Video Game / Crash Team Racing

It's a full-blown battle on wheels. Buckle up.

"Get ready to race for the fate of your planet!"

— Nitros Oxide

The first spin-off of the Crash Bandicoot series, as well as the last game of the series developed by Naughty Dog. A Mascot Racer heavily inspired by Mario Kart, and also drawing several elements from Diddy Kong Racing, CTR is often considered to be the best kart racing game on the original Sony PlayStation, if not the entire fifth generation of consoles, though its soundtrack typically isn't viewed with as much praise.

An intergalactic visitor called Nitros Oxide arrives on Earth to challenge the world's fastest racers in a grand prix. Eight characters — each one with unique abilities and under the command of either Aku Aku or Uka Uka — will participate in races and win enough trophies to challenge him or else Oxide will turn the entire planet into a large concrete parking lot and enslave all its inhabitants. Also, other characters want to defeat Oxide on their own and will not tolerate any disturbances in their way.

The game has a Diddy Kong Racing styled 1-player adventure mode; most levels have one of each of these items to get:

• Trophies: For winning a vanilla race.
• CTR tokens: Remember the Silver Coin Challenges in Diddy Kong Racing? Well, they're back, but you only need to get 3 letters in each race this time.
• Relics: Similar to Crash 3, the courses are littered with time-stopping crates. Break all the crates (if you can) for 10-second subtraction from your final time. Finish 3 laps with a good time for a sapphire or gold relic. Or platinum.
• There's also bosses (though unlike the ones in Diddy Kong Racing, they're not giant, and they race you in basic karts) and multi-race cups through the adventure, and the battle arenas are converted into contests where you have to get all the crystals in the arena before running out of time (which is cut if you hit a Nitro crate).

The game's roster consists of:

• Starting characters: Crash Bandicoot, Dr. Neo Cortex, Tiny Tiger, Coco Bandicoot, Dr. N. Gin, Dingodile, Polar, Pura.
• Bosses: Ripper Roo, Papu Papu, Komodo Joe, Pinstripe Potoroo, Nitros Oxide^note Oxide is unplayable outside of hacks.
• Other secret characters: Fake Crash, Dr. N. Tropy, Penta Penguin.

This was followed by two indirect sequels in the sixth generation of consoles, 2003's Crash Nitro Kart and 2005's Crash Tag Team Racing, though different developers made these and recieved a mixed/mildly positive reception. Naughty Dog made their own Darker and Edgier Spiritual Successor in 2005: Jak X: Combat Racing, a well-received spin-off of the Jak and Daxter series.

With the success of the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy remaster, the original Crash Team Racing would receive similar treatment by the developer Beenox for Activision, under the title Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. Like the N. Sane Trilogy before it, Nitro-Fueled is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, released on June 21, 2019.

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Tropes used in this game:

