on the neocortex, a part of the brain
 * Cortex's middle name has been revealed to be Periwinkle.
 * Some fans speculate the N on his forehead is supposed to be reference to the Nintendo 64 logo. Many of these fans believe the team behind the original trilogy and CTR would've preferred to create games for that console instead. It took until wrath of Cortex for a Crash game to appear on a Nintendo console.

Gallery
Neo Cortex