15 Games Meme - Day 1: Crash Team Racing

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen games you've played that will always stick with you. List the first Fifteen that you can recall in no more than ten minutes. [In no particular order, nor a complete list of all that have had great impact on me]

Taken from . Okay, so the rule is to think of fifteen games on the spot that have stuck by me and not necessarily a Top Fifteen Video Game list. That's the mindset I'll take then. Fifteen games I thought of at the drop of a hat that has stuck with me in some way, shape, or form. That means I'm going to be interesting and think of games I absolutely detested because even awful games cling to you like old mold. I'm also going to choose one game per franchise to make it more challenging. I'll try and make one journal entry per game depending on the length of the article. Alright, here goes.





Never will I love a Crash Bandicoot game as I do Crash Team Racing. Each of the previous three platformers were crafted with love and care, releasing a product that stood amongst the sea of obnoxious, punky 90s-era radical furry mascots. The first three may be excellent in their own rights, but you can gradually see an improvement on each game as Naughty Dog learned the tools of its trade. CTR, however, is practically perfect in every way and remains my pick of the franchise.

Ignoring the blatant "Me, too" formula of Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing, Crash Team Racing exceeds as a standalone kart racer. Diverse racetracks and a bushel of familiar characters is one thing, but Naughty Dog marvels with innovative technology, able to produce quality four-player mode (which I actually never played because I don't own a multitap), a decent grasp of strategy by utilizing the boost effect to timely use, and cleverly placed secret shortcuts.

But it's the battle mode that truly takes the cake. That shit is tantalizingly addicting. Eight or so big, wide open fields to beat the crap out of your opponents are only further carried by a rather immersive menu system. You can put your characters into teams, decide which weapons are allowed on the field, and note whether you want a time limit or a point system and so forth. These are child's play now, but for a mascot racing genre back in 1999, it was deep and added to the entertainment. Even the little victory commentary after each round is hilarious and worth the play just to see what title you get based on the actions you took. I played this damn game so many times I could kill the shit out of people with the unreliable rolling bomb, knowing exactly when to trigger the explosion.

It was Naughty Dog's last hurrah with the franchise and they couldn't have ended on a better note. I wished Crash Bandicoot had been treated with fairer hands afterwards, but it was one disastrous attempt after another (and strangely obsessive about developing a new racing game per platformer.) Try as they might, future games could not capture the balance of humor and subtlety the NDi era did, reducing the series down to a pop culture spewing cesspool of obnoxiousness and idiotic humor. Can someone please convince Activision to just sell the damn franchise back to Sony so Naughty Dog can give it the proper revival it deserves? Please.





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Discovery (A Transformers Animated Fancomic): Read the entire thing here. Placed there for archival purpose. Recently cancelled.



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