Cold Hard Crash

Cold Hard Crash is the eighteenth level in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. It is another snowy and icy Arctic stage. It contains a massive crate count, and requires the player to explore every single square inch of its overly convoluted layout if they want to break them all.

The skull platform is what makes this level so long. First of all, the path has boxes. Second, it doesn't have a "return platform" in the end, but a gap that leads to a place much later in the main route. You can't backtrack to the boxes you missed from here. Finally, the gem is located after the point of no return.

So, in order to get everything, you first have to go back and forth for all the boxes and then use the nearest checkpoint to quick-save. Thankfully, there's one right next to the platform. It's impossible to backtrack the part of the main route that leads to where you return from the skull route, so you have to go get the gem first.

Once you have the gem, you can kill yourself and finish the main route.

Most people who do this level annoyingly finish with 154 out of 155 boxes. The menacing crate is located in the bonus round, conveniently out of shot, floating above a mid air Bounce Crate, so jumping on that bouncy crate would enable Crash to smash that offending box open with his head. The bonus contains 31 boxes so if you're stuck on 30, kill yourself and start the bonus all over. Although if you have an Aku Aku or two spare, you are better off quitting to the warp room and starting all over. Yes this may seem stupid and lengthy but between the bonus and the skull route, there is an Aku Aku crate and another mask on the death route itself, totaling to three at least, thus making it easier to avoid the dangers and able to smash the tricky nitro crates that lie within the secret path.

Walkthrough
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Trivia

 * This level's name is an allusion to "Cold Hard Cash".
 * This level contains 155 crates, the highest crate total of any Crash series level until Wrath of Cortex introduced Gold Rush (breaking the two-century mark with 209).