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“ | Like Dr. Cortex said, give the twenty crystals you've collected to me! | „ |
~ N. Gin in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. |
“ | So, you want to go a few rounds? When this is over, we'll see who's obsolete! | „ |
~ Dr. N. Gin in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. |
“ | Alright, all you bloodthirsty lunatics! Put your freaky little hands together for... RAWKIT HEAD! [The Weapon of Mass Percussion activates as the audience cheers. N. Gin taps his drumsticks together.] 1, 2, 1 2 3 4! | „ |
~ Dr. N. Gin in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. |
Dr. N. Gin is a major antagonist in the Crash Bandicoot franchise.
He is an insane physicist and the former right-hand man of Dr. Neo Cortex, replacing Dr. Nitrus Brio after the events of Crash Bandicoot. As of Crash: Mind over Mutant, he has been replaced (without his knowledge) by the very person he succeeded.
He was voiced by the late Brendan O'Brien from Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back to CTR: Crash Team Racing, with Nolan North voicing him from 2005 to 2008. He was also played by Quinton Flynn in 2003 through 2004 and, in 2001 as well as 2017 onwards, he is voiced by Corey Burton.
Biography[]
Past[]
N. Gin's Peter Lorre-esque accent and taste for polka music suggest that he is of European ancestry, though no other evidence of this exists in the games. According to him, N. Gin has or had a superficial brother named George (a reference to entertainer Liberace), and has ruined at least one prom. As a child, N. Gin was a classmate of Neo Cortex and Nitrus Brio in Madame Amberly's Academy of Evil. After working at a stapler factory for a time, N. Gin went on to become a world-renowned physicist in the defense industry. However, due to a budget cut, one of his missile projects ended up faulty and, as a result, went awry, lodging itself into N. Gin's head. With his intellect, N. Gin was able to stabilize the weapon and reconstruct it as a life support system at the cost of his sanity. Because the missile is still live, it activates whenever N. Gin is stressed or angry, leaving him with a large headache (a trait inspired by creator Jason Rubin's own chronic migraine headaches). Shortly after the missile incident, Doctor N. Gin was taken in by Doctor Neo Cortex to replace the double-crossed Doctor Nitrus Brio.
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back[]
In Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Doctor N. Gin studies a large Crystal found by Cortex after his defeat to Crash Bandicoot and discovers that 25 smaller Crystals are needed alongside this "Master Crystal" in order to power Cortex's new "Cortex Vortex" device. When Crash is ordered by Doctor Cortex to give the Crystals he has gathered to N. Gin, N. Gin attempts to take the Crystals by force, only to be sent spiraling into the vacuum of space when Crash destroys his prized mech.
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped[]
In Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Doctor N. Gin constructs a superior model suit of mobile armor that can transform into a space fighter and dock with a huge weapon platform.
N. Gin uses this machine to confront Coco Bandicoot on the Moon, only to fail once again, falling out of his mecha; he screams, "Aaargh! Not- again!" During his second form Pura comes into view in Coco Bandicoot's craft, seemingly adding another gun to it.
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex[]
In Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, N. Gin is an attendee of Uka Uka's bad guy convention, and is ultimately the one who reveals the secret of Crunch Bandicoot, Cortex's new superweapon. For the rest of the game, N. Gin serves as an obstacle in some of the levels.
Crash Twinsanity[]
In Crash Twinsanity, Doctor N. Gin appears during the first boss battle, piloting the Mecha-Bandicoot in an attempt to eliminate Crash. When all of its weapons are destroyed, the Mecha-Bandicoot stomps a hole into the floor and falls into a cavern. N. Gin is later seen as the captain of his own battleship. At the crow's nest, N. Gin tries to destroy Crash with a barrage of missiles, occasionally tossing a TNT Crate. This leads to the eventual collapse of the crow's nest, causing N. Gin to land on his head onto a pile of TNT Crates, creating a large explosion that sinks the battleship. N. Gin is last seen teamed up with N. Tropy and N. Brio, with all of them trying to steal the Evil Twins' riches. However, they are driven out by Spyro the Dragon.
Crash of the Titans[]
In Crash of the Titans, N. Gin opposes Doctor Cortex's replacement by praising Cortex's stationery. N. Gin is next seen in his weapons factory, which appears on the outside as a version of the Statue of Liberty modelled after N. Gin. This factory constantly bombards the surrounding area with all kinds of explosives in an attempt to hinder Crash. Inside the factory, N. Gin communicates to his workers through the factory intercom, making announcements, singing inspirational songs or alerting the workers of Crash's presence. In the factory's crown, N. Gin spends his days performing on his enormous pipe organ. When confronted by Crash and Aku Aku, N. Gin indirectly reveals to them that he has mixed feelings over Cortex's replacement to Nina. One side likes Doctor Cortex and the abuse he brings to him and wishes for his return, while another side approves of Nina's new way of doing things, believing that she is a more efficient leader than Cortex. Eventually, the two sides reach a compromise, and tell Crash of Uka Uka's whereabouts in hopes that he will also free Cortex, planning to shower them with doom later on.
