A successor, Crash Nitro Kart, was released in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and N-Gage.

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.

[11] 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.

[15] 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.

Gem Cups are racing tournaments held against computer-controlled opponents and are accessible in a secret area in the "Gemstone Valley" world.

[17] 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.

[20] 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.

Pura and Polar pilot karts with low speed but improved handling, allowing them to navigate tight corners.

[21] The main antagonist of the story, Nitros Oxide, is the self-proclaimed fastest racer in the galaxy who threatens to turn Earth into a concrete parking lot and make its inhabitants his slaves.

[21] Preceding Oxide are four boss characters: Ripper Roo, a deranged straitjacket-wearing kangaroo;[22][23] Papu Papu, the corpulent leader of the island's native tribe;[24][25] Komodo Joe, a Komodo dragon with a speech sound disorder;[26][27] and Pinstripe Potoroo, a greedy pinstripe-clad potoroo.

[10] They double as obtainable "Invincibility Mask" power-ups during the races, temporarily protecting the player from all attacks and obstacles while increasing the kart's speed.

[34] 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.

[44][45] 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.

[46] 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.

[47] 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.

[49] 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.

[39] The central antagonist character Oxide was never intended to be playable in the game due to the PlayStation console's memory limitations.

[48] David Baggett produced the game's soundtrack, with Josh Mancell of Mutato Muzika composing the music.

"[56] 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.

[59] Johnny Liu of GameRevolution concluded that despite the fact that the game "doesn't add much to the tired genre, it manages to do everything well.

"[58] However, Joe Ottoson of All Game Guide said that the inability to reconfigure the controls was "the only real drawback to Crash's presentation.

The D-Pad Destroyer of GamePro said that the "whimsical" background music is "quite enjoyable" and the character sound bites are "varied enough to avoid becoming annoying.

"[30] IGN's Doug Perry had a more mixed take, saying that the "classic bouncy, xylophone-heavy beat" is "not necessarily great", and that after a few courses, "you either stop hearing it, or the incessant simplicity of it makes you want to cry or pull your hair out".

[59] Johnny Liu of GameRevolution passed the music off as "standard kitschy fare" and added that while the sound effects "add to the cartoon quality of the game", some of the character voices were unsatisfactory.

[64][65] As a result of its success, the game was re-released for the Sony Greatest Hits line-up in 2000 and for the Platinum Range on January 12, 2001.