Crash Team Racing

"I would suggest kryptonite. But that's just me."

I was never allowed video games. I mean, sure, my grandparents had a NES and my cousin had a PS1, but my ma always told me that she didn't want her kids rotting their brains on video games. Yeah, well I played Starfox when she wasn't looking, and I turned out to be a child prodigy. HA!

CTR was my first actual video game, and at the time, I was told it was the only video game I was ever getting. She intended to keep the PS1 until my broken leg healed, but I couldn't say good bye to CTR.

So maybe it was because it was nostalgic. But CTR has many more pros than cons. I mean, today, if somebody tried to pass this off as a video game for the PS3, they'd be kicked in the face repeatedly just for thinking about it. That sounds like fun. Well, being the kicker, not the kick-ee. That would hurt.

The graphics are crappy. But back then they were the cream of the crop. I actually stumbled across an old video game review site a few months ago, and they were praising the graphics for being "realistic, state of the art, and convincing." Or something like that. But the play station was one of the first consoles to introduce polygons in their games (save for the atari, but we'll pretend that didn't exist. And while we're pretended /that/ didn't exist, we'll pretend George Bush never existed either) so of course they were saying it was beautiful. Rather, 'state of the art'. I mean, most of the time, when you're racing as N. Gin, if he leans back too far, his missle will start going through his back or his go-kart. And that's not too much of a problem, but my brothers always though they were viewing an entirely different level when they crashed into a corner and could see through the boundaries. "No, Tyler, that's not a different level, it's just poor graphics."

Okay, sure, we can't expect much from the '90s graphics. But the story...well, we've been telling stories since before we walked the earth, so there's no excuse there. An alien with a really cool voice (however, nobody actually knows who did the voice...) named Nitrous Oxide has challenged the earth to a racing competition. Nitrous Oxide, though? I mean really. Think about it. What are the chances that on some distant planet in some distant galaxy, they use NO2 to speed up their cars too? Wouldn't you think they'd have some sort of alien mineral that goes much faster than NO2? Like...kryptonite. But back to the story...the earthlings will send forth their best driver to beat him, and if they can't, he'll turn the entire planet into a parking lot. If they win, he'll go away forever. Once he's done announcing this to the earth, he goes and sets up base in...well, it looks like Hawaii, but you can't be too sure. So then everyone starts working on their cars--Cocoa downloads stuff into hers with her laptop, Polar pretends to read a book about driving, Dingodile...does something, but does it wrong, because it blows up in his face, and Crash just sits around and sleeps. Okay, I don't get that. Crash is supposed to be the most balanced character, and the one that saves the day, but he's sitting around sleeping? I put my trust more in Tiny Tiger, who smashes the crap out of his car. So the story could use a bit of work, but stories don't affect gameplay. I mean, we may have had stories for eternity, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of them are garbage. I mean, Shaq Fu had the worst storyline ever, but...the gameplay was awful, so that's a bad example.

The actual racing is obviously the best part. If it wasn't, then there'd be quite a few different sort of problems with this game. Each racer has a different colored go-kart with different stats. Some have better acceleration than others but poor speed, some have better turning than acceleration, etc. There are two or three characters that are balanced, though. I don't know about you, but I'd rather go with fifth grade physics--why go for middle-class everything, when you can have great acceleration? I mean, doesn't acceleration cover turning as well? I /did/ fail fifth grade, because at least half of the year I was in detention, but I'm /still/ pretty sure some of what I just wrote made a bit of sense. To someone who just got hit by a car...well, I'm sure if you went and asked someone who just got hit by a car what they thought about acceleration, they'd say something like "I don't care; just get me to a damn hospital."

I really love the weapons. I mean, they all seem to mirror weapons from Mario Kart, but they're still awesome. The controls in Mario Kart are kinda...slippery. I mean, in the N64 version, you have to practically stop, rotate your kart, then start going again if you don't want to crash into a tree or wall or something. The NDS version is much better, but CTR and Mario Kart for the N64 came out of the same time, so that's what I'm referring to. There are missles, which you can get in sets of one or three, (reminiscent of turtle shells, the red kind) bombs, in sets of one or three (think green turtle shells) a sort of eyeball thing that hits just the person in first place if you have nine or less wumpa fruit (think blue turtle shells) or hits everyone in front of you /and/ the person in first place if you have ten wumpa fruit. Wumpa fruit looks like some sort of combination of peaches and apples, I can't tell. You can find them most often in crates that reappear after a few seconds, but sometimes you'll find single wumpa fruits just lying around in the road. Those are more annoying than anything. You'll be driving along, and then "oh look, a wumpa fruit. I'll go get it." and either one of two things happens--it's just one, and it doesn't really help your score that much, or you go to get it, and hit a mine or a nitro box or something, and your score goes back down to zero. That's not helpful at all. Another thing is that if you get ten wumpa fruit, it's supposed to not only beef up your kart and make it go faster, (I can't really tell, but okay...) and it also upgrages your weapons. Instead of the little green potions (we always called them juice boxes...um...yeah...) you get red ones that not only make you spin out, but you get a little rain cloud over your head that makes you go slower. Well, if you've had the game as long as I have, and I got it when it first came out, then I doubt that the game still realizes that you're supposed to go slower. On several occassions I've actually just driven through the traps...

So okay, to todays standards, CTR isn't that great of a game. It probably would get about nine and a half people in 'accidental' car wrecks. But in 1999, this was the greatest thing that anyone had ever seen, and I'm going with that mindset.

Besides, they could have used '90s music for the soundtrack.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/10/08

Game Release: Crash Team Racing (US, 09/30/99)