The fourth overall installment in the Crash Bandicoot series, Crash Team Racing was an incredibly addictive game to play as a child that has simply never gotten old.
As much as I have talked about baseball being one of my earliest interests in life, I would be lying if I said I had baseball-related memories before I had video game-related memories.
While the household SNES and hours of watching my family play Super Mario All-Stars was undoubtedly the biggest catalyst for my early draw to gaming, the fascination developed another layer after my family purchased a PlayStation at some point in 1999.
Although the console was initially bought due to my dad’s interest in Test Drive 5, a reality-modeled racing simulator, my mom and older sister were drawn into Crash Bandicoot: Warped soon afterwards, a game that is part of some of my earliest memories.
With Warped serving as the third installment in the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy, the series departed from its established norms with the 1999 release of Crash Team Racing.
A kart racing game meant to compete with the likes of Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing, both of which were released two years prior, CTR includes many of the characters introduced earlier in the series while also featuring a riveting single-player mode.
Long seen as a weakness in the Mario Kart series, CTR went a step further from the ambitious single-player campaign offered in Diddy Kong Racing, with a variety of collectables and backtracking required to fully complete the game.
This doesn’t short players at all in the multiplayer department either, with a battle mode offered in addition to traditional versus modes, with the multiplayer modes featuring an expanded roster with unlockable characters, directly tying the single-player and multiplayer versions together.
Though I was too young to remember exactly when my family took home CTR for the first time, it’s crystal clear that I was enamored with the game from the very start, offering a young child such as myself a more accessible way to enjoy Crash as opposed to Warped.
Beyond being a commercial success across the board, it was a smash hit within my family, even winning over my dad who usually just stuck to Super Mario games on the SNES.
To me, both as a 5-year-old child and 29-year-old man, CTR offers a kind of charm and comfortable nostalgia that is truly impossible to replicate, even with the incredibly impressive and fun remaster of this game.
While players can have hours of fun in the multiplayer modes, the unique allure of CTR always rested in the single-player mode for myself – something that greets players as soon as they start a new game.
From a bizarre introduction to both the world you’ll be traversing and the game’s primary antagonist in Nitros Oxide to the first player selection screen, it became abundantly clear that CTR was a different beast when compared to the other kart racers of its time.
The player selection was the first fun layer to unwrap for many fans, who are offered a wide range of opportunities between the eight characters offered. From the established options in Crash and Coco to familiar allies in Polar and Pura, CTR opened up a new window by offering players the chance to play as traditional villains.
This allowed Cortex, N. Gin, Dingodile and Tiny Tiger to act as playable characters for the first time in the series’ history, an option that would be replicated with the 2000 party game release Crash Bash.
From there, players are sent to N. Sanity Beach, the game’s first homeworld, where you are immediately greeted with a peaceful tropical setting and adaptation of the game’s theme, the latter of which changes as you traverse through the game’s homeworlds.
The inclusion of homeworlds and individual boss races was boosted by players also needing to collect relics and CTR tokens, – the latter of which require players to win a race while collecting three tokens spread across the course, while the former requires a course to be completed in a given amount of time, with the aid of time-freezing crates.
The game’s attention to detail showed impressively few limitations when considering the era and hardware the title was released on. The game’s 16 primary tracks, many of which are named and/or based after one of the playable characters, added personality and purpose to many of the stops along the single-player campaign.
As a young kid, this truly made every playthrough of the game feel like a long-winded journey through a fascinating world that transcends both time and season. The difficulty appropriately scales up with each track required to complete the game, while boss races feature increasingly difficult hazards as the player progresses.
Between CTR tokens, trophies, relics, boss races and even gems, the game’s addicting multiplayer mode is almost made out to be an afterthought with the countless hours that can be spent on the adventure mode.
I was clearly not alone in my love and nostalgia for the game, with a multi-platform remaster of the game being released in the form of Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled in 2019.
Don’t get me mistaken – I love and have spent countless hours on the remaster, which we own for both Xbox One and Switch. With the inclusion of reworked tracks from CTR’s successor, Crash Nitro Kart, in addition to a truly dizzying amount of customization options, Nitro-Fueled boasts an incredible amount of replay value and capitalizes excellency on the thirst for nostalgia.
As much as seeing the reimagined courses come to life with a new level of vividity that previous consoles were simply nowhere near capable of, there is no replicating or besting the serenity offered in some PlayStation graphics, particularly when it comes to the background and atmosphere.
With relatively simple backdrops being universal among video games from the fifth-generation, the simple but picturesque depictions of the sky throughout CTR are in perfect harmony with the game’s tracks and music, bringing about a charm that really couldn’t be replicated even if it was attempted in today’s gaming landscape.
Tracks that best exemplify this include Papu’s Pyramid and Polar Pass, both of which offer contrasting takes on a sunset, vividly putting the player at either 7:45 p.m. on a warm summer evening or 4:35 p.m. on a frigid January afternoon.
CTR was far from alone among PS1 games in creating this charm, but the accessible, friendly nature of the game being complemented by a legitimately comforting atmosphere through and through have made this title an unquestionable lifelong favorite of mine.
For those that have never played CTR, I highly recommend giving Nitro-Fueled a shot, an excellent remaster that truly does bring the best of both worlds in reviving a classic game while supplying a surplus of modern amenities.
For those that are really nostalgia hungry, a PlayStation and copy of CTR won’t at all break the bank when considering the prices of today’s consoles and games.
A simple game that can provide countless hours of memories and fun both solo and with others, Crash Team Racing is distinguished as a magnum opus of the kart racing genre.
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