Temple of Boom

Temple of Boom
Crates:	74 (28 in Bonus Round)
Collectibles:	1 Crystal, 2 Clear Gems
Relic Times:	Sapphire: 1:02:70 Gold: 0:55:70 Platinum: 0:49:00

Temple of Boom is the third level of Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure. This level forces Crashie to explore ancient temple ruins. Conveniently for the development team, these ancient temple ruins just happened to be located in a jungle, allowing them to flagrantly reuse the graphics they created for the Jungle Book themed stages, like Jungle Jam! They really lucked out on that one, didn't they? It sure would've sucked if they were forced into doing actual work here. Work sucks. :(

Mr. Bandicoot Doesn't Go to Washington: Vicarious Visions Can't Drum Up Controversy Worth Shit

Sir George Lucas: A Self-Portrait. Note his giant hideous sausage fingers. What's that? His fingers aren't in this picture, you say? Poppycock! I command you to LOOK HARDER!

This level's name, as you might've noticed, is a clever and witty pun on the subtitle of the popular film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. As Vicarious Visions had just gotten their grimy S&M pervert hands ahold of the Crash Bandicoot franchise with this game, and were not yet an established player within the realm of Crashitude, they were looking to get free publicity, hoping to score a repeat of Naughty Dog's infamous tangle with Sir George Lucas.

Much to Vikey V's dismay, however, George Lucas is physically unable to operate Nintendo's Game Boy Advance handheld video game console, as he is one of millions of sufferers of Giant Hideous Sausage Fingers Syndrome, or "Gahasafas" in youth slangy parlance. As such, he never even got to see this level, the Vicarious Visionaries never got the publicity they so deeply lusted for, nobody bought their games, they never got paid, three-quarters of the development team starved to death, and as a result, they ended up getting booted from the series. Actually, that mightn't have been the reason they stopped developing Crash games. Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage was a horrifying third-trimester abortion of a game that no one should have to experience, ever. If I was the head of Universal Interactive Studios, or Vivendi Universal, or whoever the fuck was publishing these games at the time, I sure would've gotten rid of the development team who caused that horrible, horrible game. Then again, that game might've just been awful because of all the dying developers. Dead developers can't do a whole lot, you see. I guess it's kind of hard to know what caused what here. George's terrible fingers are to blame here somehow, though. I'm sure of it. Damn you, George Lucas! Damn you to hell!

Trivia

Executive Producer Karthik Bala Sez: "Lavafalls are the absolute best cost-cutting choice for instant intimidation on a budget! You can take your existing waterfall graphic, and make it red, like hot molten lava magma! This is a legitimate technique and certainly not shameful laziness, I assure you! Honest! For realsies! Please trust the Karthikster!"

• Contrary to this level's name, it only contains seven TNT Crates. Seven, out of 74 crates total. That doesn't seem very boomy to me at all. Disappointingly, less than ten percent of this level's crates are boombastic. LESS THAN TEN PERCENT. I mean, seriously. It wouldn't have been difficult at all to create a delightful explosion-themed stage. Crash Twinsanity had lots of explosion-themed sections! Sure, they sucked, but Vicarious Visions were so much more talented than Traveler's Tales. They could've done it. And yet, they didn't. Way to go, Vicarious Visions. Thanks to your irresponsible level naming, the only things going boom here....are the hearts of Crash fans worldwide. :(