Nina Cortex

"You want something done right... use a giant spider bot!"

- Nina Cortex

Nina Cortex (known in Japan as ニーナ・コルテックス Nina Cortex) is Neo Cortex's beloved niece or daughter. She is a Gothic girl with bionic hands which act as grappling hooks. Since Crash Tag Team Racing, she has developed a fierce rivalry with Coco Bandicoot.

Crash Nitro Kart
Nina, who was originally created by Traveller's Tales, was going to appear and make her debut in Crash Nitro Kart, but after Vicarious Visions was chosen to develop the game, she was scrapped for unknown reasons.

Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage
In Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage, Nina is recruited by Doctor Cortex to kidnap Coco Bandicoot and the Professor. When Spyro and Crash arrive to save Coco and the Professor, Nina chases down Crash as he speeds off on the back of Polar, only to soon be captured in a cage dropped by Spyro, where she is left to weep over the unfairness of the situation. Nina was very young at this point, as she called Spyro "Purple Puppy" and spoke like a toddler.

Prior to Crash Twinsanity
Even though she is a Cortex, Nina had an unnatural love for cute furry animals and she was also generally kind-hearted. Her uncle, Neo, saw this as potentially bad. So he replaced her hands with bionic steel fists so that she would be unable to get close to animals without crushing them and killing them (by accident). He then sent her to his old school, Madame Amberly's Academy of Evil to develop a bad behaviour, hoping that she would become just as evil as him.

In Crash Twinsanity
In Crash Twinsanity, Crash and Cortex arrive at the Academy of Evil to look for Nina as they need her to repair the Psychetron. After searching various classrooms and hallways, Cortex finds her in her dormitory. She pranks her uncle by using a fake head and jumping out at Cortex. She shows her uncle what she's learned, battles the Ants and briefly gets pursued by a school bus which Crash tied to Cortex's airship.

Nina is only playable in two parts of the game, one being Rooftop Rampage and the other being the first phase of battling the Deathbot. She has the ability to use her robotic arm to punch and she can also spin. Like Cortex, she can only jump once, but it's much higher than Cortex's jump. She can use her arm to grab onto grapple hooks. The impressive reach of Nina's arms also gives her the unique ability to safely break TNT and Nitro crates from a distance without the need for a countdown, Nitro Switch Crate, or Detonator Crate.

Crash, Cortex, and Nina go back to the Iceberg Lab, where she fixes the Psychetron by giving it a good smack, to Cortex's surprise. The team then head into the Tenth Dimension. Nina is then kidnapped by the wild Evil Crash, the alternate counterpart of Crash, and he takes her to his house, where Cortex soon rescues her by foolishly offering himself to Evil Crash. She later helps in defeating the Evil Twins by destroying the power sources of their Deathbot. Her voice is briefly heard in the ending.

Crash Tag Team Racing
Nina is a playable character in Crash Tag Team Racing, in which she aids Doctor Cortex and Doctor N. Gin in trying to take over Von Clutch's MotorWorld. At one point in the game, Nina gets a part-time job handling the park's edible meats in order to purchase the Angsterator car, going as far as to practically beg Crash to help her get the job. Also, in this game, Nina acts a bit bossy at times. While briefing her first mission, she asks Crash to find her keys that she lost in the Midway.

Crash of the Titans
In Crash of the Titans, when Neo Cortex fails to dispose of Crash Bandicoot, Nina is called upon by Uka Uka to replace her uncle as the main antagonist of the story. In the Nintendo DS version of the game, Nina attempts to take over Cortex's plot on her own accord when she realizes that she's merely a "henchperson" and temporarily teams up with Crash to get revenge on her uncle. When Crash confronts her inside the Doominator, Nina boards her giant Arachnina titan and battles Crash, only to lose. When the Doominator is disabled, she is rescued from the falling contraption by Doctor Cortex, who reveals that he is proud that she betrayed him, but claims that he is still going to "spank her stupid" for all that has happened.

In the mobile phone version of the game, Nina was the second boss. She steals the second mask with the help of her spider bot and tries to escape, only for Crash to jack her machine and run into rocks and it explodes.

Crash: Mind over Mutant
In Crash: Mind over Mutant, Nina is dropped off at the Evil Public School by Doctor Cortex as punishment for her actions in the previous game. When she is eventually visited by Crash and Aku Aku, she angrily accuses Crash of ruining her life and refuses to help them stop Cortex's ongoing plot. When Crash and Aku Aku get desperate, she forces the two to kiss each other and save her science fair project. Crash needs to counterattack the things shooting out of the volcano with his spin attack. After that, she uses said project to determine the location of Crunch and Brio.

Personality
In her first appearance in Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage, Nina has a childish personality and speaking pattern, referring to herself in the third person and calling Spyro a "purple puppy". This partly carried over to her next appearance in Twinsanity where she was more brooding and essentially mute. In subsequent games, however, these traits were removed in favor of a more intelligent personality (though in Crash Tag Team Racing there are some instances of her childishness as evidenced in many of her quotes). Canonically, Nina is known to be more ambitious and egotistical than her uncle; even Aku Aku believes that Nina is "a lot smarter than Cortex ever could be.", though it is unknown if she really is smarter as she needed Coco to build the robot in Crash of the Titans. Nina seems to be more "street smart" or has more (or less) common sense than her uncle. She is very spiteful and sadistic and has a Gothic look (though she seems to despise being referred to as such). She also has an antisocial demeanor, only working with people if she gets something out of it. The only feminine trait Nina really has is taking care of her 'nails'. She dislikes the Evil Public School as of Mind Over Mutant due to the perceived inferior value of her schoolmates (whom she describes as the "dregs of society") to those of Madame Amberly's private academy, where she saw herself as "the queen". She additionally hates Crash for being the reason for her stay at the Evil Public School, and also calls him "furball".

