Orient Express

Orient Express is the third level in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. The first level in the entire series wherein 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. In practice, this level plays almost identically to the Polar levels from Crash 2, but now with the ability to charge indefinitely by holding down the Circle 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 weird ramp things with Lab Assistants hiding under them, for some reason. The player will have to plan ahead and make sure he or she 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.

Trivia

 * It's a little-known fact that the player can bump into the various hanging baskets around this level to receive Wumpa Fruit, exactly as if they had broken a crate, though curiously this does not affect the crate count in the level in any way. This is never explained in-game, though some players suspect it might be because the baskets are baskets, and 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.)