A new Crash Bandicoot game may have been teased in a new PS4 trailer, with what appears to be a new character appearing in the latest PS4 “It’s Time to Play” commercial. The mask character briefly appears during the segment focusing on Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, though she hasn’t previously appeared in any Crash Bandicoot games.
The new character appears to be a variant of Aku Aku, the helpful witch doctor spirit who accompanies Crash and his comrades on his many adventures. The mask can be seen floating next to Neo Cortex 15 seconds into the new trailer:
A clearer shot of the mysterious new mask can be seen below:
To further add to the speculation, Spyro Reignited Trilogy artist Nicholas Kole responded to a tweet pointing out the new mask with a thinking face emoji.
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While Kole didn’t work on Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled or Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, there is an overlap between the new Crash games and the Spyro remakes, with the Reignited Trilogy‘s developer Toys For Bob helping with the N. Sane Trilogy‘s Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC ports, while all the games were published by Activision.
— Nicholas Kole (@FromHappyRock) November 4, 2019
Considering the success of the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy, it seems highly likely that developer Vicarious Visions would be set to work on a follow-up. On the other hand, the mask’s appearance in a segment dedicated to Crash Team Racing could also suggest that a sequel to the kart-racing spin-off is on the horizon instead.
CTR: Nitro-Fueled is set to receive some more DLC later this year, including a Neon Circus Grand Prix and Winter Festival Grand Prix. However, neither of these events explain away the mask, so for the time being question marks still remain over this unnamed character. The Spyro Grand Prix event added the Sparx the dragonfly mask for some characters and an early update for the game also patched in the Velo mask for character for racers from Crash Nitro Kart. However, these cosmetic changes to the invincibility power-up had already established themselves in other lore while this mask is something completely new.
