Video Game / Crash: On the Run!

Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! (also known as Crash: On the Run! in certain countries) was a 3D platformer/runner game in the Crash Bandicoot franchise developed by King. In a sort of send-up to Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time's plot (and taking place sometime after Crash: Mind Over Mutant), the game involves Dr. Neo Cortex opening portals across the multiverse to recruit new evil minions to conquer time and space with. As expected, it’s up to Crash and Coco to catch up with these minions, take them for a spin and send them packing home by cooking up potions and technology to defeat them. You also collect ingredients on collection runs to fuel this fight.

It was released on iOS and Android on March 24th, 2021 with a pre-registration offer, where you can get the Blue Hyena Crash skin immediately at launch.

As of December 16, 2022, the game is no longer available to download on the iOS or Android stores. Three days later, in-app purchases were disabled and the developers announced that the game would be shut down on February 16, 2023.

Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! contains examples of:

• Adaptational Villainy:
  • The Iron Checkpoint Crate actually acts as one of many minions to defeat here.
  • Fake Coco also acts as a boss, despite being an ally in her debut - though this does match Fake Crash's tendencies to yo-yo between heroism and villainy.
• Alliance of Alternates: Season 4 centers around Oxide recruiting his three other elemental variants for another Survival of the Fastest challenge.
• Anti-Grinding: The Collection Run stages are on a set path that have multiple loops around, meaning they all connect back to a main track that will force you to leave eventually. Each stage has a set number of material crates, which do not respawn after breaking even when the player loops back to start. Material crates respawn when the player leaves the stage and waits for the refill timer to end. The way to earn more materials in a run is to use a skin that increases the amount for that specific material.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Pausing the game, and then unpausing has you have a 3 second countdown so you are not caught out by upcoming obstacles from when you paused.
  • Jumping from a high up place and landing on obstacles below does not penalise you in any way; dropping down onto a hazard does though. This is to prevent cheap shots as obstacles are oftentimes too small to see when jumping from above.
  • The spin attack will continue if it's meant to end while smashing a crate, saving players unneeded grief if they spin too early. Similarly, sliding underneath something too early will continue the slide for the same reasons.
  • When on a Collection Run, the HUD has a tracker of ingredients, and if you collect certain ingredients that would make a potion or other item, then the game will notify you with the icon and a checkmark on the top right of the screen.
  • Collection Runs have an early exit right before the first loop. While this may seem a little pointless at first, it can be handy for those requiring a specific ingredient to get it before the main loop starts.
  • The Collection Run loops are entirely learnable, as crates, traps, switches, spring mushrooms, hazards and such do not change positions.
  • Portal Weapons do not count as crafted items for the Silo, so the player can craft and collect them while the Silo is overflowed.
  • Before starting a Battle Run or Collection Run, the player's skins are automatically organized with the leftmost skin providing the best bonus for that level.
• Anti-Hoarding: The Silo's capacity is 150 crafting items. If it gets overfilled, the player cannot go into Collection Runs nor collect eggs that still exceed the Silo's limit. The Silo's first upgrade is to 300, and can be upgraded each time after this to hold 50 more items, or the player must sell items to lower down the total amount.
• Art Evolution: The models for the characters look like simplified versions of their selves from the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, minus the fur.
• Ascended Extra: Robo-Cortex goes from being a legendary skin in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled to a full-fledged boss encounter, as one of Cortex's (many) alternate universe selves.
• Aside Glance: Crash, Coco, and Aku Aku occasionally turn around and gesture at the player when running.
• BFG: The most-expensive Portal Weapon to produce is a single-use bazooka which fires a rocket filled with whatever element was required.
• Badass Fingersnap: Oxide does this to summon his space craft. The moment is spoiled a little when it nearly mows him down, leading him to stagger into it grumbling.
• Big Bad: Neo Cortex is the main one, as always, but each season has its own Big Bad:
  • Season 1: Nitros Oxide.
  • Season 2: Nefarious Tropy (Alternate).
  • Season 3: Dark Spyro.
  • Season 4: Oxide again.
  • Season 5: Pinstripe.
  • Season 6: Mr. Crumb.
• Big "NO!": N. Gin says one when you defeat him.
• Bowdlerise: Crash and Coco do their revised dances from the N. Sane Trilogy which lack the pelvic thrusts, instead of the one from the original Crash games and It's About Time.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • Skins have useful perks for Collection Runs and Battle Runs (40% more of a specific ingredient, for example). The perks for skins do not apply for Survival Runs.
  • The premium currency of the game is Purple Crystals, which can be used to speed up the lengthy crafting times of the technology and potion crafting, as well as to purchase Survival Run Tickets for more trophies, and to buy skins.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Scorporilla, a Titan from the Radical Entertainment games, is given a redesign to better fit the traditional Crash Bandicoot art style and appears in this game as one of the first bosses you fight.
  • Mr. Crumb from the very obscure Crash Bandicoot 99X game makes an appearance. Also joining him are Thorn Thing and Grumbler, two of his minions from the same game.