Crash: Mind Over Mutant[]
In Crash: Mind Over Mutant, N. Gin leads an attack on Crash Bandicoot when Coco and Crunch become addicted to Cortex's and Brio's personal digital assistant, fleeing to a small observatory on Wumpa Island afterwards. When Crash and Aku Aku catch up to him, N. Gin reveals that ever since Doctor Cortex escaped the Doominator, he has been secretly watching the Bandicoot family and collecting information on them, hoping to be rewarded with the ownership of Wumpa Island if Cortex is triumphant in his current plot. For some reason, he also expresses a desire to eat Coco, calling her "delicious". After Crash fends off N. Gin's army of Ratnicians, N. Gin is sternly told by Aku Aku to leave the island, to which he reluctantly complies.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time[]
In Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, Doctor N. Gin performs a heavy metal band with his latest invention by using the mask Akano to harness its power on the Hazardous Wastes.
In this fight, N. Gin uses his machine to destroy Crash Bandicoot, but has failed again, resulting in falling out of his mecha and landing on the ground. As N. Gin sobs for his latest failure, Akano falls in and knocks out N. Gin, getting launched right into the next dimension. In the 100% Ending, he gave up his heavy metal lifestyle in favor of smooth jazz, with his first album, My Heart is a Doomsday Device reaching the number one charts in elevator music all across the globe and playing at the hotel bar from 3:00 to 3:30.
Spin-Offs[]
Crash Team Racing[]
Doctor N. Gin is a playable character in Crash Team Racing, driving a purple high-acceleration kart. His home track is N. Gin Labs. The epilogue states that N. Gin opened a custom auto parts store in Toledo, Ohio, only to have it close down after a massive recall due to the damage caused by his patented "Clear-the-Road" missile system.
Crash Bash[]
In Crash Bash, Doctor N. Gin appears as an obstacle in a "Ballistix" level, launching balls at random players.
Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure[]
In Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, N. Gin battles Crash in the skies with a weapon platform similar to the one he piloted in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. He is later merged with Doctor Cortex, Tiny and Dingodile, and becomes Mega-Mix. After chasing Crash down a space station hall, Mega-Mix is left inside the space station, which explodes with the villains in it.
Crash Nitro Kart[]
N. Gin is a playable character in Crash Nitro Kart, driving for Cortex's team in a kart with high turning prowess. In one cutscene, N. Gin considers creating cybernetic sharks as new henchmen after racing Nash.
Crash Tag Team Racing[]
N. Gin is a playable character in Crash Tag Team Racing. In the game's story, N. Gin convinces Neo Cortex to join in the search for Von Clutch's missing Power Gems so that he can use Von Clutch's theme park as a new base of operations (although Cortex later claims the idea as his own).
Crash Boom Bang![]
N. Gin has a cameo appearance in the "Silhouette Quiz" minigame in Crash Boom Bang!.
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled[]
N. Gin returns in the remaster for Crash Team Racing serving the same role he had in the original game. He is a Acceleration class driver.
Crash Bandicoot: On the Run![]
???
Crash Team Rumble[]
???
Appearance[]
Doctor N. Gin is a stocky, red-haired man with bangs (black in Crash Tag Team Racing and dark blue as of Crash of the Titans) cyborg with only half a face. He wears an identical attire to Cortex, with a notable difference being a numerous amount of large bolts located all over his lab coat. A distinguishing feature of his is the large missile protruding from the right side of his head. After the incident that provided the missile, N. Gin reconstructed it as a life-support system, turning nearly half his head into metal. The missile is still live, and was only thought to activated only when N. Gin was stressed or angry, but as revealed in Crash Tag Team Racing, he can activate the missile at will, usually to stabilize a vehicle. While the eye located on the non-mechanical side of his head is somewhat small, the eye on the other side of his face is large, circular, and with a small black pupil occupying it (although in Crash Nitro Kart, this eye is replaced by a black electronic eye with a red pupil). In terms of height, N. Gin is somewhat shorter than Cortex, but appears to be as tall as him in Crash Tag Team Racing. In the same game, N. Gin's skin takes on a grayish tone, as opposed to the peach/pink of earlier games (Doctor Cortex once described N. Gin as "having bad complexion"). An alternate costume in the game depicts N. Gin in a ballerina outfit, bought by Crash to increase his effeminacy and self-esteem. In Crash of the Titans, N. Gin's skin and hair color take on a bluish scheme, and the pupil on the robotic half of his face is larger. Besides these differences, N. Gin looks similar to what he did in past games. According to the Nintendo DS version of Crash of the Titans, N. Gin is 1.25 meters tall (4 feet, 1 inch) and weighs 63 kilograms (139 pounds).
As a child in the Academy of Evil, N. Gin is shown to have a paper airplane stuck in his head, foreshadowing the missile lodged in his head later in his life. This is revealed in an unlockable piece of concept art in Crash Twinsanity.
