Crash Team Racing Free Download

Crash Team Racing is a racing video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The game was released in North America on September 30, 1999 and in Europe and Australia later the same year. It was re-released for the Sony Greatest Hits line-up in 2000 and for the Platinum Range on January 12, 2001. It was later added to the European PlayStation Store on October 18, 2007, then on the Japanese store on June 11, 2008 and then finally to the North American store on August 10, 2010.

Crash Team Racing is the fourth installment in the Crash Bandicoot series. It is the first Crash Bandicoot game in the racing genre and the last Crash Bandicoot game to be developed by Naughty Dog. The game's story focuses on the efforts of a ragtag team of characters in the Crash Bandicoot series, who must race against the egomaniacal Nitros Oxide to save their planet from destruction. In the game, players can take control of one of fifteen Crash Bandicoot series characters, though only eight are available at first. During the races, offensive and speed boosting power ups can be used to gain an advantage.

Crash Team Racing is a racing game in which the player controls characters from the Crash Bandicoot universe, most of whom compete in karts. While racing, the player can accelerate, steer, reverse, brake, hop or use weapons and power-ups with the game controller's analog stick and buttons.[4] Two distinct forms of crates are scattered throughout the tracks and arenas of Crash Team Racing. Crates with question marks (?) on them hold power-ups and weapons, which can be obtained by driving through and breaking apart the said crates.[5] When the player collects a weapon or power-up, it will appear in a box at the top of the screen.[6] The player can activate the weapon or power-up to wreak havoc on the other racers or supplement the player's own performance.[5] "Fruit Crates" carry "Wumpa Fruit" that increase the speed of the player's kart and strengthen the player's weapons and power-ups if ten of them are obtained.[6][7][8]

A crucial maneuver in Crash Team Racing is the power slide; the player executes the slide by holding down one of the shoulder buttons to perform a hop, and steering before the kart lands.[7] While sliding, the "Turbo Boost Meter" on the lower-right corner of the screen fills up and goes from green to red.[8] At the same time, the exhaust gas from the player's kart turns black.[7] To get a speed boost, the player quickly presses the opposite shoulder button while the Turbo Boost Meter is red. The player can execute three speed boosts in a row during a power slide, with the third speed boost being more powerful than the previous two.[8] If the player waits too long into the power slide for a boost, the kart back-fires and the chance for a speed boost is lost; power sliding for too long causes a spin-out.[7][8] Aside from power slides, speed boosts can be obtained by gathering hang time when leaping over gaps in the track. The longer the player is in the air, the bigger the speed boost will be when the kart lands.

Crash Team Racing features five racing modes: Adventure, Time Trial, Arcade, Versus and Battle. In each mode, the player selects one from eight characters to control.[9] A PlayStation multitap can be installed to allow three or four-player games.[10] The "Adventure Mode" is a one-player game where the player must race through all of the tracks and arenas in the game and collect as many trophies, Relics, Boss Keys, CTR Tokens and Gems as possible.[9] The objective of the Adventure Mode is to save the world from the story's antagonist, Nitros Oxide, by winning races on 16 different tracks. In the beginning of the game, the player only has access to two levels.[11] As the player wins more races, more tracks on multiple worlds become available.[5][11][12] In each level, the player must win a trophy by coming in first place.[5][13] When the player receives all four trophies in a world, the "Boss Garage" of that world can be accessed. In the Boss Garage, the player competes in a one-on-one race against a boss character. If the boss character is defeated, the character will relinquish a Boss Key, which the player uses to access new worlds and ultimately to face Oxide inside his spaceship.[14]

After beating levels, new modes become available, such as the Relic Race, in which the player races through the track alone and completes three laps in the fastest time possible. "Time Crates" scattered throughout the level freeze the game timer when a player drives through them. If all of the Time Crates are destroyed, the player's final time is reduced by ten seconds. The player wins a Relic by beating the time indicated on the screen.[13] Another mode, the CTR Challenge, is played like a normal race, except that the player must also collect the letters C, T and R scattered throughout the track. If the player manages to collect all three letters and come in first place, a "CTR Token" is awarded. These tokens come in five different colors. If the player collects four tokens of the same color, the player will be able to access the Gem Cup of the corresponding color. Gem Cups are racing tournaments held against computer-controlled opponents and are accessible in a secret area in the "Gemstone Valley" world. A Gem Cup consists of four tracks in a row, in which the player must race for points. If one of these cups is won, a Gem is awarded.[15] To win the game, the player must collect all trophies, Boss Keys, Relics, CTR Tokens and Gems before defeating Nitros Oxide in a one-on-one race.

