I'm a fan of kart racers. Heck, one of the possible themes for the TR I'm running this month was nearly "kart racers" before it became "crossover games" X3. After all the mainline Crash games on PS1, I figured I may as well pick up CTR (known as Crash Bandicoot Racing here in Japan) as well since it was also just a couple bucks. I beat the main story mode in about 3 or so hours, and then went and did a bunch of time trials and a few medal missions over the course of another 3 or 4 hours.
The story of the game is fairly simple. An alien named Nitros Oxide comes to Earth and claims to be the fastest racer in the galaxy. If no one can beat him in a race, then he'll enslave everyone on the planet and take over. In response, a bunch of the cast of the Crash games build their own karts, (in some cases) learn how to drive, and gear up to see who among them is the fastest so they can challenge Nitros. It's a silly, not terribly present story, but it does make the game's overall construction more like Diddy Kong Racing than Mario Kart 64, as it has races against boss characters much like DKR does.
As a racer, it's a pretty darn fun one. Mechanically, it's a well-put together racer, and very thankfully also has dual-shock support (as one would hope a PS1 game in 1999 would do). The most notable positive change from something like Mario Kart 64 is how you do boosting. Jumping at the top of a ledge will give you a boost upon landing, but the way grind-boosting is done has also changed from prior kart racers. Instead of just grinding for a while and then getting a speed boost, you wait until the bar in the lower right goes from green to red (or watch for the smoke coming out of your kart to go from white to black, like I did) and then press the other shoulder button to activate the boost. You can even do this trick up to 3 times per grind! It adds a lot of active thinking to racing beyond just grinding whenever you can and taking corners as well as you can, and I really liked it.
The biggest negative thing in the game's mechanics I would say are the way it handles powerups. Now, for the most part, the powerups in the game are fine copies/modifications on the things Mario Kart brought to the table previously. Potions don't just slow you down like a banana peel would, they also make it so you can't use items for a while. TNT boxes don't just slow you down like a fake box would in Mario Kart, they hop on you for a while and if you hop enough yourself, you'll be able to get it off of you and not get slowed down. What I think the game really stumbles on is how you can collect Wumpa Fruit as you race. Get 10, and your powerups get even stronger. TNT boxes now become nitro crates that explode on contact. Potions now not only make it so you can't lose items, but also slow you down significantly. They seem to kinda miss the point of powerups as an equalizing force in these kinds of games, and overly reward people already doing well in a way that I find drags down the whole experience. It's far from a game breaker, but it's not a mechanic I have any love for.
The game has 16 different tracks to go through its story mode with, as well as a handful of battle mode tracks (which also have associated use in the story mode) as well as time trials and versus modes of course. The story mode also has a big world map to drive around to the different tracks in, just like Diddy Kong Racing has. The time trails are kinda weird, as it's not just racing fast through the courses (at least in the adventure mode). There are boxes with numbers on them littering the course, and hitting that box will freeze the countdown clock for that many seconds, meaning you're not just racing through the tracks quickly, but quickly and precisely (though the game does have normal time trials and "ghosts" to compete against as well).
It's a neat take on time trials to give the story mode a bit more to do, and the battle courses have similar "collect all the things within the time limit" aspects to their inclusion in the single-player mode as well. There are also medal challenges in the story mode's normal tracks, which involve not only winning the race, but also going to shortcuts and out of the way parts of the track to collect big 'C', 'B', and 'R' letters (the title acronym), which adds another element of challenge to races you've probably gotten pretty good at by now.
The only really negative part of the story mode is the boss races, something that CTR takes from DKR and fails to really make any more fun than they already aren't in that game. The concept of the boss tracks is that they serve as gates between the differently themed areas in the world map, and there are five of them in total (and if you do a BUNCH of the extra content, you can even unlock most of those guys as playable characters if you're keen to). They're one-on-one racers on a track from that area, but they're not against big animals like they are in DKR. They're against boss characters from Crash who race like normal racers. The bosses have really strong rubber banding and also infinitely spawn powerups behind them whenever they're ahead of you. However, the prize boxes on these levels also very frequently give you triple packs of rockets (this game's red shell), so a lot of these races comes down to not very fun one-v-ones trying to dodge powerups and then rocketing them close enough to the finish line that they won't have time to rubber band ahead of you. These are easily the worst parts of the game, and it's just a small mercy that they're not super hard due to all the rockets.
As far as changes between the English and Japanese versions of the game, there really aren't many. Those that are here are cosmetic and mostly found immediately, namely the change to the title (now it's CBR instead of CTR), the new title screen, and the new title screen music (as all the other PS1 Crash games have in Japan). Other than that it's clumsily integrated rumble support and a few very minor cosmetic changes, like all the trophy girls having their eye colors changed to brown.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. It's not my new favorite kart racer or anything, but it's a damn good racing game, and certainly one of the best to ever try and steal Mario Kart's thunder from this era. The mistakes it takes and innovates on from other racing games of the time are unfortunate, but they're minor enough that they don't come close to ruining the entire experience. The positives to this game easily outweigh the negatives, and this is a game I can easily recommend to anyone who likes racers (even over the remake, because this one isn't bogged down with crappy, post-launch micro-transactions).
