YMMV / Crash Team Racing

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Jason Rubin, one of the creators, notably stated he thought by making Oxide an alien, they would have jumped the shark and caused the series to fail, as Naughty Dog wasn't sure they could take the game much further and intended to torpedo the series' future chances with what they saw as a ludicrous character (this is due to bad blood developing between them and Universal Interactive Studios). Crash Team Racing received high sales and high ratings from multiple gaming review sites, including notes that, while it added nothing new to the mascot racer genre, CTR did some things better than other similar games did (including the original Mario Kart). Meanwhile, Oxide himself became an Ensemble Dark Horse due to his cartoony charm still making him an ideal fit for the Crash universe despite (or even because of) his weird concept, with later Crash titles even expanding the "intergalactic racing" premise of the game.
• Awesome Levels:
  • Sewer Speedway. The best part is a half-pipe section including a wild shortcut that requires you to hop off the top of the halfpipe with a drift boost (or item) to reach it.
  • Most of the late-game tracks as well, notably Oxide Station the longest in the game. Especially once you know the Easy Level Trick for it.
• Character Tiers: It varies from track to track. Some of the more straightforward tracks require a bit of top speed, while others are more favorable for karts with better acceleration and/or handling. Most Battle Mode tracks require good handling in order to be agile against most projectiles flung at you by other people, while most other kinds of tracks can have handling issues be circumvented a la power sliding to get proper boosts to not fall behind.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Trophy Girls, Isabella, Megumi, Ami and Liz, are surprisingly popular for only appearing in one game for a while. People lamented their removal from the victory screen in the aforementioned remake, only to cheer when it turned out they were Promoted to Playable and now known as the Nitro Squad.
• Fanon: Despite there being eight playable characters in the Adventure Mode, whenever the game is referenced in fanworks, Crash is generally considered the "canon" winner (and thus the one who defeated Oxide and saved the Earth) due to him being the hero of the series. The Wrath of Cortex lends some credence to this, since a racing trophy can be seen on the fireplace shelf in Crash's house in that game's intro cutscene (though it could just as easily belong to Coco, Polar or Pura).
• First Installment Wins: Crash Team Racing is much more popular than either of the two sequels. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who prefers either of them to the original.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the NTSC version of the game, Penta Penguin's voice files are unfinished. While he mostly makes typical penguin noises, his cheers for when he boosts have him saying "Penguin Yay 1" and "Penguin Yay 2" in a monotone male voice. These were two placeholder sound effects recorded by programmer Gavin James, which went unnoticed until the game was being put up for sale. The PAL version of the game fixed the error, but the version on the PSN store still has the wrong dialogue.
  • The PAL version, meanwhile, has a bug when selecting the game language: pressing the triangle button to back out instead of selecting a language will cause most text to display as dashes and hyphens, and, even more bizarrely, causes the bosses barring Ripper Roo to swap heads during cutscenes, leading to the surreal sight of Pinstripe's head on Papu Papu's body, Oxide's head on Komodo Joe's body, Komodo Joe's head on Pinstripe's body, and Papu Papu's head on Oxide's body.
  • A very elaborate series of glitches can be used to put the game in a pseudo custom boss race mode, which gives even more bizarre glitches if two people are playing.
• Harsher in Hindsight: According to the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, Pura gets a job as part of a Sigfried and Roy expy's act, which ends when he accidentally kills the Roy expy. Four years later, the actual Roy was mauled by one of the duo's own tigers mid-show, effectively ending their act. Perhaps due to this, the remake alters it so that the Roy expy doesn't die and Pura just goes solo after that.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Ami becoming a racer in her part of the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, in light of the remake making her a playable character.
  • The trophy girls are all named after Sony representatives that were in various branches at the time, particularly one Megumi Hosoya who came up with the Crash Dance, so it was already a "thank you" gift. The fact that they all became playable in the remake is an even greater honor.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During Ami's part in the epilogue, it's mentioned that she had gotten sick of handing out trophies and decided to race and win one. 20 years later, we get to see her in action as one of the remake's DLC characters. Also, she receives high speed stats, just like the majority of the racers she gave said trophies to.
  • Some fans had initially confused Isabella for Tawna, despite some differences in their designs. Both of the girls eventually wound up in the aforementioned remake.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Unfortunately the case for two of the classes in the game:
  • Turning characters are considered terrible due to their poor design: their main draw is supposed to be their great handling allowing them to take corners better than the other types, but this is usually more of a hindrance than a benefit due to this ensuring they can't snake effectively on straightways and thus struggle to retain their reserves. In addition, they're the slowest of the four classes, meaning that if they do end up leading, they're likely to be overtaken anyways, with their only niche being on tracks with lots of sharp turns such as Cortex Castle and Oxide Station.
  • Balanced characters unfortunately don't fare that much better. This is mostly due to the fact several of the stats listed for the Balanced characters are deceptively low: although their speed stat is stated to be one point higher than the Acceleration characters, they're actually slower than them and have worse acceleration than the already-slow Turning characters, resulting in them being heavily outclassed by Acceleration in everything they can possibly do. Even their comparatively better turning is considered a flaw, as the turn stat is often regarded as a redundant Dump Stat by experienced players at best, and an active detriment at worst due to the tighter turning ensuring it's much harder to snake on straightways consistently. Fans were not happy to learn this inconsistency carried over into the remake, and there's active demand to get them buffed there to actually reflect their displayed stats.
