abstract
| - Piston It Away (ピストン はつでんしょ lit. Piston Power Plant in Japanese) is the twenty-first level and is the first level of the fifth warp room in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. Set in Dr. Cortex's space station, Crash is required to avoid giant pistons, shrink rays and sparky tentaclebot units in order to survive. Obtaining the clear gem for breaking all 69 crates is considered by many to be one of the most difficult tasks in the game, because backtracking is necessary. This level contains a death route, but if the player takes it and finishes it right when they first encounter it, they will miss out on a number of crates past it on the main path. Instead, they are expected to take the main path to the end first - leaving one sparky tentaclebot alive and then they can be able to successfully backtrack all the way through the level to the death route. However, leaving the sparky tentaclebot is not necessary, as it's possible to jump out of the map and back again and thereby avoiding the trouble of saving the tentaclebot. From here, all that separates the player from his rewards - the death route gem and, if he does not mess anything up, the crate gem - is a series of tricky platforming challenges involving awkwardly placed pistons, awkwardly placed shrink rays, and conveniently placed floating sparky tentaclebot units. Interestingly, even this level's Bonus Round embodies this spirit of backtracking, requiring the player to leave enough boxes intact to allow them to backtrack after activating a ! crate.
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