• 100% Completion: You have to complete all the tracks, get all the CTR tokens, all of the relics (including platinum!) and defeat all of Oxide's ghosts in time trial. Beating all of Oxide's ghosts unlocks the scrapbook for the main menu that is otherwise only seen when you complete Adventure Mode (or enter a code).
  • In the Adventure mode, you must get all the trophies and beat all the bosses to race Oxide a first time, then get all the CTR tokens and win a relic on every track (sapphire is fine), then beat Oxide again for 100% and the Scrapbook.
• Abandoned Mine: The Dragon Mines, which serves as Komodo Joe's home track. There exist minecarts that serve as obstacles.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Sewer Speedway.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Nitros Oxide, who wants to turn Earth into a giant parking lot and enslave all its inhabitants.
• Alternate World Map: The Hub Worlds are all interconnected.
• Arrange Mode:
  • The "CTR Challenges" have you race in the tracks with other characters, but you also have to collect C, T, and R letters placed in different parts of the road and coming at 1st place.
  • The "Relic Race" is similar to Time Trial, but with a finite number of time crates around that you can break to stop the timer momentarily.
• Ash Face: Getting burnt by any obstacles in the course only results in spinning out for a moment before shaking off the soot.
• Astral Finale: The final boss race with Oxide takes place in his track, Oxide Station, which is situated in space just off the Earth.
• Athletic Arena Level: Tiny Arena is a Wario Stadium Expy with all you can expect from it: the track is made of dirt, surrounded by big walls, it happens on night, and it's on the podium of the longest tracks of the game.
• Badass Adorable: Penta Penguin in the European/Australian version: he's a cute little penguin with maxed out stats across the board.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Oxide states that if he wins, he will turn Earth into a giant concrete parking lot. Obviously he doesn't, but Battle Mode provides a hypothetical "What If?" scenario by naming one of the unlockable areas Parking Lot.
• The Bus Came Back: The first four bosses (not counting Oxide as he's new to this game) return for this one after being absent for a game or two; specifically, Papu Papu and Pinstripe from the first game and Ripper Roo and Komodo Joe from Cortex Strikes Back.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: Crash and Cortex are balanced^note according to the in-game stats, though they actually have below-average speed, Tiny and Dingodile are bad-handling high-speed racers, Coco and N. Gin are high-acceleration racers with below-average speed^note according to the in-game stats, though they actually have above-average speed and turning, and Polar and Pura are slow-moving but excellent turners. Unlockable racers follow this pattern as well, with the exception of Penta Penguin in the European/Australian version where he's a Master of All.
• Big Fancy Castle: Cortex Castle, the battle map Nitro Court, and the hub world Citadel City.
• Canon Immigrant: Penta Penguin originated from a Crash Bandicoot manga.
• Chase-Scene Obstacle Course: Players can drop trap-type obstacles that obstruct/slow down other racers.
• Cheat Code: There are codes that unlock all of the unlockable racers (including N. Tropy), give unlimited Wumpa Fruit, automatic and unlimited turbo, automatic weapon gain (without breaking crates), unlocking the scrapbook (you need to 100% the Adventure mode normally to see it and beat Oxide's ghost on every track to unlock it on the menu), etc. Those that modify the gameplay can be used in Adventure, too, but you will need to open the 'New/Load' screen before the codes will work.
• Citadel City: The fourth Hub Level is the Trope Namer.
• Civilization Destroyer: Unused dialogue shows that Nitros Oxide was the reason there's no life on Mars. There was, until Oxide showed up, challenged them to a racing competition, and won.
• Comeback Mechanic: These weapons appear in more frequency if you're in the last (8th) place or close to it.
  • Warp Orbs, which hits the player in first place (and all players ahead of you when it's juiced up).
  • The clock weapon, which slows down all other players when it's used.
  • And the Aku-Aku/Uka-Uka mask, which provides increased speed and invulnerability for a short time, as well as able to knock over other karts by colliding into them.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • The bosses in Adventure mode have infinite items (of the trap variety, and they are laid CONSTANTLY, though one uses the rolling bombs). Oxide starts the race before the green light! He even laughs at you as he does this.
  • Oxide is also resistant to traps and missiles, merely spinning out just like when hit with the chemicals rather than tumbling like with the TNT and Nitro; he only tumbles if you hit him twice.
  • It's implied that the bosses sans Oxide are cheating bastards because Oxide is an even bigger bastard than the other four; they have to make sure that you'll be up and prepared against Oxide's dirty tricks. Evidenced in the Purple Gem Cup where they race together with you normally with the same rules as a normal enemy racer.
