Neo Cortex

Doctor Neo Periwinkle Cortex, (ネオ・コルテックス Neo Cortex in Japanese) most known as Doctor Neo Cortex or simply N. Cortex, Cortex or Doctor Cortex, is a professional evil scientist and the primary antagonist of the Crash Bandicoot series. He is known as the creator of his nemisis: Crash Bandicoot. In Crash Bandicoot, along with all the other characters, Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, and Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage, he is voiced by Brendan O'Brien. 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 Crash Bandicoot out of the way so he can conquer the world. He is also cruel to Doctor N. Gin, as shown in Crash of the Titans when Cortex spits scalding hot tea at him. 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 successful masseur, 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 his wumpa stalk out for the first time and Cortex hides behind N. Gin. It is stated on the Crash Bash website that not even Uka Uka trusts him. Cortex is very sensitive about his own success, it is shown in many games such as Crash Team Racing, and Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, that he whines and crys whenever he loses or fails. Madame Amberly teases and taunts him for it, calling him "Crybaby".

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 the letter N on his forehead which stands for "Nerd", and not for "Neo", as most people think. He always wears his trademark lab coat, complete with yellow (later dark red) gloves. He will also turn into an angel like Crash if he dies in Twinsanity.

Prior to Crash Bandicoot
Neo spent his youth as the youngest son in a family of circus clowns. Unlike his family, which loved the spotlight and making people laugh, Cortex spent most of his time reading science books. Neo was always teased, and at the age of three, had an "N" for nerd tattooed on his head by a particularly evil group of circus performers. But soon, the torment stopped, after a "freak" explosion wiped out his entire family, leaving Neo to fend for himself - though a brother may have possible survived, as Cortex's niece, Nina, is well known to him, however, Cortex may have married and been Nina's father himself, as in Twinsanity, he says "My daught... err... NIECE! - this was when Cortex decided that he would not rest until he ruled the world.

At the age of four, Neo left for Madame Amberly's Academy of Evil, a school for evil children. It was here that Neo met up with his life-long associates, Nitrus Brio and N. Gin. But soon, the torture of bullying caught up with Neo again, and he and Nitrus Brio decided to sneak out and go to high school, where they thought they would be reveered for being the youngest people to ever graduate.

At the age of eight, both Neo and Nitrus enrolled in high school. But even here Neo and Nitrus were mocked by the cruel teenagers, a tradition that became the story of his life. It was also at this age in which Cortex made his very first prototype of the Evolv-o-Ray on his own, although credit is given to both N.Brio and Cortex. He then made his pet parrots Victor and Moritz be his first test subjects. The experiment went wrong, sending the two twins into the 10th Dimension where they learned skills from the dimension and later returned for revenge on Cortex in Crash Twinsanity.

Neo and Nitrus suffered through high school together until another "freak" explosion blew up the entire building, as well as most of the surrounding town. By some amazing coincidence, Neo and Nitrus were far away from the detonation, two miles underground in an abandoned plutonium mine.

They decided to split and went on a world-smashing rampage. The terrible twosome, calling themselves the Cortex Commandos, left in their wake a trail of charred earth so monumental that they became international criminals. Seeking sanctuary from the various forces against them, they found three deserted islands off of the coast of Australia and set up shop. Soon, realizing that his puny body couldn't crush a fly, Neo figured the only way to take over the world was to create an army that would do his bidding for him. In memory of his "glory days", Neo named them the Cortex Commandos. In a moment of diabolical genius, Nitrus came up with the ideas for the Evolvo-Ray, an energy force capable of mutating common animals into intelligent super-beasts; and the Cortex Vortex, a device that trains the mutated animals to obey their master. Cortex, however, did not see one small problem with the machine.

Crash Bandicoot






Together, the doctors began experimenting with the animals and plants from the surrounding islands. Some of them were not so successful, like Ripper Roo, an insane creation that went wrong. But none of them compare to possibly Cortex's greatest mistake ever - Crash Bandicoot. One quiet evening at Cortex Castle, Cortex had just captured two eastern barred bandicoots; one male and one female. Cortex planned to have the male be the general of his army. The male is the first to get zapped by the Evolvo-Ray. It is then raised into the Cortex Vortex, though Brio insists that the Vortex is not ready. It turns out he was right as the male, Crash, is rejected by the machine. Cortex is furious, as he gives chase trying to capture the freed bandicoot. Crash escapes by jumping out the window, but leaves his bandicoot girlfriend (Tawna) in the clutches of Cortex's henchmen. She is used as a lure by Cortex in order to get Crash back. After a time, Crash arrives at the castle, where Cortex confronts him on his hoverboard atop his Airship. However, he is defeated when Crash destroys the hoverboard by lobbing Cortex's projectiles back at him, and apparently falls to his death. However, during the bonus ending, Cortex is shown to have survived the fall and had landed in a cavern beneath the castle. He manages to find a well hidden Crystal, and starts laughing menacingly until his match burns out then saying "Darn!".