Physical appearance
Nina has partially spiked black hair with side swept bangs (in the Radical Entertainment games), light-blue/gray skin, prominent buck teeth and a permanent tattoo symboled lowercase black and grey lowercase 'n' on her head. Nina's most distinguishing features are her spring-loaded steel bionic hands, which were given to her by her uncle Doctor Cortex, additionally, Nina has a beta version that got altered in Crash Twinsanity, that shows her with a lab coat similar to Cortex's with an N on it and red hair. Nina stands about four feet and eleven inches (1.5 meters) and weighs 110 pounds (50 kilograms). Although this is not proper canon, Nina was originally taller than Crash and Cortex. In her early appearances, she wears a dark-blue sailor fuku, apparently the uniform of the Academy of Evil. In Mind Over Mutant and Crash of the Titans, she wears a black dress shirt with short sleeves, a red tie, a blue, pleated miniskirt (grey shorts in the GBA version) and black tanker boots. In both versions, she has two silver barrettes on the left side of her hair. In Crash Tag Team Racing, her alternate costume is a pink and white drive-thru uniform, which she earns by getting a job as one of Von Clutch's employees.

Portrayals
Nina is voiced by Susan Silo in Crash Twinsanity, by Amy Gross from Crash Tag Team Racing onwards and by Debi Derryberry in the Nintendo DS version of Crash of the Titans. In the Japanese version of the series, she is voiced by Satomi Kōrogi (who also voiced Polar in Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash) in Crash Twinsanity and by Chihiro Kusaka in Crash Tag Team Racing. In the French versions of the games, she is voiced by Patricia Legrand, who also voices Coco and the Brat Girls.

Quotes
"Huh?"

- Nina

"Bad girls, bad girls. Whatcha gonna do?"

- Nina

"I feel so alive!"

- Nina

"Super-size me!"

- Nina

"Don't worry. That broken neck looks good on you."

- Nina

"You fought like a Cortex! And that's why you're dead."

- Nina

"I'll write you a postcard from the finish line."

- Nina

"Crash! Aren't you supposed to be defeating my uncle somewhere?"

- Nina

"Take out the trash, girls."

- Nina

"Sorry, uncle. But it's time for some young blood to lead us to victory. And now that we have Coco, we can make her build the robot."

- Nina

"Oh, I hope Crash tries, I really do. After all, I need a new fur coat. Ha ha ha ha ha!"

- Nina

"Get to work on the Doominator! Make more mutant soldiers! I want Wumpa Island smashed flat!"

- Nina giving orders to Coco

"Oh shut her up!"

- Nina getting annoyed by Coco

"Cower before my mighty mightiness...of might!"

- Nina

"Why did you rescue me? I betrayed you, took over your evil plan, then failed."

- Nina

"How's it going?... How's it going? I'm stuck in Evil Public School now! Oh, I used to be the queen of Madam Amberley's private school... now I'm stuck with the dregs of society. All because of you!"

- Nina

Gallery
See: Nina Cortex/Gallery

Trivia

 * Her appearance was based on one of the designers working at Traveller's Tales. An early design of her depicted her wearing a white lab coat exactly like her uncle's.
 * Cortex almost called her his daughter in Crash Twinsanity but he corrected himself and said niece. This may show that Nina is actually Cortex's daughter.
 * If Cortex had not replaced her hands and sent her to the Evil Academy, she might have been good, or even an ally of Crash.
 * It is stated in the BradyGames Strategy Guide for Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, that a "freak accident" blew up Cortex's whole family when he was a young child, which would've included his sibling, however, judging by Nina's age difference, the sibling, in theory, would've had to survived with little enough damage to have a child later on in his/her life. Cortex must have known that his sibling was alive after the explosion because, in Twinsanity, this is not the first time he met Nina. As previously stated above, Nina may be Cortex's daughter and not his niece.
 * There is an error in Crash Twinsanity: Nina's teeth disappear in one cutscene after covering her mouth with her hand. This happens just before they teleport to the Tenth Dimension.
 * The fact that Nina calls Spyro a "purple puppy" in Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage is similar to how Baby Bowser calls Yoshi a "gween donkey" in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.
 * She is apparently allergic to fleas, which Crash (supposedly) has.
 * Nina was originally taller than her uncle and N. Gin. It is a mistake that later games said she was shorter. As in Crash Twinsanity, she is clearly taller than Crash too.
 * There is a glitch in Twinsanity that allows players to play as Nina in the Iceberg Lab.
 * According to a promotional short for Crash of the Titans, Nina can use her hands to teleport to different places.
 * Nina's full name is derived from Spanish and Greek origins meaning that her name "Nina Cortex" means "Girl Shell" or "Girl Husk".
 * The name Nina also means strong/powerful and intelligent, traits that Nina has.
 * Because of Nina's design in the Activision series and her first speaking role, Nina's reception has been mixed.
 * Nina is 1 of the 5 playable female characters with the other four being Coco, Pasedena, Tawna, and Yaya.
 * In Twinsanity, Nina doesn't speak at all, but she can completely talk in Crash Tag Team Racing and onward.
 * From Twinsanity to CTTR, Nina used to wear a belt around her skirt. But in Crash of the Titans, her belt is gone.
 * In the GBA version of Crash of the Titans, Nina wears grey shorts instead of a skirt.
 * Nina was originally going to talk in Twinsanity.