Crash is back and better than ever but instead of smashing enemies with his devastating tornado spin he'll be hitting the road in style with his trusty, racing cart. Crash and his friends will find themselves racing to save the world from the evil Nitrous Oxide in Naughty Dog's latest game Crash Team Racing.

      Ever since the release of Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing, the Playstation has cried out for a kart game. Some, such as Formula Carts have tried but, alas, have failed. But now two great karting games are on the horizon. Speed Freaks (formerly, Super Deformed Racing) has been in development for nearly two years while Naughty Dog have just released their first information on Crash Team Racing.

      Naughty Dog's goal with Crash Team Racing is to combine the kart genre with the excitement of a motorcross game. CTR has more realistic features than previous kart titles, but the focus is on playability and competition. It's also about group play and therefore supports fully featured two, three and four-player modes in addition to the one-player Adventure mode.

      CTR will have one of the most advanced game engines of '99 written specifically for the game. It has been stressed that the game will not use the engine used in Crash 3 for the vehicle sub-games as many expected. In actual fact, work had begun on CTR in May '98, three months before the vehicle levels were implemented into Crash 3. The engine will also have some new features. For example, the background polygons do not res out (become stretched so that the pixels are very large) or visibly subdivide the distance and the foreground. In fact, there are immense views that have no fog in the distance, no digital switches and no popping in. This is a true first for a Playstation 3D engine.

      With the absence of good multi-player games on the PSX, Crash Team Racing will be a very welcome edition to the little gray console. Naughty Dog has emphasized the multi-player aspect in CTR with multiple modes of multi-player racing madness including VS and Battle modes. In VS mode, you and a friend or three can put the pedal to the metal in a race to the finish. If you have no social life or if your friends are not around, you can include racing robots in the VS mode. But the main part of the single player game is the Adventure mode. Similar to Diddy Kong Racing, players will start out in an over-world in which they can access other tracks from. You can race to collect gems or just race to finish in first. After winning so many races, you can upgrade your vehicles with the prize money you've won. All very basic stuff but never has it been done on the PSX.

      CTR will also have all your favorite characters from Crash 1, 2 & 3 back to bash it out against each other. From Crash and Coco to the Polar Bear and Tiger Cubs, and from bosses new, such as Tiny and Dingodile, to bosses old such as Papu Papu and Ripper Roo. Everyone makes a cameo.

      CTR also has many new gameplay features such as a unique powersilde feature, which enables the player to get up to three turbo boosts out of each corner. And there's a hang-time meter that gives the player a turbo boost based on the amount of time that he/she spins in the air. In effect, you can learn to chain these two turbo types to maximize your speed through the course. A player can enter a corner, powerslide correctly to collect three turbos and leave the corner to get a 1.5 second jump off the bump directly after the corner. This hang-time gives you a turbo boost, which speeds you along to a later bump at a high-enough rate to get another one. Without the initial powerslide speed, it's quite possible that you might have got the hang time required to get a turbo off the two later bumps. The better player gets the better time, and there is only one winner. Every hang time counts. There is also unique power-ups, a car upgrade system and an Adventure mode that should keep single players occupied for hours.

      CTR will be Dual Shock compatible. It will also be Naughty Dog's second game to support the Pocketstation (note* Crash 3 was Pocketstation compatible but only in Japan). The Analog controller is used for steering and there is an option to use the other analog controller as an accelerator.

      Crash Team Racing redefines not only the karting genre, but it redefines the Playstation market with its new gameplay features and unique game engine. But is there really room for two new kart games on the Playstation market.

6/16/99