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
One year later, Cortex got a new partner, a cyborg named Doctor N. Gin and has just finished building a new Cortex Vortex in space. The Crystal Cortex found in the cavern 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, turning everyone into mindless 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 to stop the planets aligning. 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 time Coco finally tells Crash, he has already given the crystals to Cortex. Crash then fights Cortex in space with jet packs, attempting to stop him from reaching the Cortex Vortex. The evil scientist loses once again and blasts off into outer space yelling "You haven't seen the last of me, Crash Bandicoot!". However the Cortex Vortex is still in space so after Crash collects all the gems, Dr. Nitrus Brio (Cortex's henchman from the first game) helps blow it up with a plasma cannon. However a part of it falls towards Earth and destroys a temple freeing an evil mask.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
It turns out that evil mask (Uka Uka) has been working with Cortex and is the younger twin brother of Aku Aku who imprisoned him in the temple to protect the world from his wrath. Uka Uka is upset that Cortex lost the previous crystals and gems meaning there is no power source, but now that he's free he can continue to enslave the world and with a time travel genius named Doctor Nefarious Tropy by his side he'll make sure Cortex succeeds. Together they build the Time Twister Machine in order to go back to diffrent time periods to get crystals however Crash and Coco start retriving them. Throughout the game Cortex and Uka Uka talk to Crash and Coco via a warp vortex. Cortex is also seen watching the two battle with Tiny. By the end he becomes mad and has his boss fight with Crash under the time twister while Uka Uka battles Aku Aku. Cortex loses and falls down a hole onto a platform below where he lets out his fustration: "Defeated again! This is not fair! Maybe I should retire to a nice big beach, with a nice big drink and a woman with nice big... bags of ice for my head." Uka Uka however still has high hopes as Crash and Coco don't have all the gems. Eventually though, they do get all the gems and fight Cortex and Uka Uka together. When the two villains lose, a warp sphere starts to engulf them, Tropy and the entire Time Twister Machine. Luckily, Crash, Coco, Aku Aku and the other animals escape. Meanwhile, in another time period where all three have been reduced to infants, Cortex and Tropy are seen fighting over Uka Uka while stretching him.

Crash Team Racing
In Crash Team Racing, Cortex takes part in the race to beat the crabby alien, Nitros Oxide, who threatens to turn the world into a parking lot if he wins and make it's inhabitants his slaves. Cortex is seen in the intro laughing evily, while powering his kart with one of his gadgets. His karts stats are the same as Crash, having even acceleration, speed and turn. In the epilogue, Cortex discovers a new element in the periodic table which law suits failed to change the name so he chose element 117, Cortexrulestheworldium.

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 his Ray Gun 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 but is quite weak.

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex
Sometime after Warped, Cortex had built a new space station. Uka Uka holds a meeting to discuss evil with Dr. Cortex, Dr. N. Gin, Dr. N. Tropy, Tiny and Dingodile. Uka Uka claims that their atempts at evil are pathetic although they say that Crash is to blame. N. Tropy lets on that Cortex is working on something in his lab he denies it though N. Gin then foolishly tells Cortex that N. Tropy was probably refering to a super secret weapon he has making day and night since the last time Crash defeated him. Cortex then admits he was and is almost finished making a superweapon of unbelievable strength. The power source is the final solution at which point Uka Uka thinks of The Elementals Cortex agrees then he'll have a weapon that's stronger than Crash and will wipe him off the face of the earth with an evil laugh he declares "Get ready to face my wrath, Crash Bandicoot!". The only way to get rid of The Elementals is to gather ancient crystals which is what Crash and co. set out to do. Like the previous games he talks to Crash on a big screen he also introduces his newest creation and superweapon: Crunch Bandicoot. However even with the aid of The Elementals Crunch keeps losing. Portraits of cortex are seen on stained glass windows in wizards and lizards.

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 2: N-Tranced
Cortex may not appear in this game but he is playable in the multi-player mode in an Atlasphere.

Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage
Doctor Neo Cortex and Ripto from the [http://spyro.wikia.com/wiki/Spyro_2:_Ripto's_Rage! 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
Taking place three years after the events of Wrath of Cortex, Dr. Cortex and Uka Uka wash onto N. Sanity Island frozen in an ice cube. It melts and Cortex rounds up several of Crash's old enemies to ambush him. After stunning Coco and disguising himself as her he lures Crash to an arena for the "birthday party" and does battle with Crash. Defeated once again by Crash the two get into a brawl in a mine in which the two reluctantly agree to work together to escape. After escaping the mine they encounter the Evil Twins, who claim they will destroy the Wumpa Islands, after Cortex doubts it, they take out his brain, causing him to flee in terror.