  • The Ant Drones from Crash Twinsanity show up to mess with Crash once more.
  • The Elementals make their first true appearance since Wrath of Cortex nearly two decades earlier.
  • One of the bosses is a Pink Elephant, which was originally an enemy that was meant to appear in the unused Twinsanity level "Gone a Bit Coco".
• Cap:
  • Survival Runs stop counting after 1,000 trophies. With the 50 trophy bonus for finishing 1st place, a player can earn up to 1,050 trophies per run.
  • The Silo's maximum amount after multiple upgrades is 1,200 crafting items.
• Car Fu: One of Oxide's attacks is running over the player with his hovercraft.
• Company Cross References: An entire season was dedicated to a crossover with Spyro the Dragon, a fellow Activision-owned property.
• Continuity Nod: The Space Head wreckage seen in Mind Over Mutant is visible in the background of the map of Wumpa Island.
• Crossover:
  • Season 2 had a limited-time event where you could fight Domino's old mascot The Noid.
  • Season 3 introduced several Spyro the Dragon pieces of content. This included several skins based on characters from that series, and boss fights against Gnasty Gnorc and Dark Spyro, the latter of whom seems to be based on his Skylanders Academy self, while also carrying sinister purple crystals with him.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Prior to an update which destroyed any items you collected without them respawning, dying without watching an ad or spending gems used to result in you just losing all Steps collected, but keeping the items.
• Defeat by Modesty: Defeating Thorn Thing causes his bark to shatter leaving him nude. He covers himself before being sucked in by the portal.
• Demoted to Extra: The Quantum Masks are reduced to being skins rather than giving powers. Crash gets Lani-Loli and Ika-Ika, and Coco gets Akano and Kupana-Wa.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Due to the "Nitro" prefix being used to describe a character's default self, Oxide and Brio are officially listed as "Nitro Nitros Oxide" and "Nitro Nitrus Brio". With a further "Oxide" prefix, we get "Oxide Nitros Oxide".
• Difficulty by Acceleration:
  • Like with any Endless Running Game, Crash and Coco continuously speed up in Survival Runs.
  • A boss' difficulty depends on the delay between attacks. The shorter delay affects their idle animations too, so a difficult Araknid has them go between firing and crossing their arms at absurd speeds.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first season didn't have Season Battle Runs. This is why Oxide, the Big Bad of this season, comes back for season 4.
• Endless Running Game: Only applies to the Survival Runs. The Collection Runs appear endless, but the tracks within the level actually have multiple loops and always join back up to the main loop.
• Enemy Mine: One of the missions during Season Three is hosted by Neo Cortex, who attempts to make a Reverse Ray that will transform Dark Spyro into an egg. Of course, the bandicoots have to get him the required ingredients whether the doctor's attempt will work or not. If Spyro's comment during the next mission is any indication, Cortex has actually driven Dark Spyro off.
• Excuse Plot: By franchise standards, the plot is extremely simple: Neo Cortex wants to take over all the dimensions, so Crash and Coco must stop him! It's essentially a side story to It's About Time.
• Freemium: Two of them:
  • The Vending Machine sells one week, two week, and one month subscriptions for Purple Crystals. These subscriptions give the player a set number of Purple Crystals per day.
  • Certain seasons offer the Bandicoot Pass. The player is rewarded items, Survival Run Tickets, Purple Crystals, and skins for collecting trophies. All players earn from the Free Pass and can purchase the Bandicoot Pass to earn more rewards and participate in exclusive challenges.
• Freemium Timer: Much of the game's main progression is centered around gathering materials in Collection Runs, then using those materials to create portal weapons to use in battle runs. However, weapons must be left to construct before taking them into battle runs, and each new type of weapon takes longer than the last, and each collection run level contains only a limited supply of materials, which refills completely a set amount of time after a run is completed in that level. While you can alleviate some of this by cooking up items in tandem (the first two slots on the machines only require free-to-get ingredients, with only the third slot requiring the use of purple crystals), both timers can be bypassed by spending purple crystals, which are handed out in small quantities while playing, or can be bought in much larger quantities via in app purchases.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game has a tendency to crash and boot the player out even on current hardware when they try and play ads. Trophies in a currently running Survival Run are lost when this occurs, as well as any ingredients gotten from a collection run.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: All gang leader battles involve your character chasing the villain while they attack from their hovercraft. Uka Uka, Mr. Crumb, N. Tropy, and Dark Spyro don't use it, as they already can fly, and N. Gin and Oxide use their own personalized vehicles.
• Goomba Springboard: Some enemies, namely seals and blobs, can be used as bounce pads to reach higher areas.
• Ground-Shattering Landing: Crash's entrance into the levels result in him landing face-first onto the ground, cracking the floor.
• Guest Fighter: As part of a limited time event, one of the mini-bosses that the bandicoots face is The Noid from Dominos Pizza.
• Halloween Episode: Season 6 takes place on Halloween and had the fittingly spooky Mr. Crumb as the villain.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Collisions with a crate or a wall's side without an Aku Aku mask causes circling stars to appear above Crash and Coco for a few seconds. Colliding again in this state kills them.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: The Return of Nitros Oxide event ended with Oxide revealing that all the event quests to gather and deposit resources were all a ploy set by him to trick Crash and Coco into repairing his ship for him and gathering the ingredients to fuel the engine.