Fifteen characters are playable in Crash Team Racing, although only eight of them are playable from the start.[9] Crash Bandicoot, the main protagonist of the series, is an all-round racer with balanced acceleration, top speed and handling. Doctor Neo Cortex, Crash's archenemy, is a mad scientist who wants to stop Nitros Oxide so that he may conquer the world himself. Like Crash, his kart is an all-round performer. Coco Bandicoot, Crash's younger sister, is a computer genius who installed computer chips into her kart to increase its acceleration prowess. Doctor N. Gin is a rocket scientist who, like Coco, added custom parts to his kart to improve its acceleration. Pura and Polar pilot karts with low speed but improved handling, allowing them to navigate tight corners. Tiny Tiger and Dingodile control karts built for top speed at the cost of turning prowess

The inhabitants of Earth are visited by an extraterrestrial named Nitros Oxide, who claims to be the fastest racer in the galaxy. Challenging Earth to a game called "Survival of the Fastest", he beckons Earth's best driver to race him. If Earth's driver wins, he promises to leave Earth alone, but if Oxide wins, he will turn Earth into a concrete parking lot and enslave the Earthlings.[29] In response, the player character gathers all four Boss Keys needed to access Oxide's spaceship and races him in a one-on-one match. Upon Oxide's defeat at the hands of the player character, he temporarily leaves Earth, but promises that he will return when all of the Time Relics have been gathered.[30] Oxide faces the player again after all the Time Relics are gathered. After losing once more, Oxide keeps his word and angrily leaves Earth forever.[31] An epilogue is relayed during the end credits, explaining what the characters of the game did after the events of the story. Nitros Oxide himself returns to his home planet of Gasmoxia and secludes himself from society. After undergoing years of therapy to cope with his loss, he takes up unicycle-racing, only to get into a gruesome accident.

Naughty Dog began production on Crash Team Racing after the completion of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back; the game engine for Crash Team Racing was created at the same time Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped was produced.[33] During the game's prototypical stage, the team built a replica of the "Crescent Island" course from Diddy Kong Racing to test whether a racetrack of the same scope and scale was possible on the PlayStation.[34] The turbo system that gives the player boosts of speed during power slides and by gathering hang time was added to make Crash Team Racing feel more interactive and involving than older kart-racing games.[33] The characters of the game were designed by Charles Zembillas and Joe Pearson, who designed the characters of the last three installments of the series.[35] Nitros Oxide was originally a mad scientist obsessed with speed who plotted to speed up the entire world until the end of time.[36][37] However, having exhausted human, animal, machine, and various combinations for Crash Bandicoot bosses in the past, it was decided to have Nitros Oxide be an otherworldly character.[38] The original "speed up the world" plot is referenced in a promotional comic (written by Glenn Herdling and drawn by Neal Sternecky) featured in the Winter 2000 issue of Disney Adventures.[39] Crash Team Racing went into the alpha stage of development on August 1999, and the beta stage on September.[40] In an interview with GameTrailers, Naughty Dog's co-president Evan Wells, who was a designer on the game, revealed that Oxide was never intended to be a playable character in the game due to the memory limitations of the PlayStation. The said limitations further affected the game's roster of playable characters; Polar and Pura were originally to ride in the same kart and be played as a single character, but were ultimately split into separate characters, and both Komodo Brothers were to appear in the game before Komodo Moe was omitted

Crash Team Racing received critical acclaim. Official PlayStation Magazine described Crash Team Racing as "the game that made kart racing cool" and proclaimed that "nothing has ever matched its quality."[49] Electronic Gaming Monthly noted that the game was "heavily inspired by Mario Kart, but still an amazing multiplayer racer."[44] Doug Perry of IGN stated that the game was "rock solid" in playability and graphics, but was critical of "the insanely capitalistic smile of Crash."[48] Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot called the game "a great Mario Kart clone", and that it succeeded where similar games like Mega Man Battle & Chase, Bomberman Fantasy Race, Diddy Kong Racing, Chocobo Racing and Mario Kart had failed.[47] Johnny Liu of Game Revolution concluded that despite the fact that the game "doesn't add much to the tired genre, it manages to do everything well."[46]

The game's controls were well received. The D-Pad Destroyer of GamePro praised the controls as "nearly-perfect" and explained that "the transparent controls allow you to concentrate on racing and blasting your opponents, and so the races are faster, more fluid and more fun."[27] Johnny Liu of Game Revolution concluded that the controls "feel very natural, with an emphasis on maintaining speed rather than fighting lousy controls."[46] However, Joe Ottoson of Allgame ("All Game Guide" at the time) said that the inability to reconfigure the controls was "the only real drawback to Crash's presentation."[43]

The graphics of the game were positively received. The D-Pad Destroyer of GamePro, while noting that the graphics were not too complex, cited the "cartoony look and the ingenious use of textures and colors" as high points in the graphics department.[27] Doug Perry of IGN commended the "sharp looking" environments as "clean and fully formed" and the characters are "full of funny animations and cleanly designed".[48] Jeff Gertsmann of GameSpot said that the environments "are reasonably large, and they convey the cartoon-like attitude of the game very nicely."[47] Johnny Liu of Game Revolution stated that the graphics were "smooth and seem to push the Playstation's limits

Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 
Processor: Pentium 3 @ 2.0GHz 
Memory:256MB 
Video Memory: 64 MB (nVidia GeForce 3/ATI Radeon 8500) 
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible 
DirectX: 9.0 
Input: Keyboard & Mouse