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Native Fortress
Nativefortress1
Crates: 42 (11 on Pink Gem Route)
Collectibles: 1 Clear Gem

Native Fortress is the eighth level in Crash Bandicoot. Our favourite furry fugitive friend is finally almost free! All that stands between him and the ability to put this wacky President Papu Papu incident behind him is another goddamn border wall. Er, gate. You know what? Fuck it. I'm sticking with wall. If Crashie can survive the full force of the notorious Tribesanistani Army - Vibrating Wooden Turtles, Non-Copyright-Infringing Venus Fly Traps, Sexy Shirtless Diddy Kongs, and most terrifying of all, weak-ass Tribesmen feebly defending themselves with flimsy shields - he can make it up and over and out of Tribesanistan, free from their jurisdiction and free to swim to the Second Island at long last. Crashie couldn't swim in a shallow-ass stream, but apparently he can survive the ocean. How marvellously consistent.

Unraveling the Mystery of the Solid Clouds: "Unravelling" Is a Rather Nifty Pun Here, I Assure You, You Just Won't Know Till You Actually Read the Entire Section. So, Um, Do That. Now![]

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This stage's blind-fan-speculation-tastic Pink Gem Route. Assistant Producer David Gracia Sez: "Have a really uncreative layout for part of your level? Make it out of clouds! People won't be able to focus on how lame the level design is, because walking on clouds is cute and novel and whimsical!"

It's been a long-standing source of fan speculation and contention and homicide motives: just what is the deal with the clouds on this stage's Pink Gem Route? It is never explained in-game how Crash is able to walk on those clouds, as in the real world, clouds are made out of water vapour, and are generally not considered to be solid objects. No official answers to this question have ever been provided. Fans don't know. Non-fans don't know. Literally nobody knows. The Crashie Wiki knows.

President Jerome Papupapudopoulos had fought a valiant battle against Crash Bandicoot. He failed miserably, obviously, but nonetheless, his bravery caught the attention of another powerful Head of State, Neo Cortex. He's the ruler of something, right? Hard to imagine anyone could own their very own castle without, y'know....being a major political power of some sort. Um. I don't actually know. Well, he's powerful, anyway. He owns a fucking nuclear power plant, for fuck's sake! Anyway, he wanted to reward Papulina for joining his side in the anti-bandi-war that would rage for decades to come. With what? Why, his latest scientific innovation, of course! New (as of 1996) from Dr. Neo Cortextiles, it's Uncle Cortie's Magnificent Anti-Gravity Cotton! A revolutionary product poised to revolutionize the entire world!

It did not.

MassaEliWhitney

Eli Whitney, the original inventor of the cotton gin, and a general cotton fanatic. Here we see him smoking a cotton "Q-Tip" swab, the original usage of that device. It was not until smoking began to fall out of favour that they began to take on their modern role as ear dildos.

Prezzy Papumeister immediately stuffed the floaty cotton away in some obscure place. (Namely, waaaaaaaaaaaay up above his Savage Tribal Native Fortress.) It was a crappy gift, he thought. It sucked. It would do him no good, especially since he comes from a tribe that doesn't even fucking wear clothes. I mean, what the hell? This is why you have no friends, Doc. Crash, obviously, found use for the gift - sky crates be crackin', yo - but otherwise, it just lied around unused, unwanted, unloved, unetc., until Christmas 1996, when Big Daddy P.P. regifted the Cortacky gift. Cory was pissed.

Neoie was pissed. Not only did he have his useless sky cotton back, but now it was a mess. Crash had walked all over the goddamn stuff. It was dirty. There were icky things in there. Eeeewwwwwww. Our professional scientist acquaintance had absolutely no use for the stuff....unless he could get it cleaned up, of course. What would work marvellously for something like this? Why, of course, I'm talking about the greatest invention in American history! (Which was actually recycled from much older inventions from other countries!) Dr. Neo Cortex needed a cotton gin. And fast. This is why he went through the trouble of befriending Dr. Cott-N. Gin!

Eli Whitney deserves to be remembered. Not only is he indirectly responsible for Neo's delicious new number-two assistant dude in Crash Bandicoot 2: The Passion of the GinGin and beyond (replacing Cort's ex from the first game), but he's also responsible for driving the American South into a far deeper quagmire of Negro slavery, since his invention made the production of cotton that much more feasible, causing production to increase threefold, far more work that required far more black man-hours. Great guy.

To summarize: The clouds, they be cotton. Floating cotton. Papu got it. Papu didn't like it. Papu gave it back. (This particular collective process of gift-getting, incidentally, is referred to as "Indian receiving" in common douchebag parlance.) Blah blah blah. It's cotton. Cotton, I tell you! I just made it up, but it is canon, I assure you! Mystery solved, Crashie fans. Now you can go back to ignoring this shitty stage, like everybody else.

Trivia[]

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Due to this stage's delightful use of cotton, Crashie pays tribute to the historical history of cotton farming. By dressing in blackface!

  • This level's name might be a clever pun on "native headdress". Like most natives' headdressings, this stage is an unnecessarily elaborate but ultimately worthless construction, with no real practical purpose whatsoever.
  • Alternately, it could be a pun on "native forest", in reference to the Native Forest Action Council, an environmental organization in the island nation of New Zealand, a possible reference to this island as a whole, which appears to have many well-preserved forests. It is interesting to note that N. Sanity Island, on which this level takes place, is said to be located near Australia, just as the fictional utopia of New Zealand is in the real world.
  • Curiously, the first world of this game ends with a fortress. A lame fucking fortress. Really, Naughty Dog? You couldn't even fucking spring for a Native Castle??? Assholes...
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