GONNA MAKE TOAST

Dingodile
“Break out the butter, gonna make toast!”

Dingodile is one of the many mutated animal villains in the Crash Bandicoot series, though with the distinction of being the only crossbreed, specifically of a dingo and a crocodile. You could have probably guessed that by the name. He first shows up without any real explanation in Crash Bandicoot: Warped, where Crash fights him in the ice age.

Like most Crash villains, Dingodile has a specific gimmick and sticks to it for nearly every fight with him, that gimmick being a flamethrower. For some reason, despite being a one-off boss with 5 lines of dialog tops, Dingodile is one of the most popular characters in the franchise, with every good spinoff game having him be playable. I’m not sure anyone knows why he’s popular, maybe it’s the accent?

Of note is that it’s implied by some of the meme dialog in Crash Tag Team Racing that Cortex killed Dingodile and made him into a handbag. While the canonicity of this is dubious at best, stating that post Twinsanity Cortex killed anyone is laughable, Dingodile never showed up in any of the main games after this, only in handheld versions of bad games, which are arguably less canon. So yeah, Dingodile may as well have been dead before they rebooted everything.

There was also the time that Dingodile was brainwashed by a walking egg, and when he used a water gun. We don’t talk about those.

Stats
Weight – 115
Walk Speed – 0.9
Run Speed – 1.5
Air Speed – 0.95
Fall Speed – 1.9

Dingodile is a super-heavyweight and has fairly generic super-heavyweight stats to go with it, the most unique being his weight, which rides the line between high heavyweight and super-heavyweight. But other than that, it’s what you would expect.
DIngodile’s model is large, roughly the same size as fellow(?) reptile K. Rool in terms of width and height, though Dingo would be taller if he stood up straight, as he has a hunched posture thanks to the large canister on his back. That size description doesn’t factor in the canister at all, actually, because with it attached to his back, he becomes one of the larger characters in the game, near Ridley levels.

Dingodile retains his N. Sane Trilogy look, but with one notable change, that being the meter on top his canister. It now looks like the more colorful, more legible version from Twinsanity, starting at a green point and moving up to red. In addition, the meter is placed at the top left of Dingodile’s character portrait during fights. Wonder why that is.

Yeah, I know its supposed to be a fuel gauge and not a heat gauge, let me extrapolate a bit.

Specials
Neutral Special – Burnt Toast
Dingodile readies his flamethrower and fires a stream of fire forwards. The flame, while somewhat comparable to Bowser’s own flame breath, actually doesn’t go towards the ground. Instead it travels straight forward, reaching 2.5 Blocks when fired. The best thing to compare it to is Bowser’s Fire Roar custom move from Smash 4, but with the steadiness of his standard version. Somewhat like Bowser, Dingodile can aim his flames, but instead Dingodile aims his gun similar to the ill-fated Cracker Launcher from Brawl, using the control stick to point it up or down.

Opponents trapped in the flames will take a stream of 1.5% damage, weaker than Bowser’s flames, but with the increased reach and control of Dingy’s attack, something needs to be made up for. This isn’t a good option for KOing, as it deals barely any knockback (as you might expect at this point, considering the Bowser comparisons), but it can rack up damage quickly. Unfortunately, the attack has the same limitations as the fire breath, as using it for too long will cause it to shrink, before Dingodile needs to recharge.

The flamethrower will stop firing after 6 seconds of continuous use. Yes, stop firing. While Bowser’s attack doesn’t stop and instead becomes hilariously useless, Dingodile will instead enter an animation where he shakes his gun in frustration, giving him brief ending lag. This long enough to be punishable, not long enough to be completely obnoxious. This is obviously not that great either way, but there is a reason for it. Dingy will have to wait 10 seconds before he can use it again.

Well, remember the valve thing I mentioned before? As Dingodile uses flame-based attacks, the gauge will gradually increase, one notch every four attacks. The notch will move up 7 times, and when it reaches the last one… things happen. Specifically, Dingodile’s gun will fully overheat, which changes up his flame-based Specials and Smashes and gives him weaker normal and aerials. This is both a blessing and a curse, as the new versions of attacks are incredibly powerful, but… you’ll see in a second.

The flamethrower is, whether you like it or not, the main means of gaining this overheat, as it will move up one notch every two seconds the flames are out, meaning that Dingodile can easily add almost half to it just by using the attack once. Obviously its hard to get out the full 6 seconds during a match, but hey, you can try.

When fully Overheated, the flamethrower will change the next time you attempt to use it (you still have to wait for it to charge if you reached max with it). Instead of a steady stream of fire, the flamethrower will let loose a massive stream of fire that reaches up 2 Blocks and reaches forward 3.5 Blocks. This isn’t like the normal flamethrower, as this is a single hit that deals 25% damage with heavy knockback, KOing at roughly 70% for mid-weight characters. While being a single hit, the flames linger for a while, giving Dingo time to have some sucker run into it. Unfortunately, this is where the downsides of this come in.

While he may be good at taking the heat normally, Dingodile isn’t prepared for this kind of heat, and starts to burn up himself, actually catching fire and falling to the ground once the move ends. This causes Dingodile to take a whopping 15% damage and heavy ending lag. That’s right, using Overheated attacks causes Dingodile to take damage himself, the main drawback of their insane damage output.

Thankfully, once one Overheated attack is used, the canister will return to normal heat and give Dingodile back his good attacks.