• Memetic Mutation: "Penguin yay one / two." ^ExplanationPenta Penguin, due to being incomplete and unlockable only through a cheat code, sometimes uses placeholder dialogue that says these phrases in a monotone voice, which turned into an in-joke among the fanbase. Even the remake has Penta say "Penguin yay one", albeit with his own voice rather than the monotone placeholder.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Several drivers have their own pleasant quotes:
    Crash: A-WHEEE!
    Coco: Pass it on! / Bandicoot power!
    Tiny: TINY SQUASH / SQUISH PUNY CARS!
    Cortex: The trophy's mine!
  • The Crash Bandicoot staple "KA-CHING!" when you juice up your kart and can start getting REALLY wild with the weapons.
  • Getting big air off a jump and hearing the engine's RPM top out can be a really exhilarating experience. Especially since it'll usually be followed by a Big "YES!" or I Can See My House from Here style shout from the driver if it's a big enough jump.
  • The "WAIONG" sound made by Oxide's spaceship in the cutscenes has an old school science-fiction vibe that is oddly satisfying to hear.
• That One Attack: The Warp Orb. At normal power, it functions almost identically to the Spiny Shell from Mario Kart, hunting down and taking out the player in first place... though because it doesn't fly directly to its target like the shell does, anyone unfortunate enough to wander into its path gets smacked, too. What does it do, then, when it's fully powered? It targets everyone in front of whoever fired it, so that now even being close to the front of the pack leaves you open to attack. Have fun!
  • Red Beakers are even worse due to the fact that they're much more common. Their weaker counterparts, the Green Beakers, are little more than glorified bananas in that they simply cause you to spin out when you hit one. The red ones do that, too... in addition to slowing you to a crawl for several seconds and randomly switching your weapon. While this can rarely work for the better (say, getting an invincibility mask when you originally had a speed booster), it far more often works to your detriment. Worst of all is their relatively small size, which not only makes them difficult to see until you're almost on top of them, but also makes them ideal for booby trapping item and Wumpa crates. Suddenly, those bowling bombs you're supposed to be using to blow up other racers become remote detonators for boxes.
• That One Boss:
  • N. Oxide's Ghosts in Time Trial mode. Especially the one on Blizzard Bluff, who pulls off a shortcut deemed barely possible without a Mask or Speed Boost... without a Mask or Speed Boost.
  • It's inverted on some levels, where Oxide is actually simple to beat. Oxide Station, ironically, has a relatively simple shortcut that completely trivialises beating Oxide's time if you can pull it off; meanwhile, his ghost actually spins out on Slide Coliseum.
• That One Level:
  • Dragon Mines, which happens to coincidentally be a track which you have to challenge a boss in (Komodo Joe). While power sliding in a straight line helps mitigate some of the difficulty within the level, there are few straightaways and you also have to watch out for mine carts which get in the way at inconvenient times.
  • Tiny Arena, the last race of the third hub world, combines a lot of tight turns with sudden mud pits that will slow you down significantly if you land in them, along with being one of the longest tracks in the game. In Adventure mode, this is also where even the normal races start to get noticeably more aggressive, and the CPUs start specifically going after you slightly more often the higher place you are instead of firing at random.
  • Hot Air Skyway, for the same reasons as Dragon Mines and more. Except for a few portions of the track, Hot Air Skyway for the most part has no walls. An inexperienced player will have difficulty with Pinstripe (the boss you confront in Hot Air Skyway) because they will have trouble with keeping themselves away from falling off the narrow roads. Pinstripe himself is not too difficult, but his bombs offer no favors due to how narrow the track itself is. There is a way to circumvent a bit of the difficulty via jumping across the other side of a track at a point where one of the walls is the only thing between two close portions of the road running parallel with each other.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Be warned: you will rage trying to get some of the CTR tokens. For example, one race has you dip into a pool of water - which slightly lowers your speed - to get to a jump that's just high enough that if you press the hop button too early you will run into the side and not make it. You then have to go down a short path and run off the side of a bridge in the reverse direction to get one of the letters. The track? Crash Cove, the first racetrack of the game. And it gets worse from there.
  • Do you have dreams of getting all 18 Platinum Relics in Adventure Mode? Papu's Pyramid is where those dreams go to die. The track is already difficult enough to speedrun due to the infamously tight 90-degree upward spiral, finicky shortcuts, and abundance of hairpin turns. The Relic Race for this track only exacerbates these issues with some truly awful time crate placement. Crates stuck in the grass? Check. Crates suspended off the side of the track over pits? Check. Crates placed next to piranha plants whose sole deciding factor in whether or not they eat you and destroy your run is sheer, blind luck? Check. A set of four crates that require you to make reverse progress through the track? Oh yeah, check. And to cap things off, the Platinum time limit is so unforgiving that you can still end up a second or two short even after breaking all 48 time crates if your boosting and turning isn't nearly flawless. When beating the Oxide ghost for this track is a breeze in comparison simply because there aren't any time crates to worry about, you've got a serious problem on your hands.
• Tough Act to Follow: This game set the bar for Mascot Racer games insanely high, and Crash's next attempts at racing were critically panned. (Though Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled was received pretty well, time will tell if it lives up to Naughty Dog’s original masterpiece.)
• Unpopular Popular Character: Nitros Oxide was created to be a Hate Sink in order to kill the franchise, since Naughty Dog knew this was it for them anyways and they thought fans wouldn't take an alien character seriously (see Asterix and the Falling Sky or Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for why this is justified). It didn't work, however, and instead he became one of the most popular characters in the whole series (partly thanks to being the only racer in the game you can't actually unlock). He would, however, become playable in later games, including the remake of this game.

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