Crash Bandicoot 2: Brio Strikes Back
In the "true" ending of Crash Bandicoot 2, Crash gives all of the power granting gems to N. Brio, which he uses to destroy Cortex's spaceship. While it is true that Crash was dumb to trust Cortex at first by gathering crystals for him, it's not exactly much smarter to gather the equally powerful gems for another evil doctor in N. Brio.
Regardless, though, N. Brio supposedly never uses these gems for evil and never shows up in the series again. Yes, he shows up later in non-Naughty Dog games, but the Crash series really lost what made it special when the original team left.
Upon heavily hacking the disc, though, I managed to find the remnants of something with the other level files. This file, simply titled "NtrsBr", was the last listed of the files. Being the huge Crash fan I am I recognized this as a shortened version of "Nitrus Brio", and I attempted to set this "level" to be the next one I would enter regardless of what warp room I would enter.
Unfortunately, this would just cause the game to freeze. I tried overwriting the warp to Cortex with it, figuring I'd need to be more specific, but still, nothing worked, even if I went on a file that had all the gems you'd need to talk to N. Brio. It then hit me that I had to find the code that specifically sent you to the 100% ending where you give the gems to Brio and direct that to "NtrsBr".
The regular 100% ending where you give the gems to Brio started playing, but with Brio's theme from when he talks to you as a hologram playing instead of the generic forest level music. I didn't notice at the time, but upon looking at the regular ending again later I realized that Brio and Crash (Coco was strangely absent) were in a space station rather than off the coast of an island.
Upon Brio prompting Crash to do the "honors", and hit the button to fire the laser, the laser fired down at earth, blowing it up. Unique dialogue started to play with Brio having his usual stuttering, but I obviously don't remember it perfectly. Crash had the horrified expression he has when he talks to one of the holograms on his face, before using the animation where he places his arms in front of his face in fear from the Pinstripe fight in the first game.
Brio just laughed. "You wanted Cortex dead, didn't you, Crash? I held up my end of the bargain!" Brio turned to Crash. "Look, Crash, you even hit the button AND gathered the gems! You're just as responsible as I am!" Brio laughed maniacally for a good while. "Now all I have to do is succeed where Cortex failed, in finishing YOU! I created you, Crash, and I can destroy you!"
An actual Brio boss fight was loaded up, though he had no health bar. I wasn't expecting much more than the amazing material I'd already witnessed, and when it loaded up I realized that this looked to largely be identical to Brio's boss fight from the first game, just with the updated music playing and a different background. I soon saw it was at least somewhat edited, though, in that the slime Brio creates with his potions would change colors to yellow, red, and back to the regular green. The red slime for whatever reason was damaging to touch, even if you were attacking it, so I had to wait for it to change color.
Before going into his monster form, Brio created three more slimes which permanently stayed red, which I had to dodge around as I attacked Brio in his monster form. As I knocked Brio back again and again, though, he just came back for more, rather than just the normal three hits he'd take in his fight from the first game. I died three times here, the slime not helping when I had no idea what to do.
I eventually noticed a lever that was behind Brio's starting position. You normally can't go up to Brio when he's in his regular form, as he'll crash his potions together and damage you. I was still able to spin the lever as I got killed, though, so I knew it wasn't just for decoration due to it opening up a door on the left side of the room. I figured I had to wait for Brio to go to his monster form and go around him, but Brio was too large in the fairly small room, and he was fairly fast too. It was impossible to go around him as I learned with two more deaths.
I got the idea to keep going forwards as I jumped on Brio's head to go over him to get to the lever. This opened the door, but Brio closed in on me and killed me again. I realized I had to wait to jump over Brio until he was right next to my side of the room so I could reach the door in time, though this was quite difficult as I had to get lucky with the debris that fell from the ceiling which you use to jump on Brio to spawn at the back of the room.
Eventually, I finally got out of the main room. While the room inside was nearly perfect, this area wasn't nearly finished, with a dull gray untextured floor. This was just a long hallway, and Brio immediately followed me out into the hallway. He sped up significantly here and started chasing me through. Yet more debris continued falling from the ceiling, I assumed I just had to outrun Brio here, but he was too fast, so that wasn't an option. There were "boost pads" from the levels where you have to run away from the giant boulder/polar bear, but even hitting all of these I wasn't fast enough to get away from Brio. There were also many of the electrical gates from those levels, some of the enemies from the futuristic "Piston it Away" levels, and even the occasional nitro crate.