Crash later finds him and Cortex tells about his love of the Wumpa Islands, and envies the Tribesman, and after mentioning the Bumble bee being humble, he is swarmed by bees causing him to run blindly on a bridge full of traps, which Crash must protect him from. After being chased by bumblebees, and Bee-hive falls on his head, later attracting a bear. Crash helps him escape all of these, but after escaping the bees, he ends up getting captured by Papu Papu, who hoists him high on a totem pol with intentions to cook him. Crash rescues him, but causes the totem pole he was on to fall down the nearby waterfall. He is later seen at Farmer Ernest's Farm where he zaps Mr. Ernest with his raygun and takes the crystal that was promised if they got rid of the worms infesting his land. Soon confronting the evil twins once again, who reveal they came from the tenth dimension. Proceeding to bring to life a totem statue, Tikimon.

The evil twins leave after defeat, and soon Cortex gets a idea. Insisting they go to his brand new base; the Iceberg lab where he attempts to open the main entrance with a remote, which doesn't work. Then Cortex insists they take a different route. He is later seen talking with his penguin minions who are demanding the crystal Cortex found. Then he tries to bribe them with fish to let him keep his Crystal. But the bribing doesn't work and they growl at him until Cortex shoots one of the Penguins. Then Crash and him continue there journey until they accidentally free Uka-Uka who was frozen in a cave. Then Uka-Uka tries killing both of them because of their history with each-other, by making himself a body of ice. The duo defeat Uka-Uka.

After revealing the Twins plan, Uka-Uka allies with him, saying it was his job. Crash and Cortex eventually reach his Iceberg Lab where they confront the Evil Twins where they bring out Aku-Aku and Uka-Uka paralyzed by the Twins and they send armies of Ants to kill them. Eventually they destroy all of the Ants and the Evil Twins then flee. After they leave, Aku-Aku and Uka-Uka question Cortex about the Evil Twins and how they said that he ruined their lives. Crash and Cortex team up to defeat the Twins then Cortex shows Crash the psyhcotron, a device capable of teleporting to different dimensions, then Cortex says they need six crystals, but they have four, so then Cortex has the idea of going to N. Gin's battleship to get the 2 Crystals, where they go to a balcony in a mountain, where Cortex thinks how are we going to get to N. Gin's Battleship in time? Causing Crash to push him off and use him as a makeshift sled.

They eventually reach the Battleship where Cortex lies in the snow, humiliated, where Dingodile hears they're intention of getting the Evil Twins' treasure. After Crash is launched back to the Iceberg Lab, Cortex is standing there, where he goes to the Psychetron room, where he is attacked by Coco, who thinks Cortex has kidnapped Crash. After kicking him in the groin sending him onto the Psyhcetron controls, screwing it up, and paralyzing Coco. Then the two go to Cortex's Airship, to go to the Academy of Evil to find Nina Cortex, the only one capable of fixing the Psychetron. While flying, they are ambushed by the Evil Twins and an army of Ants. Cortex eventually defeats them and they reach the Academy of Evil where Cortex accidentally finds a hidden staircase to the boiler room under the central fountain. Crash later finds him in the boiler, where he gets stuck in a pipe. Crash and Cortex eventually find Dingodile in a large boiler room where he threatens Cortex to give him his cut of the treasure that he thinks that they found in his Australian accent. Then Cortex replies to him not knowing what he said, then Dingodile shoots the platform he is on and it fly's up.

He is later seen in the classrooms where he nearly gets hit by toxic spray coming out of the walls and quickly slides under it. He then orders Crash to attach the Airship to a secure area while he goes to look for his niece, Nina. After going through many hallways and classrooms he finds his niece, who willingly scares him with a fake dummy of herself, then when he tries to shake hands with her they clamp onto his hand. He then sends Nina out and he goes to the fountain area only to find that Crash had misunderstood his orders and detached the airship, then Nina later catches it. He later meets up with Nina in a room where they are ambushed by Ants and Nina leaves then. After defeating the Ants, Cortex wanders into a large acid room, where he meets up with the founder of the Academy of Evil, Madame Amberly. She mocks Cortex and the two eventually get into a fight. Cortex later snaps all the ropes supporting Madame Amberly and she falls into the acid pit.

