Charmy the Speedy Fawn 2: Crimson Strikes Back

Charmy the Speedy Fawn 2: Crimson Strikes Back (Japanese: チャーミー迅速な子鹿 2: クリムゾンの逆襲! [Charmy the Speedy Fawn 2: Crimson's Counterattack!]) is a platform game and the second game of the Charmy the Speedy Fawn series, being the sequel to Charmy the Speedy Fawn. It was developed by Eurocom for the PlayStation and released in the United States of America on May 13th, 1998. It was also released for Nintendo 64.

In the game's story, Charmy is abducted by Doctor Crimson, who has apparently turned over a new leaf and is now willing to save the world. Charmy is then thrust into several parts of the islands in order to gather crystals and allow Crimson to contain the power of the upcoming planetary alignment and keep the planet from being destroyed. He is joined by Sally, his sister, who is suspicious of Crimson's true intentions. Doctor Xavier, who has a personal vengence for Cortex, tries to convince Charmy to gather gems instead of crystals in hope of destroying his arch-enemy Crimson and sends his own henchmen to stop the fawn's progress.

Story
Taking place right after the previous game's events, in which Charmy fights Doctor Crimson on top of his airship, Crimson is defeated, and the rocketsled he was standing on explodes. Crimson falls to the ground, and he lands in a mine, where he discovers a large crystal, and has a flash of inspiration. One year later, he is seen in a space station, being told by his new assistant Doctor Ian that to harness the Master Crystal's power, he will require an additional 25 "Slave Crystals", which are scattered across the Earth. Since Crimson does not have any "friends" left on the surface, he decides to abduct Charmy (while he is searching for a spare battery for Sally's laptop) and persuades him to gather the slave crystals, telling him that he will use them to harness the power of the aligned planets and prevent Earth from certain doom.

Throughout his quest, Charmy is contacted by his sister Sally, who is continuously searching into Crimson's scheme and trying to figure out what Crimson is really using the crystals for, as well as Crimson's former assistant, Doctor Xavier, who tells Crash that if he truly wants to save the world, he must collect gems instead of crystals, so that Brio may use the gems to destroy Crimson, who took credit for Xavier's creation of the Evolvo-Ray. He is also Charmy's primary opposing force, claiming to use all of his strength to prevent him from gathering crystals. Xavier recruits Ripper Roo, who has become extremely intelligent but is still insane, to destroy Crash. Brio also creates and sends out new villains, like the sword-swinging Komodo Brothers and muscle bound Tiny Tiger, but unfortunately for him, they all fail to stop Crash. Cortex later demands Crash to hand his current amount of crystals over to N. Gin, but to his dismay he finds out the marsupial instead defeated N. Gin.

At the end, when all of the Crystals are collected, Sally reveals that Crimson actually intends to harness the force of the Crystals to turn every single creature on Earth into Crimson's mindless slaves with his new and improved Crimson Vortex, and Charmy defeats Crimson once again, banishing him deep into space, but leaving his space station operational. After Charmy gathers all 42 gems, Xavier uses the gems to destroy Crimson's space station with a laser beam, leaving the station in space until it crashes into a mysterious temple on earth.

Game
Charmy 2's gameplay is largely similar to that of the original. However, there are some differences. Players make their way through a limited environment whilst breaking crates, each of which containing some kind of bonus. Breaking all of a level's crates earns the player that level's clear gem. The player can also collect additional clear and colored gems by finding and touching them. Colored gems activate secret areas. If the player collects all of the gems in the game, the secret ending is activated.

Charmy has several moves: jump, run, spin attack, body slam, slide, duck, crawl, and a Spin Dash performed by pressing the jump button while crouching. There are also several difficult glitched moves that can be performed at any time. Stepping on a question-mark platform/trap door takes Charmy to a bonus level. Going to special locations, where something is somehow out of place, brings Crash to one of five secret levels.

