Crash Bandicoot is back! Prepare for an exhilarating blast from the past in Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled. Grab your favourite driver, customise your Kart, and beat the evil megalomaniac Nitros Oxide in the race to save the planet. But what does the game offer that improves on the original? Strap in and hold tight – this is going to be a crazy ride!

OLD SCHOOL

‘90s kids will definitely remember losing hours of time to the Crash Bandicoot series, and Crash Team Racing was no different. For anyone that didn’t get in on the high-octane fun, let’s take a look at what you missed – starting with the story. It’s a tale as old as time: an evil alien travels the galaxy forcing each planet to take part in dangerous races to fight for their survival, we’ve all been there right?

Nitros Oxide comes from Gasmoxia and is obsessed with his “Survival of the Fastest” challenges, but he’s got an incredibly short temper combined with also being a sore loser if he’s beaten… The original game let racers choose from 15 different characters, but Nitro-Fueled includes up to 26 playable characters to unlock as you progress. All these modes from the original game are going to be a big part of CTR: Nitro-Fueled, so strap in and let’s take a look at the good old days, remastered!

ADVENTURE

Play through the story in Adventure Mode, unlocking new levels by winning races and collecting relics, trophies, and gems. Players can get the edge over their opponents by driving through question mark crates to pick up power-ups and weapons, or fruit crates to gain Wumpa Fruit. Wumpa Fruit speeds up the karts and even super-charges the racer’s weapons if they pick up enough of them! Didn’t your mother tell you fruit was good for you? She just didn’t know she was giving out great Crash Team Racing advice. Once four trophies are collected in a single level, a ‘Boss Garage’ is unlocked and it’s time to go head-to-head with a boss. By defeating them, players won a ‘Boss Key’, which let them push onto the next level. After all 16 levels are beaten, it’s time to take down Nitros Oxide on his ship! Who else spent hours trying to defeat him in the original?

TIME TRIAL

Even after you’ve beaten all the bosses and Nitros Oxide, there’s still one more racer to challenge… Yourself! Go round each track and see how fast you can make it round, then face your ghost and try to race your previous time… Good luck!

ARCADE

Fancy an extended challenge? Arcade Mode is the best way to test your endurance skills by entering into a set of four races. It lets racers customise the difficulty of each track as well as how many laps they have to do, so it doesn’t always have to be a pulse-pounding race to the finish! Additionally, with Versus mode racers can go up against their friends in similar games to those in Arcade.

BATTLE

How about some rapid-fire kart warfare? In the days of the original, Battle might’ve been the cause of many childhood arguments between friends because those tussles got intense! Battle lets up to four racers go head-to-head in customisable, weaponised fights across seven different maps. Use bowling bombs and tracking missiles to dish out the damage or speed past your opponents unseen with some invisibility…

NEW KARTS ON THE BLOCK

If you hadn’t heard the news already, Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled is bringing back all your favourite modes, characters, and more in one high-octane game that will keep you racing for hours and give you that sweet, sweet wave of nostalgia! But what does the new game offer that the original doesn’t? Well, it’s updated with 2019 HD visuals running at 4K for a start – but it offers content that wasn’t in the classic Crash Team Racing, as well as all the modes we just looked at, here’s what else you can expect.

TRACK RECORD

Remember Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Tag Team Racing? They were the 2003 and 2005 sequels to Crash Team Racing, and if you thought Beenox and Activision were forgetting about them – don’t worry. Nitro-Fueled is bringing back content from both games to give racers every single track from both games at their fingertips. At the moment, there are 31 different courses to fling yourself around at insane speeds while firing missiles and power sliding all over the place. And don’t forget that there’ll be even more tracks available in the post-release content – all of which will be brand new for CTR: Nitro-Fueled. So which one will take your fancy first? Dingo Canyon? Crash Cove? Polar Pass? We can’t wait to get around Coco Park again…Don’t worry if you thought the original game was too difficult, there are several different difficulty settings to choose from!

JUST KART GET ENOUGH

The game gives players five main hubs to travel around, each with their own challenges and hidden areas to unlock. Make sure you get all the trophies, relics, and CTR letters so that you can take down each boss before battling it out with Nitros Oxide himself! Beating each boss not only unlocks them to use as drivers afterwards, but their kart’s colour scheme and a sticker to use. Crash racing games never really let players customise their characters or karts… Until now. Racers can change everything about their rides, from the kart bodies, paint jobs, stickers, and even new wheels. There are also other whole karts available to unlock through the in-game shop, the Pit Stop. Additionally, there are unlockable Legendary Skins for each character that, when unlocked, provides a unique podium celebration – so keep an eye out…

ONLINE AND SEASONAL CONTENT

Single player is great and all, but it’s not the same as taking on real, squishy humans, is it? This time around, CTR offers more than one way of getting that adrenaline rush by introducing an online mode! Races of up to 8 people can battle it out to the top of the leaderboard and be proclaimed as the best of Crash Team Racing. But what about after the release? The rush doesn’t stop once it’s all been completed; not by a long shot. Seasonal content will be on its way From July 3rd, and there are some huge surprises in store. Each season will have a variety of challenges centred around a brand new track, and with each Grand Prix challenge completed, players will fill up their Nitro Gauge to unlock brand new characters, skins, karts, and other customisation items.

TRICK SHOT

So since you’re going to be losing plenty of hours to Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, we thought we’d give you a few tips and tricks to help kick-start your marathon!

At the start of each race, wait until the final green light before hitting boost – it’ll send you ahead of the competition! Keep an eye on the meter at the bottom of the screen to see how your boost is filling up, you’ll need to be in the red before boosting.

The Aku Aku mask gives drivers invincibility and hurls them at top speed.

Lose an opponent from your tail by using a bowling bomb or throwing a TNT crate, supercharge these items by collecting Wumpa Fruit while you drive!

Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled is out now for the PlayStation® 4, PlayStation® 4 Pro, Nintendo Switch™, and the family of Xbox One devices from Microsoft, including the Xbox One X.