Empire of the Clouds story of the R101 airship, which crashed on its maiden voyage in northern France on 5 October 1930. The song was written entirely by the band's lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, who initially intended it to be about "World War I fighter airplanes;" Dickinson abandoned the idea after using the same theme for the song "Death or Glory," also from "The Book of Souls". At the time of recording, Dickinson was reading "a big, sort of encyclopedic crash report" of the R101, entitled "To Ride the Storm", which gave him the idea for the song's eventual subject. Dickinson describes it as
Crash of the Titans shields Crash from enemy attacks, and transforms into a skateboard to help Crash traverse slippery terrain. From there, each level (known as an "episode") asks players to complete fights against large groups of enemies or simply progress through the episode. Crash starts the game with four lives. The length of each of Crash's lives is tied to his health meter, which decreases whenever Crash is damaged from enemy attacks or falls down a bottomless pit. The player can replenish Crash's health meter by instructing Crash to eat Wumpa Fruit. Each time the health meter is fully depleted, Crash loses a