  • A subtle one for the main bosses: aside from the Purple Gem cup - where they run off their normal stats - all of the bosses will gain a speed boost if behind you no matter which racer you choose. Thus Komodo Joe and Pinstripe, who have speeds equal to Crash or Coco, will also be able to easily catch up to Tiny and Dingodile. Part of the challenge is having to be neck and neck with them the whole way, even if you chose a racer whose speeds should ideally blow them out of the water.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: Contrary to what the in-game stats tell you, "Balanced" characters are not faster than Acceleration characters. As the datamined stats indicate (noted on the game's wiki), Acceleration characters actually have a higher speed value than Balanced characters, and thus have higher stats than the latter in all but turning.
• Cool Gate: The way to enter race levels in Adventure Mode is by driving onto a shining warp pod on the ground, which sucks the racer into it. The "boss garages" are also cool in their own ways, especially Oxide's.
• Cool Key: The rewards for beating bosses are keys that you'll need to open later areas of Adventure Mode and, in the end, the way to Oxide's boss race.
• Crosshair Aware: If you're being targeted by a missile or Warp Orb, there's a crosshair on your back that alerts you.
• Crutch Character: Polar, Pura, Ripper Roo, and Penta Penguin (in the American version). They have good handling, but have inadequate top speed. As such, they are extremely slow initially, and they are not the quickest accelerators either, but they can make turns without slowing down that require faster characters to powerslide or brake, and thus are the best options for learning how to handle the more complex maps.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Going into Crash Team Racing expecting Mario Kart-style short hops before initiating a drift. Due to the height gained with a hop being much higher than in any of the Mario Kart games (not counting Double Dash!!), there's a bit more of a delay before you actually start drifting.
• Dancing Mook Credits: At the end, characters dance next to the credit roll.
• Deadly Force Field: The powershield power-up can be either used as a forcefield to negate one attack or attack another player by touching them, or launched ahead to attack another player in front of you.
• Death Mountain: Dingo Canyon, and the battle map Rocky Road.
• Deflector Shields: The bubble shield weapon you can take from the crates. They can protect you once from any attack, you can knock another racer off their wheels when you collide into one, and you can also launch them forward as a projectile attack. Normally if nothing happens to the shields they'll dissipate after a time passes, but when juiced up, they'll remain up indefinitely (unless, again, something happens to the shield and it's used up). The Aku Aku/Uka Uka masks also function as this, on top of boosting your speed.
• Deliberately Jumping the Gun: The Final Boss starts driving before the final light.
• Double Unlock: To get to race Oxide for a second time and beat the game, all you have to do is beat the time trials on every course. Easy, right? Well, that includes a track that's only unlockable if you collect all five gems. How do you get those? Beat a cup race, four races in a row for one gem. How do you unlock those? Collect 4 tokens of the cup's respective color by beating races while collecting all 3 letters around the course or, for the purple tokens, by going into the arena levels and collecting all the crystals before time runs out.
• Easy Level Trick: In the form of shortcuts. Some are intentional (e.g Crash Cove, Tiger Temple, Cortex Castle), a few others are not (e.g Oxide Station), and some have shortcuts of both varieties (e.g. Hot Air Skyway).
  • Hot Air Skyway, in fact, has four shortcuts. The first is the obvious and only intentional shortcut branching to the right of the normal track when you jump off the first ramp. The second (jumping the barrier midway through the level) - the first unintentional one - is relatively simple. The third is almost Rainbow Road-esque, involving turning around and jumping to a lower layer. The fourth is just about impossible to non-competitive gamers, and involves jumping from the last ramp straight to the finish line. Demonstrated at full in this video.
• Enemy Mine: Everybody teams up against Oxide to save the world; most of the playable roster is made up of bosses from the previous games, in fact. That said, they are competing to be the one who races Oxide. Even the bosses (except for Oxide, of course) are really on your side and are essentially sparring partners. Their job is to make sure that Earth's champion is actually capable of defeating Oxide, because the entire planet loses if the champion loses.
• Expy:
  • In the form of racetracks, some of which are similar to ones from Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing. Crash Cove is one to Koopa Troopa Beach and Crescent Island, Coco Park is one to Luigi Raceway and Royal Raceway, and Tiny Arena is one to Wario Stadium.
  • While the weapons differ from Mario Kart items, some of their uses are very similar: the Brio Beaker is an immobile trap like the Banana Peel, the Missile attacks the racer in front of the thrower like the Red Shell, etc.
• Flawless Victory: Getting all the time-freezing crates in a time trial rewards a 10 second deduction from your final time. Quite often, this is necessary due to the ridiculous Platinum Relic times.
• Fragile Speedster: Coco, N. Gin, and Pinstripe all are high-acceleration karts. Because of this, they reach their top speeds (which is only second to that of Tiny, Dingodile, Papu Papu, and N. Tropy despite the game's stat display saying otherwise) more quickly and recover from hits more quickly as well. However, their karts handle worse than those of balanced characters.