Also, if the player manages to reach a certain point in some levels without losing a single life, the player can hop onto a platform with a skull and crossbones logo on it. This takes Charmy to another portion in the level of the main path and contains boxes and other secrets one might notice not being found on the main path. This marked the first appearance of the death route.

Warp Room & Levels
Charmy 2 introduces the Warp Room system. Unlike the original, where levels are played in a specific order, the warp room allows the player to play one of the five levels present in the room in any order. To complete a level, the player has to fetch the crystal and reach the end of the level. When all 5 crystals have been collected, the player can move to the next warp room. There are five main warp rooms, twenty-five main levels, five boss arenas, a sixth secret warp room with three secret entrances and two extra levels. Boss fights are in bold.

Rest TBA...

Easter Eggs

 * In Warp Room 2, if Crash jumps on Polar enough times, he will get 10 lives.

Reception
Charmy the Speedy Fawn 2: Crimson Strikes Back received generally positive reviews from critics and was considered to be superior to its predecessor. Much of the praise went to the game's graphics, control and music, with major criticisms varying between the trial-and-error gameplay, lack of level variety, easy boss levels and lack of innovation. The game went on to become one of the best-selling PlayStation video games of all time and replaced its predecessor as the highest-selling Western title in Japan, selling more than 800,000 units in the country by April 1998.

John Broady of GameSpot considered the game to be superior to its predecessor, commenting positively on the Warp Room concept, improved game-saving system and variety of the levels. The staff of IGN praised the "spot on" control and noted the decreased linearity of the game and increased intuition of the bonus levels compared to the first game. Mark Cooke of Game Revolution described the game as "undeniably fun".

The game's graphics were positively received. GameSpot's Broady described them as "in a league of their own among PlayStation games", while the IGN staff praised the high-resolution graphics as "beautiful". Game Revolution's Mark Cooke, meanwhile, went into more detail and started off by describing the graphics as "awesome". He noted the absence of cutscenes brought about by the entirety of the game being "rendered on the fly beautifully" and that the game could "really set some new standards in Playstation graphic quality." He went on to describe the animation as "flawless" and of "cartoon quality" and added that the game's "creatures, environments, and story building scenes are absolutely perfect." The game's audio was also well-received; Broady simply stated that the music "couldn't be better", while Cooke said that Clancy Brown's "hilarious satirical" performance as Doctor Neo Cortex added to the game's cartoonish quality.

Minor criticisms varied among critics. Broady noted that the semi-3D setup is "sometimes hard to navigate" and elaborated that "you'll find yourself missing jumps because you're unable to judge distances properly." Additionally, he criticized the trial-and-error aspect of the gameplay as "just plain cheap" and stated that "in some areas you must sacrifice many lives until you memorize a level's layout." The IGN staff said that the level design "isn't as varied as it could be" and added that the "jungle, snow and water" environments are recycled from the previous game and reused multiple times in Cortex Strikes Back. They also described the boss levels as "insultingly easy". Cooke observed that, like its predecessor, the game did not add anything to the genre and summarized that "the first Crash was dauntingly similar to the 16-bit platform games of yester-yore, only with better graphics, and Crash 2 doesn't deviate much from this formula." He also described the "bizarre 3D" cover art of the game as "unnecessary and evil" and "a device of unprecedented agony" and claimed to have contracted a massive headache after "looking at it in [his] car for about 15 seconds."

The game's success resulted in its re-release for the Sony Greatest Hits line-up on August 30, 1998 and for the Platinum Range on 1999. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back was initially released on the European PlayStation Network on July 26, 2007 but was withdrawn on August 7, 2007, along with Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and MediEvil, as a precautionary measure when the two other games experienced technical problems. The game was released on the North American PlayStation Network on January 10, 2008 and re-released on the European PlayStation Network on February 2, 2011. At Sony's E3 2016 press conference it was announced that this game, Crash Bandicoot and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped will be remastered on the Playstation 4 in 2017.