Orient Express

Orient Express (ばんりの ちょうとっきゅう lit. Ten Thousand Mile Superexpress in Japanese) is the third level of the first warp room in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. The first level in the entire series where Coco is playable, this stage sees her riding her new tiger friend, Pura, along the Great Wall of China, still under construction at some point in the distant past. This level is almost identical to the warthog levels from Crash 1 and the Polar levels from Crash 2, but now with the ability to charge indefinitely by holding down the button, or the R2 button.

Obstacles along the path include fearsome Chinese-style dragons, rolling barrels (which can be charged through), barrel-filled wagons, and lab assistants in disguise as brick-laying Chinamen. Complicating the quest for the clear gem are several vertically split paths, where Coco can either simply stay on the ground, or launch herself up to a higher level very briefly using ramps with lab assistants hiding under them. The player will have to plan ahead and make sure Coco is taking the path with crates, and not the path without them.

Name Origin
This level derives its name from the real-world Orient Express, a famous historical long-distance passenger train which passed through the Orient, or Far East (China), on its historical route between Paris, France, and Istanbul (not Constantinople), Turkey. The Orient Express no longer exists, but has been forever immortalized in Agatha Christie's classic work of mystery fiction, Murder on the Orient Express.

Types of crates

 * ? Crate
 * Aku Aku Crate (time trial only)
 * Basic Crate
 * Bounce Crate
 * Checkpoint Crate - wooden
 * Crash Crate
 * Time Crate (1/2/3 seconds)

Trivia

 * Coco can bump into the various hanging baskets around this level to receive wumpa fruit, exactly as if they had broken a crate, though this does not affect the crate count in the level in any way. This is because the baskets are not crates. Incidentally, contrary to the absurd scenes depicted in this level, ancient Chinese crates and baskets always contained rice and never fruit. It shares this glaring error with Midnight Run.
 * Given the distinct look of the watchtowers, the level, along with Midnight Run, are located on the south end of the Great Wall, somewhere in the Jinshangling section.
 * This one, along with Midnight Run, are the only levels in the game where it's impossible to reach the maximum limit of 9:59:96 in time trial mode. This is due to the inability of Pura to stop at one place. The highest time a player can achieve, providing that neither one of the time crates throughout the respective level is broken, is between 1:23:50 and 1:24:00, but never above the latter.
 * Originally, the barrel carts in this level used to have only a single row of 3 barrels. That was changed in the final version, with the addition of another row of 3 barrels. The same concept applies for Midnight Run.
 * Both of the Pura levels in the game take place at a different time of the day. This level happens in the day, while Midnight Run, at night.