Upon getting back to the chase after a couple more attempts, I realized with the debris falling from the ceiling that I could jump on Brio like in the regular boss battle. This stunned Brio briefly and knocked him back, giving me more time to get away. I had to do this many, many times to get away, and it took many attempts. I once tried jumping over Brio to get behind him, but Brio destroyed absolutely everything he rampaged past and the boost pads only sent you towards the camera, so I could only run from Brio a bit that way.
It was incredibly difficult, even for a seasoned Crash Bandicoot fan like myself, and it eventually got to the point where some of the electric barriers blocked off both jumping over them and sliding under them, forcing me to get on top of the debris to jump over it. After countless lives lost, I eventually reached what seemed to be the end of the chase, with Crash and Brio at the laser that used the gems to blow up the earth. Brio went to smash it in his rampage, killing himself in the explosion, but I also blew up. I realized that I was probably supposed to jump up to climb on top of the laser before jumping over Brio and fleeing upon reflection, but Brio was way too close for me to have time to do that – I'd have had to of done the impossibly difficult chase nearly perfectly to have a good shot at that.
Either way, I didn't get another attempt, as that was my last life. I got a game over screen with N. Brio laughing on it instead of Cortex, and when I reloaded the game my save file was deleted. It was easy enough to hack the save file back, but I couldn't hack the game to fight Brio again, no matter what I did. Almost all the time the game would usually freeze, and on rare occasions would either load up the normal 100% ending or the Cortex boss. I assumed this would be easily reproducible, so I didn't bother filming it the first time, as I was rather immersed back then.
If you don't believe me, perfectly understandable, here's some evidence regardless. First off, is that theme when Brio talks to you through the warp room. It'd a pretty fantastic remix of his theme from the first game, but it only plays twice in the entire game, plays at a low volume under Brio's voice, and you barely get to hear but thirty seconds of it before it cuts off. It seems like a waste.
Second, in the alpha version of the original Crash Bandicoot, the N. Brio boss is significantly more difficult. The color changing properties of the slime I described are present in that boss, and N. Brio requires nine hits to be defeated in his monster form instead of three. In addition, if he comes into contact with a wall, Brio will rampage back and forth across the room and become invulnerable. People have just dismissed this as a generic glitch from the alpha, but that glitch actually makes sense in the context of the fight I witnessed – the game is trying to transition to the secondary chase phase when Brio goes through the door, makes him "invulnerable", and starts up the script that Brio must keep moving no matter what.
You might say that's irrelevant, since that's from the first game and not the second. Given all the information, here's my theory. Cortex was entirely unchanged in the alpha despite Brio being so much harder, so I think that Brio was originally going to be the final boss of the first game. They eventually decided to save this for the second game and that the boss was too hard, though, so they toned Brio down to how he is now and demoted him to second in command to Cortex.
Yes, I believe Brio was the main villain over Cortex originally given the alpha and the boss I witnessed in the second game. It only makes sense given Brio is the one who created the Evolvo Ray that created Crash, Tiny, Ripper Roo, and the other animal minions even in the final version. In general, the alpha for the first game is massively harder than the final product with even an entire level getting removed (Stormy Ascent), and Naughty Dog wanted to play it safe at that time seeing it was the first game in the series. After the success of the first game, though, they thought it'd be safe to bring back their dropped concepts for the sequel.
The other thing that makes sense with all this is how lame Cortex's boss fight is in the second game, with it being a chase where Cortex is running from you, hardly a menacing final boss, it's almost like it's meant to be anti-climatic. This Brio boss reverses it the other way around and has an actual direct fight at the beginning to boot.
As far as why this Brio boss was removed, I honestly don't think Naughty Dog had a problem with the dark tone of blowing up the earth. The main reason why this was rejected, if anything, was probably because of them realizing that more sequels were on the way, and that they couldn't just kill off the entire cast like this.
That said, it would be possible for the series to continue, given how many characters in the third game are new and could theoretically be alive in Uka Uka, N. Tropy, and Dingodile. Perhaps with the aid of N. Tropy in the third game, Crash would reverse time to save the earth from being blown up by Brio? I wouldn't bother stretching so far, but I always thought it was interesting N. Tropy was so heavily emphasized in the story, but was only the third boss and not all that important in the long run.
Perhaps he originally had a more important role to play? While you might say that it's ridiculous that was ever planned given the other old characters in the game, with the element of time travel it could be possible to fight old characters in the past. Either way, it's again very telling that Brio is never mentioned again in the Naughty Dog titles.
Credited to MasterWarlord
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