When Crash Bandicoot escapes from his castle, he prepares to experiment on a female bandicoot named Tawna. However, he is soon confronted and defeated by Crash, who gets away with Tawna on Cortex's airship. In "Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back", Cortex lands in a cavern where he discovers a large Crystal that he believes will aid him in controlling the world. However, he soon learns that 25 smaller Crystals are needed alongside this "Master Crystal" if his new "Cortex Vortex" device is going to work. To remedy this situation, Cortex abducts Crash Bandicoot a year later and fools him into believing that he is working to save the world from an upcoming solar flux by gathering the Crystals. Cortex is later forced to flee when Coco Bandicoot discovers Cortex's real plan and reveals it to Crash. When the ruins of his space station crash into Earth and release his boss Uka Uka in "Warped", Cortex takes part in Uka Uka's plan to gather the Crystals in their original places in time by using Doctor Nefarious Tropy's Time-Twisting Machine. When Cortex is defeated after Crash gathers all the Crystals, Relics, and Gems, the Time-Twisting Machine implodes on itself, trapping Cortex, Tropy and Uka Uka in a strange time prison. Preceding the events of "The Wrath of Cortex", Cortex began laboring over a genetically-advanced super weapon that'll supposedly wipe Crash Bandicoot off the face of the Earth forever. The project is kept a secret until it is inadvertently revealed by N. Gin and N. Tropy during a bad guy convention inside Cortex's new space station. He claims that the superweapon is unbelievably strong, but it is still missing a power source. He soon decides to use the Elementals as the power source, which successfully bring the secret weapon, Crunch Bandicoot, to life. When Crunch fails to defeat Crash, Cortex tries to explain himself to Uka Uka, but soon finds himself dodging Uka Uka's subsequent energy blast, which hits a vital part of the space station. During the resulting critical overload, Uka Uka and Doctor Cortex flee into an escape pod, which lands in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, stranding them both on a large sheet of ice for 3 years. In "Crash Twinsanity", Cortex ambushes Coco, disguises himself as her, and lures Crash over to the bay where he attempts to eliminate Crash with the forty-foot-tall Mecha-Bandicoot piloted by Doctor N. Gin, which Crash easily disposes of.