• The Ghost: Downplayed; the Brio Beaker item is named after Dr. N. Brio according to the instruction manual, yet he is nowhere to be seen in the game.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Justified in the Adventure mode by way of Enemy Mine. In order to see who is capable of representing their world in the race against Oxide, many of Cortex's allies and evolved animals from the original trilogy join in the race alongside Crash and the rest of the heroes, either by being one half of the main starting roster or serving as your opponent in the boss races that cap off each world.
• Goomba Stomp: You can crush enemy cars, flattening and slowing them down for a few seconds, by hitting them with your upraised front when you get a full speed boost.
• Graceful Loser: N. Tropy when you beat him in all the Time Trials.
• Guide Dang It!: Some crates in Relic Race and letters in CTR Challenge placed on shortcuts seem out of reach on certain tracks, with no obvious way to get to them, though this can be averted when observing Oxide's ghost in Time Trial.
• Home Stage/Theme Naming: With only a few exceptions^note Mystery Caves, Sewer Speedway, Blizzard Bluff, Slide Colosseum, and Turbo Track, every stage in the game is named after one of the playable characters (Crash Cove, Roo's Tubes, Coco Park, etc) and serves as their home stage. An added Meaningful Background Event is that if you are not playing said character, the AI racer who is put in first at the starting line will be said corresponding character. Hot Air Skyway and Dragon Mines are the two exceptions to be home stages that are not named after their characters (Pinstripe and Komodo Joe, respectively), unless you count Blizzard Bluff serving as Penta Penguin's home stage.
• Homing Projectile: The Missile weapon will track the opponent in front of you, provided that you don't fire it from too far away. When juiced up, it gets better tracking capability and travels much faster.
  • The warp-ball is one for the leading racer, and as such a racer can only get it if they're lagging behind. When juiced up, the ball will also knock over other racers in the way.
• Hub Level: Appears in the Adventure Mode.
• Invisibility: One Battle mode-only weapon lets the user become invisible for a time. Only their wheels can be seen by the controlling user during this state.
• Jack of All Stats: Despite what the games shows, the "balanced" characters actually are Masters of None. See the trope below for further explanations.
  • Considering the gameplay of the game, the acceleration based characters are closer to this trope: because of their actually good top speed and their low handling stat, they are a good introduction to drifts and turbo boosts.
  • Penta Penguin is this in the European/Australian version of the game: he may have perfect stats all round, but Mighty Glacier computers playing against them will have a slightly better top speed, making him fall into this trope by default.
• Lethal Lava Land: Mystery Caves.
• Levels Take Flight: Hot Air Skyway.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: N. Gin Labs, and the unlockable battle map Lab Basement.
• Magikarp Power: Polar and Pura initially start out as this, in Adventure Mode. Their karts do not have much in the way of top speed, and power sliding in a straight line is a troublesome task for them. After Papu Papu's boss fight is when tracks turn out more favorably for the handling-centric karts and the game gives myriad opportunities for them to come out on top. Notably, tracks such as Dragon Mines and Hot Air Skyway are turning-centric. While they would normally be difficult for someone without stellar handling, Polar and Pura have karts which make those tracks a breeze for them.
• Man-Eating Plant: There are these in Papu's Pyramid, although the worst you suffer from them is lots of lost time.
• Marathon Level: Tiny Arena and Oxide Station are the longest tracks in the game.
• Master of All: In the European/Austarlian version, the cheat-only character Penta Penguin has perfect scores in all stats. When it comes to the race itself, though, he's often tiered lower than the high-speed-low-handling characters, due to how power-sliding works.
• Master of None: Despite being presented as well-rounded in all areas, Crash, Cortex, Fake Crash, and Komodo Joe all ultimately fall into this: despite the game saying they have decent speed and acceleration, they're actually outclassed in speed by Acceleration characters and acceleration by the Turning characters (despite the game saying otherwise in both cases), leaving their one definitively good stat as handling, which isn't particularly useful in the earlier courses due to it ensuring they have trouble drifting in a straight line consistently and only sees some use in the later, harder courses.
• Mayincatec: Papu's Pyramid. Also the battle map Rampage Ruins and the hub world both tracks are placed in, The Lost Ruins. To some extent, Tiger Temple.
• Meta Power-Up: The Wumpa Fruits are used to increase your max speed and, when you reach 10, upgrades all of your acquired weapons.
• Mighty Glacier: Tiny, Dingodile, Papu Papu, and N. Tropy are all heavyweight karts with exceptionally good top speed. Because they're heavyweights, however, their handling suffers and they take their time to reach top speed.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Once power-sliding is mastered, however, those guys can remain on their top speed the whole race, trivialize turns, and even, thanks to the low handling stat, powerslide in straight lines and chain drift boosts without losing time.
