Welcome to the 96th issue of the GBAtemp Recommends Revival Project! This is a weekly feature where we talk about some of our past favourites. Some may be famous, others have been ignored when released against larger titles but all are a worth your time.
It's been a while but Bortzy is back with another recommendation and this time one that is a rip off of another game that is actually better! Well better than the SNES/N64 & Wii versions...up yours, I love Double Dash![prebreak][/prebreak]
Crash used to be the fearless mascot of Sony, way back when the digital polygon was invented. Most of you remember the orange bandicoot and his furry friends. Sony pumped out 3 platformer games for the little guy as well as an answer to Mario Party, Crash Bash. But probably the best thing on the PS1 with Crash in the title is their arguably superior kart clone, Crash Team Racing.
CTR was the kart game to have for the PS1. The mechanics were solid if not excellent, fantastic texture and polygon work, and a great cast of characters to select from. Introducing another N word villain, Nitrous Oxide, He planned to take over earth and make the whole thing a... parking lot. Only a few steps down from the villain's plot from Ratchet and Clank to cobble together a planet from other planets. Anyways, its up to you and your animal pals (and foes) to defend your planet.
The game has the obvious game modes where you can choose single races to go head to head, or blister your thumbs by playing a whole cup of 4 races with rollover scoring. There is also an additional "story mode" (strangely missing from SMK64) where you play all the race tracks in the game collecting cups, gems, time boxes, and even the letters "C" "T" and "R". While the story itself isn't all the in depth, the game play is. Many of the tracks come easy at first, but as you progress, you might need to take a few minutes and memorize the layouts of the road. Challenges are exactly that, challenging. Not only that, once you finish a world, there are even boss races to complete. For a kart game, there sure is a lot of content.
The characters you can choose from are your typical balanced, acceleration, speed, or cornering builds. Completing the story modes unlocks characters and tracks. If you have your old PS1 or 2 laying around, find yourself a copy of the gem. I would suggest PSP, but I think it suffers from some heavy bug issues with popsloader, and its not on PSN to my knowledge.
If you want to submit a game, please let me know first and we'll discuss it.
For a look at all the games we have covered, please visit our Wiki page for a complete list with links.
For a look at all the games we have covered, please visit our Wiki page for a complete list with links.