Once again, series villain and Crash's arch-nemesis, Dr Cortex, is up to no good and is planning to use the power of the elements to raise a powerful Elemental Lord to kill our hero.

On May 7, 2002, the company announced a GameCube version of the game, [34] which was later confirmed to have connectivity to the Game Boy Advance. Pura, Coco's pet tiger cub, serves a very minor role and appears only in the introduction of the game. After Universal fell out with Cerny and Sony, Traveller's Tales was forced to alter the game from a free-roaming title to a standard Crash title. An earlier draft of the story featured an alternate version of the game's climax and ending, which involved Crash battling Crunch in a mechanical robot suit. It is the fourth main installment and the sixth overall in the Crash Bandicoot video game series, being the first of the series to not be released solely for a PlayStation console.The series debuted in 1996 with the Sony PlayStation video game Crash Bandicoot, premiered in North America on September 9, 1996.

The controlling force behind Cortex's plots for conquering the world is Uka Uka, the twin brother of Aku Aku. There were a few contenders for the DS version such as Renegade Kid and WayForward, with Renegade Kid going as far as producing a playable demo as their pitch, while WayForward's pitch ended up being reworked into Galactic Taz Ball. Lafferty pointed out that the environments were less defined and detailed than other GameCube titles. On September 21, 2000, Universal Interactive Studios and Konami announced that they had entered an agreement that would enable Konami to publish a Crash Bandicoot game for next-generation game systems, with Universal Interactive handling the production of the games.Kosmina appreciated the GameCube version's GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable support through the Crash Blast minigame. Casamassina said that the presentation was sterile, elaborating that the environments lacked roundness and that the architecture felt empty.