Everyone criticizes the exclusivity of games – they say it interferes with the industry. But exclusivity has one wonderful consequence: you can shamelessly make multi-platform clones, and no one will judge you. For example, no one will ever blame Crash Team Racing, because there’s no other way to play Mario Kart owners of PlayStation, Xbox and PC will not have.

Ugh, game for children

There’s not a lot going on in serious driving simulators: you’re driving along a track and making sure your opponents don’t pass you around corners. This process can be more demanding, realistic or less demanding, arcade-like.

Genius Mario Kart the fact that on the track there is much more action per unit of time – thanks to the balance of bonuses, “boosters” and arcade mechanics of transport control. Power-ups, placed in boxes, allow you to shoot at enemies, create sticky spots, or gain temporary immunity to them. Deliberately stupid tracks are full of unnatural obstacles, and the balance is built so that the last rider regularly becomes the first and vice versa.

Thus, in practice Kart is a serious and well-calibrated multiplayer entertainment, where your success depends on the ability to wait for the moment, hold back the bonus, jump correctly on a bump and be second on time, instead of mindlessly rushing forward. Yes, you may not like this type of gameplay. But it cannot be disputed that it is richer and more complex than ordinary racing; it is a whole subgenre that reaches a huge audience around the world.

Now cross out a couple of https://spinsy.co.uk/games/ paragraphs above Mario Kart and write it there Crash Team Racing. Nothing will change.

Ew, stupid clone

CTR Although she was an outright clone, she was a successful clone. It completely adopted the mechanics of the original and didn’t break what worked. So the authors of the remake follow this principle without changing anything significantly. In the demo version of the re-release, I drove along three classic tracks, each of which systematically complicates the gameplay and makes it much more fun.

First up is Crash Cove Beach: a regular circular track where we learn that the main mechanic of the game is drifting: essentially a QTE that gives you a boost every time you hit the R1/L1 button at the right time, either during a skid or after a spectacular fall. If you don’t do this consistently, your enemies will leave you to bite the dust. Fortunately, this is not a death sentence, and the game has a trick for the most unlucky – a special weapon that only falls behind the laggard and shoots at the leader, knocking down everyone in its path.

The second track, Tiger Temple, is complicated by bumps and fire cannons, and the third, Polar Pass, is a complete disgrace: ice, jumps that allow you to jump entire sections of the track, narrow bridges and so on – it seems there is not a single boring straight line on this map at all. Especially when all participants are constantly collecting bonuses and throwing them at each other. Everything works exactly as it should. The gameplay is not at all outdated and does not seem boring in itself.

Reissue content Nitro-Fueled not limited to the original game. Of course, they added an online mode, new tracks, a new playable character and kart customization, which was not in the original. Well, it’s beautiful now – re-releases of classic PS games have no problems with this.

But another change, which is not written about on the cover, is even more in the spirit of the times than technological graphics: Trophy Girls, the sexualized female characters who stood next to the podium in the victory section after the match, were removed from the game. Here we will refrain from commenting, and you do not deny yourself anything!

Is it worth the wait Nitro-Fueled? Nostalgic – yes, but for the rest – a question. On the one hand, everything in the game works as it should. It’s fun, playful, simple, but not primitive. On the other hand, there is a fundamental problem here: the outside world is outside Nintendo gets just a reissue from another era. But the genre has managed to evolve beyond recognition, and in “healthy person cards” everyone flies on gliders through anti-gravity zones, knocking down balloons over each other’s heads.

Nostalgia is nice, but completely uncompetitive. Wouldn’t it be better to make a sequel?? Better. And it’s possible that they will. But first they’ll see if we’ll buy a remake.