Pufferfish

Pufferfish are enemies encountered in the underwater levels of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, and the N. Sane Trilogy remaster of the third game.

Description
First appearing in the original version of Warped, pufferfish are small, red fish with orange-yellow eyes and spines. They can inflate to become larger and more rounded, where their spines are made most visible. Pufferfish appear plain red with yellow eyes in The Huge Adventure, and have white-pinkish stripes, mouths and undersides in the N. Sane Trilogy remaster of Warped.

Initially, the pufferfish in the original Warped were colored purple instead of red, as seen in a promotional trailer, the leaked beta version of Under Pressure and the Pizza Hut NTSC/U demo version of the latter level. Although it is unclear why the color change was made before the game's release, it is likely that this was done to make the pufferfish more visible to players.

Three pufferfish from The Huge Adventure appear on a trading card in Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage.

Behavior
Pufferfish are shown to inflate and raise their spines every few seconds, all while slowly moving up and down. In the original and remastered versions of Warped, they also turn to face Crash whenever he swims near them. Pufferfish can be defeated using the spin attack when deflated, or by shooting torpedoes using the Submergible. If Crash touches a pufferfish when it is inflated or fails to spin them away when they are deflated, he will become inflated himself.

In Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, several pufferfish appear as background objects in the remastered Roo's Tubes. They can be seen in one of the track's underwater sections, floating, inflating and deflating as in their N. Sane Trilogy appearance.

Appearances

 * Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
 * Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure
 * Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage (as a card)
 * Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
 * Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
 * Roo's Tubes (as background object)