Crash Advance IV – Ballard of a Bootleg

Crash Advance IV

Ballard of a Bootleg

One misty morning, on a Crash Bandicoot forum, Dingodile555 waltzed in and made a shocking declaration:

"My friend had a gba game called Crash Advance 4 and the controls were A to spin, B to jump. It had long and extremely difficult levels in it. He told me his aunt in Saudi Arabia sent him it but now he has lost and tells me he bought it in Game and the box had Crash holding a wumpa fruit in the cover. Has anyone else heard of this game?"

The Crash Mania forum members found it hilarious. So much so, in fact, that the statement was copied and pasted multiple times throughout the forum's history in a joking fashion, usually in response to something utterly unbelievable regarding a new Crash game. Thus, it was immortalised as a meme.

Then, in 2015, FierceTheBandit, an avid collected of all things Crash Bandicoot, sighted a strange cartridge on eBay. Bundled with three other Crash Gameboy Advance (GBA) cartridges, was one titled 'Crash Advance IV'. The forum postings went something like this:

Crash Advance IV

The initial post...

Crash Advance IV

The eBay listing

Crash Advance IV

Suffice to say, the forum went wild.

The purchaser was me. It didn't take much convincing. Here was the Gameboy Advance cartridge of a legend. To simply see what was on there and try and ROM dump it for everyone else was a tantalising prospect, especially when I didn't think anyone else would bother if he or she acquired it. It's probably worth noting that I knew nothing about ROM dumping anything. In fact, this was an entire new world for me. If this had been a legitimate game and published by Nintendo for the GBA, then I'd have had reservations, but as this was clearly a bootleg game, I was safe to continue. So I read up on how to do this, for many hours, and looked into videos, ready for when the cartridge arrived.

Crash Advance IV

A terrible mock-up of what the box cover looked like.

Getting the Game to Run

The big day came and Crash Advance IV arrived. It didn't work. I grew a little frustrated, contacted the eBay seller, and was informed it worked on their Gameboy Advance. I read up some more on these type of bootleg games and discovered many didn't work on the Nintendo DS handheld, due to the protection measures taken by Nintendo. So, I acquired a second-hand Gameboy Advance. It worked. At least, it worked until trying to load the first level, then it crashed. It was time to look for ways around this, since I at least knew it would now start up. A second-hand Nintendo Gamecube was purchased, along with the Gameboy Advance player (no longer available in the UK, so I had to go more European for this), and then purchase the software disk separately. Phew! It worked, but no more than the second-hand GBA did. Darn.

Crash Advance IV

The GBA player for the Gamecube. I acquired a second hand Gamecube, the device AND the disc to run it all separately.

It was time to ROM dump the darned thing. I figured that would get around the issues and just capture the whole file. I discovered that due to it being unable to work on the DS, that usual ROM dumping equipment, such as the EZ Flash Card IV or V, would be a no-go. In fact, I had to travel back a bit. I had to acquire an earlier model of hardware, and these were only available second-hand, now. I spent several weeks checking eBay on a daily basis, looking around everywhere, and discovering I'd need only a specific one - the EZ Linker II. It had to be that one, since it needed to be a linker to ROM dump Crash Advance IV (the cartridge that came with the linker was irrelevant for what I wanted). For almost a month, I found nothing. Then, one marvellous day, it appeared on eBay for something stupid like £150, from the US. This was my one and only chance at such a rare and obsolete piece of hardware. I purchased it, sucking up my cash flow for the next couple of months.

Crash Advance IV

The EZ Linker II by Powerstar... and the only version of the linker I could use.

The linker finally arrived. I ripped my hair out finding the original drivers, online. Everything was set. Then nothing happened. Reading up more on it all, I had to have a working copy of Windows XP running, since this was all that could run the linker. Curses! Sources confirmed Windows 7 could emulate this. Okay, good. I acquired a copy of Windows XP. Then nothing happened. Again. Turns out it wouldn't work on one type of Windows 7 operating system - the very type I had. I wouldn't let this beat me. So I drank some tea, calmed down, then read up on ways around this. Somehow, I finally reached the stage of emulating Windows XP on my Windows 7 laptop, had the drivers, had the linker, had the USB ports working in the emulation (easier said than done) and all was finally set to go.

Crash Advance IV

I had to acquire a second-hand GBA along with the EZ Linker II

Then the cartridge wasn't read. So I drank some more tea. I tried other GBA cartridges, and they all worked fine. Spiffing. The one cartridge I wanted to ROM dump wasn't even recognised by the linker. It was if it wasn't a GBA game at all. I tried all sorts to get it to work on there, but nothing would break through this barrier. I'm sorry to say this was a dead-end. I looked up online, found out the developer was called Sintax (who had developed some other hilariously bizarre games), and that their copy protection was astoundingly good, due to the bootleg market they were in. To ROM dump this beast, it'd take something more, like opening the cartridge and messing around, something I would not have been able to do on my own (this was how some other Sintax games were dumped, apparently).