The story of the game is fairly simple. An alien named Nitros Oxide comes to Earth and claims to be the fastest racer in the galaxy. If no one can beat him in a race, then he'll enslave everyone on the planet and take over. In response, a bunch of the cast of the Crash games build their own karts, (in some cases) learn how to drive, and gear up to see who among them is the fastest so they can challenge Nitros. It's a silly, not terribly present story, but it does make the game's overall construction more like Diddy Kong Racing than Mario Kart 64, as it has races against boss characters much like DKR does.
As a racer, it's a pretty darn fun one. Mechanically, it's a well-put together racer, and very thankfully also has dual-shock support (as one would hope a PS1 game in 1999 would do). The most notable positive change from something like Mario Kart 64 is how you do boosting. Jumping at the top of a ledge will give you a boost upon landing, but the way grind-boosting is done has also changed from prior kart racers. Instead of just grinding for a while and then getting a speed boost, you wait until the bar in the lower right goes from green to red (or watch for the smoke coming out of your kart to go from white to black, like I did) and then press the other shoulder button to activate the boost. You can even do this trick up to 3 times per grind! It adds a lot of active thinking to racing beyond just grinding whenever you can and taking corners as well as you can, and I really liked it.
The biggest negative thing in the game's mechanics I would say are the way it handles powerups. Now, for the most part, the powerups in the game are fine copies/modifications on the things Mario Kart brought to the table previously. Potions don't just slow you down like a banana peel would, they also make it so you can't use items for a while. TNT boxes don't just slow you down like a fake box would in Mario Kart, they hop on you for a while and if you hop enough yourself, you'll be able to get it off of you and not get slowed down. What I think the game really stumbles on is how you can collect Wumpa Fruit as you race. Get 10, and your powerups get even stronger. TNT boxes now become nitro crates that explode on contact. Potions now not only make it so you can't lose items, but also slow you down significantly. They seem to kinda miss the point of powerups as an equalizing force in these kinds of games, and overly reward people already doing well in a way that I find drags down the whole experience. It's far from a game breaker, but it's not a mechanic I have any love for.
The game has 16 different tracks to go through its story mode with, as well as a handful of battle mode tracks (which also have associated use in the story mode) as well as time trials and versus modes of course. The story mode also has a big world map to drive around to the different tracks in, just like Diddy Kong Racing has. The time trails are kinda weird, as it's not just racing fast through the courses (at least in the adventure mode). There are boxes with numbers on them littering the course, and hitting that box will freeze the countdown clock for that many seconds, meaning you're not just racing through the tracks quickly, but quickly and precisely (though the game does have normal time trials and "ghosts" to compete against as well).
It's a neat take on time trials to give the story mode a bit more to do, and the battle courses have similar "collect all the things within the time limit" aspects to their inclusion in the single-player mode as well. There are also medal challenges in the story mode's normal tracks, which involve not only winning the race, but also going to shortcuts and out of the way parts of the track to collect big 'C', 'B', and 'R' letters (the title acronym), which adds another element of challenge to races you've probably gotten pretty good at by now.
The only really negative part of the story mode is the boss races, something that CTR takes from DKR and fails to really make any more fun than they already aren't in that game. The concept of the boss tracks is that they serve as gates between the differently themed areas in the world map, and there are five of them in total (and if you do a BUNCH of the extra content, you can even unlock most of those guys as playable characters if you're keen to). They're one-on-one racers on a track from that area, but they're not against big animals like they are in DKR. They're against boss characters from Crash who race like normal racers. The bosses have really strong rubber banding and also infinitely spawn powerups behind them whenever they're ahead of you. However, the prize boxes on these levels also very frequently give you triple packs of rockets (this game's red shell), so a lot of these races comes down to not very fun one-v-ones trying to dodge powerups and then rocketing them close enough to the finish line that they won't have time to rubber band ahead of you. These are easily the worst parts of the game, and it's just a small mercy that they're not super hard due to all the rockets.
As far as changes between the English and Japanese versions of the game, there really aren't many. Those that are here are cosmetic and mostly found immediately, namely the change to the title (now it's CBR instead of CTR), the new title screen, and the new title screen music (as all the other PS1 Crash games have in Japan). Other than that it's clumsily integrated rumble support and a few very minor cosmetic changes, like all the trophy girls having their eye colors changed to brown.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. It's not my new favorite kart racer or anything, but it's a damn good racing game, and certainly one of the best to ever try and steal Mario Kart's thunder from this era. The mistakes it takes and innovates on from other racing games of the time are unfortunate, but they're minor enough that they don't come close to ruining the entire experience. The positives to this game easily outweigh the negatives, and this is a game I can easily recommend to anyone who likes racers (even over the remake, because this one isn't bogged down with crappy, post-launch micro-transactions).