Bear It

Bear It (しろくま ダッシュ lit. White Bear Dash in Japanese) is the eighth level and is the third level of the second warp room in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. This level introduces Crash to his first ally in the game, Polar, a polar bear cub that he can ride. This gameplay idea is very, very similar to the hog-riding in the levels Hog Wild and Whole Hog of the previous game in the series. The bear/bandicoot team is tasked with dodging totem poles, seals, killer whales, and TNT crates in a snowy valley climate.

It should be noted that because this level is specially scripted for Crash only, it is one of the levels that Coco is not allowed to visit to in the N. Sane Trilogy remake, also barring her from Bear Down, Un-Bearable and Totally Bear.

Types of crates

 * Basic Crate
 * Bounce Crate
 * Checkpoint Crate
 * Crash Crate
 * Nitro Crate
 * Nitro Switch Crate
 * ? Crate
 * Time Crate (1/2/3 seconds)
 * TNT Crate

Hazard Count

 * Totem poles: 25
 * Seals: 3
 * Orcas: 8

Stage parameters

 * Aku Aku Crates: 0
 * TNT Crates: 6
 * Nitro Crates: 12
 * Other Crates: 30

Trivia

 * Bear It is based off the phrase "grin and bear it", which means to deal with something unpleasant in good humor.
 * Outside of the level warp door, if Crash jumps on Polar enough times, he gets ten lives. This can only be done once without starting a new game.
 * Polar, the polar bear Crash rides in this level among others, is later angry at Crash for riding on him. He then joins Crash's "birthday party", in Crash Twinsanity, in which Crash's enemies from previous games have a gathering with Dr. Neo Cortex.
 * This could also refer to on how you get free 10 extra lives in the second Warp Room by jumping on Polar exactly 10 times.
 * In the beta version of this game, Polar says "Nyeh" instead of his usual barking. This was just a placeholder until the bark could be added in.
 * As with the other bear levels in this game, Aku Aku is banned from this level, so even if the player has an Aku Aku mask when entering the level, the player loses the mask.
 * This was the level present in the Official UK PlayStation Magazine Demo Disc 10, Volume 2. It was similar to the retail version, but some sound effects were different or non-existent, and the dynamic difficulty adjustment wasn't set properly, so all extra checkpoints were normal checkpoints. There is also a glitch where the player can fall through the ground while going uphill.
 * The original version contained three TNT crates that explode before they can be seen on the screen.
 * In the N. Sane Trilogy, these crates were removed.