Crash Advance IV

The disc to run the GBA player on the Gamecube.

I acquired cotton buds, little bits of cleaning chemicals and cleaned up the copper strips as much as I could, to at least spur on the cartridge to work. It never did, at least not on the linker...

One day, when recording various GBA Crash Bandicoot games to have recorded evidence of my Time Trial times, I decided to give Crash Advance IV one last shot in the Gamecube GBA player and record it, never wanting to miss out an opportunity. Somehow, through some minor miracle, it worked. It made it past the title screen. I wasted no time in immediately recording the game and the gameplay that followed. I didn't want to turn it off in case I would lose the accessibility to the first level, once more.

Crash Advance IV Gameplay

Crash Advance IV is a difficult game. B is to jump, of course, and pressing B and Up performs a higher-than-usual jump. A doesn't spin, like Dingodile555 attested, but instead fires a strangely cold coloured wumpa fruit in a horizontal line. This projectile attack is someone a lot more useful than Crash's usual spin attack. This also allows for Crash to stay airbourne through continuously  firing fruit, allowing for greater ease in navigating more difficult terrain. Another 'bonus' is that Crash no longer has hit points in the form of Aku Aku, but instead has a fully fledged health bar that can be replenished with... er, cherries.

Crash Advance IV

Crash Advance IV title screen... with a different title to on the cartridge.

The first level is titled Dreamlike Watercity. It's not really a dream, more like a nightmare of a level, and there's not really any water or city, either. In fact, it's more like a desert ruin. A desert ruin with lab assistants floating in space-age vehicles. Thanks, lying title! This level is frustrating. By far, the most difficult level in the game, Dreamlike Watercity pits Crash against leaps of faith, one-hit-kill areas of spikes and viciously timed cloud platforms. Once past this, however, the rest of the game is a doddle.

Crash Advance IV

Dreamlike Watercity is... more like a dessert.

Crash Advance IV

The level design is irritating and somehow gets easier the further on you get.

The second level is Stray in Woods. As you've probably guessed, there are no woods. At least 'stray' is right, as the level is a garbled maze that climbs higher and higher into the sky, before making more leaps of faith to get back down to ground level. The level design is atrocious, but this level's great for abusing the wumpa-flight glitch. Speaking of glitches, there are plenty; the level tune stops whenever a certain enemy turns up on screen and a new garbled tune replaces it once the enemy is defeated, enemies flash and disappear when you approach them (no, they don't flash in that way, although it'd make the game more entertaining)... and so on. The main level tune, I must add, is from a game called Soul Falchion - another bootlegged game from another developer, no less. And every level has the same music, too, making a grand total of... three tunes in the entirety of the game. Four, if you include the one bizarre tune that plays when the game crashes from the title menu.

Crash Advance IV

Tiny teleports and shoots out electrical balls from his trident.

Then there's a boss fight. The boss is familiar character Tiny Tiger, his sprite ripped directly from Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure (or Crash Bandicoot: XS, in Europe). Warping around at the speed of sound, he fires electrical orbs from his trident, in mid-air. Okay. He goes down easy enough with a few fired wumpa.

The third level is the Engrishly titled Mistrey Desert City and features a bizarre underwater ruin theme, complete with ripped sprites from Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced. One would think this level title should have been switched with the first, but then this game doesn't make much sense, anyway. The level is filled with flying scarab beetles, penguins and clouds, all underwater.

Crash Advance IV

Now we're running around underwater... with penguins!

The fourth and final level is Roundabout Path. It's unsurprisingly the opposite of this, being a very linear path heading to the right. New to the enemy roster are tiny versions of N-Tranced's genies. This level is certainly the easiest of the four; the paths are simple and there are very few one-hit kill pits. There are plenty of cherries, too.

Crash Advance IV

Roundabout path is really straight forward, actually.

Crash Advance IV

Dingodile runs around very fast.

Rounding up the game is the second boss, Dingodile, who runs from left to right really fast. To be honest, I just kind of jumped around to avoid him and somehow ended up killing him. No clue how I beat him. When beaten, a lovely screen of Aku Aku appears, stating "The End" in unfitting text. As if there was any doubt.

So that's the story of Crash Advance IV. Whilst we will never truly know what was on the box of the game, it sounded remarkably similar to the Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex magazine advert where Crash is playing an air-guitar in front of a castle window. One thing's for certain, however, this game has now been immortalised in both quoted meme and recorded footage. Sure, the game doesn't work again, anymore, but I was glad I recorded what I did. Of course, I managed to record everything, ready for your viewing pleasure:

This isn't the first time Sintax have tried their hand at making a Crash game, either... but 2003 Crash Advance II is another title for another time.

Crash Advance IV

The end?

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