• Moving The Goal Posts: Zigzagged; When Oxide arrives, he says that he'll leave Earth alone if he's beaten in the big race. Once you do, he relents and says that Earth gets to stay "all gushy and green"... but then claims that he won't leave until you gather up all his Time Relics and beat him again to prove that you're "the fastest in the Universe". As it so happens, getting all 18 Time Relics basically means you have to 100% the game! This can be subverted by the player however if they go for 100% completion before taking Oxide on the first time, causing Oxide to leave right away after his defeat.
• Nitro Boost: The sliding boost mechanic can give the racers additional speed boosts while sliding. There are speed-up pads on many sections of the track, usually for crossing gaps. You can also acquire the Turbo and Super Engine weapons, both of which gives you a free boost, with Super Engine giving up much more (but is only available in Battle mode plays). The Aku Aku/Uka Uka masks also functions as this, on top of making you invincible.
• Non-Fatal Explosions: No matter how many Nitros, chemicals, TNTs, bombs, missiles, or warp-balls (that work like the spiny shell in Mario Kart) the racers get hit with, the worst they get is a tumbling and then they always eventually land wheels-down to continue.
• Nonlethal Bottomless Pits: Whenever a kart falls into a pit, Aku Aku/Uka Uka will lift them back up.
• Nostalgia Level: Many levels are straightforward homages to settings from the original trilogy. A few examples: Blizzard Bluff is one to the snow forest levels in Cortex Strikes Back, Polar Pass to the snow and ice levels of the same game, Tiger Temple to the dark ruins levels of the first two games, and N. Gin Labs to the lab levels in the very first game.
• Not Just a Tournament: In the intro for the game, as well as all modes besides the Adventure mode, the cast just races for the fun of it and to win trophies, but then Oxide comes and threatens the whole planet to become slaves unless their racing champion can beat him at racing, kicking off the plot of the Adventure mode.
• Oddball in the Series: A Mascot Racer game in a series of platformers. At least, it was an oddball at the time, as racers became a staple of the series from then on.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Due to how power sliding works, acceleration tends to not be much of a factor for a good player, who will remain at top speed the whole race, and having a high turning stat may prove to be hindering, preventing a character from power sliding in a straight line (sound familiar?); so characters are tiered pretty much based on their top speed.
• Palm Tree Panic: Crash Cove, the battle map Skull Rock, and the hub world N. Sanity Beach.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: The CPU racers never get any of the Comeback Mechanic weapons, unlike the player. They also never use the (harder) shortcuts, even in the hardest difficulty.
• Portal Endpoint Resemblance: Played with. While four of the five Hub Levels thematics are centered around one of their four tracks, subtle details around these tracks' portals refer to them. The most blatant example is Citadel City which rooms are decorated to fit three tracks thematics while the fourth is placed at the exterior with a blimp above the portal, and the "boss garage" is right in front of it to show where it will happen.
• Purposely Overpowered: Attempted with Penta Penguin in the European/Australian version. However, due to poor handling actually being an advantage, he's not actually top tiered.
• Refuge in Audacity: Cortex's epilogue, mentioned below.
• Regional Bonus: Penta Penguin, the most secret character, is a run-of-the-mill beginner character in the American version, but, in the European/Australian version, has all stats maxed out.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: Nitros Oxide (note the lack of a U).
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Tiger Temple happens on a ruin temple which seems to worship tigers. Its Hub Level, the Lost Ruins, Papu's Pyramid, and the battle level Rampage Ruins fit too.
• Rule of Cool: Pinstripe, the tommy-gun wielding mafioso, has his level be a gloriously impractical length of twisty tarmac in the sky. This is in contrast to the more 'normal' levels of the other warm-up bosses (a Shark Tunnel, Mayincatec temple and an underground cavern).
• Sacrificial Planet: Unused audio found in the game's files reveals that Oxide is the cause of the barren wasteland on Mars: the inhabitants on the planet failed to defeat him at racing and thus got obliterated. He threatens to do the same on Earth (by making the planet a parking lot and enslaving all its inhabitants) if they fail to defeat him at racing, too - setting up the story.
  You're the fastest racer so far? You're the best this planet can offer? This is going to be a bigger joke than that last civilization I challenged. What was it called... on that red planet so close to here... Oh, yes. I think you call it Mars. Now that was an easy win. What? You say there is no civilization on the planet Mars? (laughs) Not anymore! They lost the race!
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: The tracks in Adventure Mode aren't placed in ascending difficulty. Many times, the courses are chosen because it fits into the theme of the world rather than difficulty. This is why, for example, the second world has both Coco Park and Papu's Pyramid, a simple track and a pretty hard track respectively. The Arcade Mode cups fix this and the tracks are in ascending difficulty.
• Secret A.I. Moves: When fought as bosses, Komodo Joe and Nitros Oxide demonstrate the ability to throw TNT crates into the air and have them explode upon hitting the ground. Outside of hopping to get a TNT crate off of a racer's head, this cannot be done in-game, as TNT crates can only be placed behind the player when used and cannot be made to explode at will.
