A couple years back, Crash Bandicoot was the most popular game character on the market. This of course was in his heyday of the PSOne, a time when Mario was on a small vacation. His games sold like hotcakes and some began to feel that Naughty Dog was selling out. Luckily for them, that didn’t happen until after they handed the franchise over. Crash Team Racing was released quietly and with little hype, but soon turned into a critical success. Critics called it the best Kart racing game since Super Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64 years back, and they were right. Not many games up to that point ha been able to faithfully take a character from one genre and place him in another without changing the game’s style in some way. Crash remained intact as he speeded along narrow raceways in an attempt to collect the numerous purple crystals and stop Nitrous Oxide. Well now its 2004 and the Crash Bandicoot series has stagnated as (you guessed it) a sellout. Crash Nitro Kart won’t do anything to return the series to its former glory, but the result is a very good try. Nitro Kart is not as satisfying as the original and while it has quite a few more options than before it actually ends up being quite a bit shorter in the replay department.

 

You start the game and choose from a team of characters. They include Crash, Coco , Tiny, Cortex and many other mainstays from the series. Each team has different driving statistics that can either make or break you depending on how well you can control a character. After you choose your characters, you are placed on an over world map. From there you can drive to the various competitions you may take part in. The map design in Nitro Kart lacks the creativity found in the previous game. They are competent, but very few of them really instill any sense of true speed or require much skill. It’s always about getting ahead of that one loon after he rams you with a TNT box. You can get an early boost in the race, and you can also land on the speed pads that are scattered throughout the maps. It is very important to note that this is the only way that you will be completing a race, because if you don’t use the pads, the computer AI definitely will. Like most kart games, you are given a wide array of weapons and gadgets to use in your plans to knock your opponents off the road. Most of the original favorites are back, but the newer additions leave much to be desired. Not one of the new weapons stands out at all, leaving you to sticking with the classics. After completing the required set of races, you will go up against a boss. The battles mainly entail you avoiding the traps that a boss leaves behind while you try and get ahead. None of them are particularly difficult, but some will leave you with a bad taste of “cheat” in your mouth. The computer AI can be quite brutal depending on the map you are playing so its to be expected that you lose numerous times in order to “memorize” the right strategy of play. Aside from basic races, the single player mode has some smaller mini-games like best time races and a search for crystals against a time limit. After all is said and done though, it doesn’t really last very long. It can take the average gamer under 10 hours to complete. The only redeeming quality comes from the multiplayer mode which allows you and three friends to compete in cup races or the battle mode (which is quite entertaining). The multiplayer is where the bulk of the fun comes from.

 

Graphically, Crash Nitro Kart pleases for the most part. The art design used in the game is excellent and the tracks all have their own styles that never really become repetitive. The framerate is usually rock solid, but does dip in the oddest places, particularly when a lot is going on, but sometimes it just leaves you scratching your head. Where the graphics slump are in the character animations. They are stilted, stiff and lack fluidity, which makes the characters look like remote controlled robots more than cute and fuzzy animals. Don’t expect the sound to wow you either. The character voices are pathetic (Crash doesn’t even sound like himself, and all he did to begin with was wail!), and the sound effects are typical of a racing game (vroom vroom, putter putter). The music on the other hand does its best to replicate previous games in the series, and the effort really shows. The music isn’t great, and its quite hokey, but its nice to see some of that classic Crash flair return.

 

Overall, I don’t really know what to say. On the one hand it’s not as polished or addictive as Crash Team Racing, but on the other hand, it’s pretty much the best kart racer aside from Mario Kart that we have. So if you have worn the tires of your “Mario Kart” (get it?), then it would be best to take Crash Nitro Kart for a test drive. Addictive with friends and derivative alone, you can’t really expect all that much, but Nitro Kart does its best and for the fans, that’s all that matters.