He later finds Crash where the three head to the airship, where Cortex remembers the origin of the Evil Twins, on how he was eight years old building an Evolvo-Ray prototype, which he used on his pets, Victor and Moritz, and how the machine messed up and the two parrots disappeared. Then they land at the Iceberg Lab where they warp to the Tenth Dimension. When they arrive there Evil Crash, Crash's counterpart, comes out and kidnaps Nina, they go to a balcony pursuing Evil Crash, where Cortex thinks on how they are going to save Nina, then Crash once again pushes Cortex off the balcony and uses him as a make-shift sled. After pursuing Evil Crash to his house, Cortex attempts to save Nina but ends up getting chased by Evil Crash. Crash eventually saves him and they reach The Evil Twins base, where Cortex and Nina go in, with Crash following them. They meet up in the Evil Twins' treasure room where they meet N. Trophy, N. Brio and N. Gin there, where Cortex states that the treasure is stolen property, then Spyro the Dragon come out and burns N. Trophy, N. Gin and N. Brio.

They meet up with the Twins in they're massive throne room, where they have a discussion. Then Cortex orders them to go into they're cage, which they obey. Then angrily, they transform they're cage into a large robot, the Deathbot, then the three fight the robot. Nina takes out the shields, making it vulnerable, leaving Cortex to destroy the weapons. Mecha- Bandicoot then hops in front of him, revealing Crash piloting it. After Crash destroys the Deathbot, they flee in terror. After this they all return to their dimension, where Cortex betrays Crash activating the Psychetron, but it malfunctions and sends Cortex into Crash's brain, where he confronts thousands of Crashs doing the Crash Dance, at this instance, he screams. He later escapes from Crash's brain and the two are sent to the Psychiatrist, where they practice on trust exercises, where Cortex will fall backwards and Crash will catch him. But Crash is distracted by a Wumpa Fruit that rolls up to his foot and Cortex falls backwards and sits up and replies "I hate bandicoots" then falls backwards again. Cortex also uses a Teleporter in this game.

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 his niece, Nina Cortex. 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 sent Nina to Evil Public School for a good girl, 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. In his boss fight he can burp or fart which stuns enemies, punch the ground and perform a spin that will instantly defeat any enemy on contact.

Crash Bandicoot 2010
In Crash Bandicoot 2010, Cortex probably would have sent his minions out to capture wild animals so he could fuse them to make Hybrids in his lab.

Alignment

 * In most games he has been the main antagonist. There have been exceptions however, most noticably in Crash Twinsanity.


 * After Crash defeats him in Twinsanity, he becomes (by force) an ally. However he is still an evil character, and his alignment with Crash is only temporary.

Trivia

 * Crash Bandicoot: N-Tranced is the only game not to feature Cortex because he failed to stop Crash again. But he does appear on multiplayer mode.
 * Cortex appeared in all main series Crash games as a final boss except 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 in Crash Tag Team Racing.
 * Cortex is one of the few characters to ever break the fourth wall during the series, along with Coco, N. Brio, Tiny, Ebenezer Von Clutch, and a certain Crash of the Titans enemy type being the only others.
 * His theme in Crash Bandicoot 2 is his fastest theme. Hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s67WsTvbASU
 * His theme in The Huge Adventure is a remix of his theme in Warped.
 * In Warped, his boss icon was originally going to be the same as the from Crash 1 and 2, but was changed to a new one.
 * In Crash 1's level 'Generator Room', the 'N' on his forehead is missing whenever he appears on the TV screens.
 * When he is turned into a baby at the end of Warped, the 'N' on his forehead is lowercase.
 * The "N" on his forehead likely stands for his first name "Neo". However the backstories say it was tattooed on his forehead at age 3 for "Nerd".
 * Cortex once called Nina his daughter but covered it up when he saw Crash coming up behind him. Which means only the doctor knows the real relationship between him and Nina.
 * Cortex's initials are, ironically, NPC (an acronym for 'Non Playable Character' in video game lingo).
 * Cortex has appeared in three stages (adult, child in Twinsanity and baby in Warped)
 * After Twinsanity, Cortex seems to have somewhat befriended Crash in a way. In Crash Tag Team Racing Crash helps Cortex out a lot, though they are still enemies.
 * In Crash Tag Team Racing, It is implied that Cortex had served in the Vietnam War, in the Da Nang Air Base.
 * According to Clancy Brown during an interview, he stated the reason why he stopped doing the voice of Dr. Cortex was because Universal gave minimum wages to the actors and that he was never told about the Crash games (Wrath of Cortex and Crash Nitro Kart) during the time.
 * In one concept design, Cortex appears to have a hunched back.
 * In the Naughty Dog era Cortex was more evil but in the Radical era he seems more comical.

Gallery
Neo Cortex