What weapon does Cortex use to shrink Earth in The Huge Adventure?

Cortex uses the Planetary Minimizer to shrink Earth in Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure. The gigantic machine is Doctor Neo Cortex’s central weapon and sets the game’s plot in motion.

At the beginning of the story, Cortex activates the device from a space station and reduces Earth to roughly the size of a grapefruit. Coco explains that Crystals can power a countermeasure, sending Crash across different regions to collect the energy needed to restore the planet. The premise gives the Game Boy Advance adventure a much larger objective than simply defeating Cortex in a conventional fortress.

The Planetary Minimizer is also involved in the finale. After Crash defeats Cortex’s assistants, Cortex tries to fire the machine at Crash. Crash instead tricks him into shrinking the colored Gems that stabilize it, causing the weapon to malfunction. Its uncontrolled effects fuse Cortex with the defeated bosses into Mega-Mix. “Evolvo-Ray” belongs to Cortex’s earlier mutation experiments, while the Cortex Vortex is associated with other series lore; neither is the weapon that shrinks Earth here.