• Secret Character: Penta Penguin is the only character who must be unlocked with a cheat code. The other hidden characters can be unlocked via cheat codes or accomplishing in-game tasks.
• Shark Tunnel: Most of Roo's Tubes takes place in one of these.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Blizzard Bluff is a relatively innocent snow level, while the harder Polar Pass' is a more technical pack ice level with seals, ice pools and a big jump. The Hub Level Glacier Park and the battle map The North Bowl are a midpoint between it.
• SNK Boss: Nitros Oxide is deliberately designed to be as unfair of a boss as possible. It's one thing that he drops the items of every single boss character, but he also crosses the starting line before the green light, and datamining reveals that he's the only character in the game (besides Penta Penguin in the PAL release) who has perfect stats in every category.
• Space Zone: The Oxide Station, which doubles as a Marathon Level due to its extreme length. It's also the only track that cannot be played in multiplayer.
• Springtime for Hitler: A meta example. Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin knew that their contract with Universal was about to expire, so to make the Crash Bandicoot license seem unappealing to contractors, they made Nitros Oxide the main antagonist, hoping that the inclusion of an alien would make everybody think they were Jumping the Shark. Unfortunately for them, Nitros Oxide became a popular character, and CTR is remembered as one of the PlayStation's best.
• Squashed Flat: A number of the track-specific obstacles can flatten the racers and make them run slower for a time, such as the rolling barrels in Sewer Speedway or the rolling rocks in Blizzard Bluff. You can also inflict this on other players with the Turbo weapon by activating it and then pressing the hop button when you're crashing behind them (it needs good timing).
• Stock Footage: The Naughty Dog crate burst animation from the intro is exactly the same one from Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: The rolling bomb weapons, sometimes called Bowling Bombs, which can only be shot in a straight line, forwards or backwards. You can also press Circle a second time to prematurely detonate it if you're slightly off-target, which becomes much more useful with a juiced-up Bomb as it gets a wider blast radius.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Every item has a "juiced-up" version if you have the maximum 10 Wumpa Fruit (which are scattered around the course and also slightly increase your speed, like the coins in Mode-7 Mario Kart titles as well as 7 and 8).
  • One particularly noteworthy example is the Warp Orb. A normal Warp Orb acts like a Mario Kart blue shell and targets the player in first place, although other racers in its path can get hit if they aren't careful. The juiced-up Warped Orb? It hits EVERYBODY IN FRONT OF THE PLAYER.
  • Penta Penguin in the European/Australian version has souped up stats everywhere, making him quite the speed demon.
• The Unfought:
  • N. Tropy in the main game; you only fight him in the Time Trial mode. Quite fittingly.
  • Same with Fake Crash and Penta, both of whom don't even show up as opponents in the game at all.
• The Unintelligible: Ripper Roo, who speaks in mad laughter outside of the Japanese version.
• Variable Mix: In the hub world, each and every hub has a variation of the overworld theme that plays in the background.
• Vehicular Combat: Battle Mode, where players try to shoot each other while speeding on their karts.
• Wacky Racing: Crash Team Racing is essentially "Mario Kart meets the Looney Tunes", essentially because the weapons are more hardcore: bananas are replaced by toxic beakers, fake item boxes by TNT crates, and shells by bombs and missiles.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Papu Papu, to racers who aren't Tiny or Dingodile. Top speed is his primary stat, and Papu's Pyramid does not offer much of a disadvantage for him as most of the turns needed are still wide enough for him (and Tiny/Dingodile) to make without much of an issue. The map is significantly more difficult than other levels within the same mini-hub. The trade-off is that Papu Papu's traps are the N. Brio beakers, which he throws far behind him, making them easier to dodge than the TNT crates Ripper Roo places directly behind him. After Papu Papu is defeated, the game's Adventure Mode begins to shape up.
• Warm-Up Boss: Ripper Roo is a character with low top speed, a high handling that wouldn't do him any good in his challenge map (as said map, Roo's Tubes, is one of the simplest and most straightforward in the game), and while his trademark TNT traps are difficult to dodge, they can usually be easily shaken off (unless you're heading over a ramp, in which case you generally won't be able to get enough hops in to shake it off due to the decline making each hop longer).
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Played for Laughs, of course, like how Pinstripe becomes a used car salesman in New Jersey and Cortex finds a new element he calls (and patents as) "Cortexrulestheworldium".

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"Crash sold his life's story to a major movie studio. The film entitled The Color Orange will be released for the Christmas season. Crash can now be found on a beach down under, doing what he does best... dancing and napping!"

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