Time travel with a marsupial...rodent...thing.
For those of you who have never played a Crash Bandicoot game...go back and check out 1 and 2. The lowdown is like this...Crash is a Bandicoot what wears pants and likes to run around spinning like a tornado and breaking crates with his head. He has a sister named Coco and an enemy named Dr. Neo. For some reason Dr. Neo has gems all over the place and Crash likes to collect them. Keeping up? I know, I know...it's really deep and complicated.
Well, now that you have all that, then you know how Crash Bandicoot 3 works. It's the same kind of plot. Go around collecting Wumpa fruit, stealing gems, and making poor animals suffer. But this time is a little different. This time Dr. Neo has got himself a new ally named N. Tropy. He's a time traveling dude and he's created some kind of time travel device that our hero has to go through in order to collect the gems.
This sounds like a simple plot device...but actually it gives the game a fresh new flavor (market research tells me you kids like the word "fresh"). Having Crash go back and forward in time makes for a large variety of different levels and different types of gameplay. So instead of a simple platformer, you get a platformer with some racing levels, some flying levels, and some underwater levels. It may not sound like a lot...but it goes a long way to breaking up the game and giving it a nice exciting flow.
Plus, seeing Crash go through history is a blast. You get to go back in time to the age of the primordial soup and see little "Crash Fish", you get to see dinosaurs, you get to go to Medivel times, Roman times, Arabic times, 50's times, World War times, Castle times, New York times, and Future times...just to name a few....but don't worry kids, you won't learn anything.
And the game still has it's knack for fun characters and humor. Dr. Neo Cortex has a few lines bordering on filthy, and you get to ride a little kitty tiger through the great wall of china...which is hilarious in it's own right. Plus, getting through the levels alive isn't all there is to it. You have to collect purple gems, silver gems, green gems...all kinds of gems. And each level has a time trial you can run through while screaming and cursing because you are too slow, stupid, and indifferent to do it (market research tells me you kids like the word "indifferent").
So if you haven't played the game, go out, get it, play it, and throw your history homework away. It's boring and your mother is wrong....you'll NEVER need that stuff in the real world.