• The Multiverse: While it’s not explored in-game like in It’s About Time, Cortex is still pulling minions and alternate versions of said minions from other dimensions to fuel his army.
• Mythology Gag: The game is basically a non-stop cavalcade of these, taking notes from nearly every Crash game in the series and even some discarded conceptual ideas.
  • Some of the outfits are worn in other Crash games. Among others, Crash has his biker outfit from Warped and his Blue Hyena and Shiba skins from Nitro-Fueled, and Coco has her outfits from Twinsanity, Tag Team Racing, and Mind Over Mutant.
  • The Swimmer skin says that it's useful for when you don't have a jet board, referencing the jet board from Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back.
  • The Penta Penguin skin's description notes that it doesn't require a cheat code to dress as him, nodding to how Penta was unlocked in the original Crash Team Racing.
• One-Hit Kill: As is standard for an Endless Running Game, directly running into a solid object like a wall or falling down a Bottomless Pit will kill Crash and Coco instantly regardless of how many Aku Aku masks they have.
• Palette Swap: The henchmen and bosses come in four types: Nitro, Frosty, Inferno, and Oxide. Nitro enemies has them in their original appearance with the other three types being a distinctive color. Frosty ones are Blue, Inferno ones are red, and Oxide ones are purple.
• Perpetual Beta: The game has been soft-launched multiple times, for the purpose of testing elements that are to be refined later. Even after the proper launch version came out, there are still several locked areas that are intended to be filled out by DLC.
• Playing with Fire: The Inferno-type enemies and Portal Weapons all use fire or lava as a base.
• Promoted to Playable: The game allows you to play as Coco in almost any part of the game.
• Queer Colors: Season 3 released six rainbow-themed skins (three for both playable characters) in celebration of Pride Month, which the season took place during. The skin that most exemplifies this is Rainbow Coco, who sports the bisexual flag on her T-shirt along with having streaks of each of the flag's color dyed into her hair.
• Quickly-Demoted Leader: If the Team's leader does not earn any trophies during a season, they'll be demoted and replaced with the team member with the highest trophy count.
• Retraux: Crash and Coco have retro skins that hearken back to their original trilogy.
• Sequel Hook: At the end of season 3 Spyro says that Gnasty Gnorc managed to get away.
• Series Continuity Error: The Wumpa Islands look almost completely different here (though given the game's already debatable canon status, it was probably intentional):
  • "Turtle Woods" are now situated on Wumpa Island, when Cortex Strikes Back implied that they were on N. Sanity Island.
  • "Dino-Might", a level from Warped set in the prehistoric past is now found on the present day Wumpa Island.
  • "Sewer or Later" and "The Lab" from Cortex Island, as well as "Snow Go" and "Bear It" from presumably Wumpa Island are moved to the never seen before Ice Warp Island.
• Shockwave Stomp: Slamming the ground destroys surrounding crates and enemies. Useful when you come across crates or enemies in a row of three or two on opposite sides.
• Springy Spores: Red mushrooms appear to propel the player upwards over obstacles or the upper layer.
• Systematic Villain Takedown: The main way you deal with the villains is facing their four minions before a battle with the villain themselves. Averted after the game underwent an overhaul where now you face them all one after another.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Pretty much every boss undergoes this realisation when their rift sucks them away post-defeat. Often mixed with Oh, Crap!, though there are two exception, the first is Dark Spyro, rather than panicking, just makes a subdued sulky look before getting dragged in. The second is Koala Kong who gave a roar of defiance... till a boulder hits him on the head.
• Underground Monkey: A lot of the bosses have different color variants, generally to represent one of the elements. Justified, since the majority of them are alternate-universe versions of established villains.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: The Iron Crate battle run for Dark Spyro has a Game-Breaking Bug where the TNT and Iron crates begin and end too early, leading to impossible (and/ or needlessly tricky) routes around the falling Iron crates. Not only that, but the end sequence of banishing Iron Crate to his dimension has the iron crates fall from above as if you can still weave around it, meaning unless you have Aku-Aku on hand to take a hit, you'll fail the run in a scripted event!
• Villainous Gold Tooth: Mr. Crumb's design in this game has a gold tooth. He was introduced in Crash 99X as the main villain of the game, an evil ghost fiercely guarding lost treasure.
• When Things Spin, Science Happens: When creating a Portal Weapon, the machine that does so spins around, presumably to mix the ingredients together.
• Wolverine Publicity: Spyro doesn't actually appear during Season 3 in anything but images; running away side-by-side with Crash and Coco, and thanking the player for helping. His evil form, Dark Spyro, does show up as a boss.
• Wilhelm Scream: The Lab Assistants give one when you defeat them.
• You Are Who You Eat: Mutagen chickens are available to create up to three eggs per coop to create more powerful Portal Weapons. You feed each one a certain ingredient, changing their colour and the element of the egg they're currently laying.
• You Don't Look Like You: The Ant Drones look far different here than in their previous appearance, though it's explained that they were given an overdose of mutagen.

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