Personality[]
According to Charles Zembillas, who had designed early concept art for Naughty Dog, Doctor N. Gin was designed to be a mentally disturbed cyborg with a lot of emotional problems. Whether these problems started after the incident with the rocket or already existed before, when he was full human, was never made clear. However it can be assumed that the rocket in N. Gin's head has surely made his insanity worse. Despite the original idea of N. Gin having problems, they were not originally meant to be shown as loud and severe as the latest games and in serious situations and fights, N. Gin was mostly in control.
N Gin is neurotic, maniacal, creepy, and sadistic, and bipolar, with constant mood swings: one moment he might be calm and nice, another he might be depressed, another he might be just emotionless, and another moment he might become angry and hysterical with a need to hurt someone. N. Gin is a genius with all kinds of machines, robots, computers and weapons, mechanic, electronics, cybernetics, and physics. He loves technology, violence, war, extreme speed, alterations and destruction, and hates short circuits and machines that don't work. N. Gin can contradict himself at times, as shown when he acts disgusted with Coco Bandicoot, yet he stalks her and later describes her as "delicious" and creepily telling Crash that he wants to "eat her". In all Crash Bandicoot games, N. Gin is shown to be submissive towards his boss, scared of his wrath, and acts in a more collected way in his presence, making Cortex the only person that can make Gin keep some professional behavior. His crazy personality, maniacal tone, and robotic voice are not even enough to make one uncomfortable and anxious with him around: his nuclear missile is still active and when Gin gets furious his head is literally smoking, like it's going to explode any moment.
During his first appearances, N. Gin is portrayed in a similar light to that of Cortex's previous henchman Doctor Nitrus Brio: he is less impulsive than Doctor Cortex or Uka Uka and prefers to think over the situation rather than rushing to a solution, which usually leads to a loud rebuttal by his superiors whenever he questions their way of doing things, as shown in the opening cinematics of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, the latter in which N. Gin actually contemplates the fact that Crash Bandicoot might simply be too powerful for him and the others to defeat.
N. Gin's behavior becomes more deranged by Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Twinsanity, becoming prone to fits of giggling. He also engages in piracy and shows a greed for the Evil Twins' treasure. In the following games, starting with Crash Tag Team Racing, Doctor N. Gin is depicted as a lot more mentally unstable than before. He is a bipolar, sadomasochistic madman with a slim grasp on reality. He is prone to sudden fits of yelling, sobbing, and is shown to have low self-esteem and cross-dressing tendencies, at one point asking Crash to buy him a ballerina outfit so that he can feel more attractive. He is more obsessed with doomsday weapons and adds odd items in them, such as fuzzy slippers. It's also shown that N. Gin appears to suffer from severe depression. For example, when Crash attacks him, as he will sometimes randomly blurt out that his is happy that Crash is trying to kill him and asks how he can thank him. Also when N. Gin is racing and another racer brushes up against him and he expresses that he likes that they are trying to kill him and his taunt pose has him pretending to die. A possible reason for this could be the constant ridicule he faces from other characters of the series, mainly from Cortex. It is hinted that N.Gin may have had a grim childhood, as he recalls in Crash Tag Team Racing that his mother and father were apparently verbally abusive to him. Parents aside, N. Gin mentions in the following game to have a brother named George, stating that he was superficial, implying that he is deceased. In the random dialogues in Crash Tag Team Racing (by pressing triangle on characters), Crash can listen to Coco saying that she finds N. Gin cute and likes the way he waddles while he walks, in contrast to her friend, Pasadena, who is seriously disturbed by his turned on missile that never explodes.
N. Gin briefly shows a misogynistic side when he informs Crash of his sister's whereabouts in Crash of the Titans, expressing disgust at the thought of girls and eventually is disgusted of Coco. This contradicts with a statement he makes over his factory's intercom, in which he expresses a desire for women, or when later in Crash Mind Over Mutant N. Gin implies a desire to kidnap her. On a miscellaneous note, N. Gin enjoys muffins and cupcakes, but hates preppies, citing their music and wavy hair as reasons for his ire against them. While N. Gin is a masochist, he only enjoys pain if it is bound to logic, demonstrated by his reaction to Neo Cortex spitting scalding hot tea all over his face despite having dumped his entire tea cup prior to that. He is shown to be schizophrenic due to his regular mood changes and crazy personality that he seems to not care about it.
Trivia[]
- During Crash of the Titans and Crash: Mind Over Mutant, N. Gin's lab coat is torn and his buttons appear to have been ripped off. His skin and hair have also changed, leading fans to speculate that either N. Gin has changed his look to fit with his depression, or that the rocket in his head caused physical mutation of his skin and hair (starting with his greenish skin in Crash Twinsanity).
- His name is a pun on the word 'engine'.
- N. Gin's first name is unknown. It has been speculated in the past that it may have been Nitro to further capitalize on the pun of his name (Nitro Gin being a pun on the word 'nitrogen'), but official it has never been revealed.
- In the official N. Sane Trilogy guidebook, he is mistakenly referred to as "Dr. Nitrus Gin".
- In fact, his name is sometimes spelled N-Gin with a hyphen in official sources, suggesting it to be a singular name.
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Villains | ||
Humans Mutants Aliens Others Crossovers |
- ↑ Crash Bandicoot 2 American manual