YMMV / Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

• Accidental Innuendo: When watching Pasadena's bottle-spraying victory podium animation from certain angles, she looks like she's doing something much less wholesome. Given who she is, this isn't too surprising.
• Adorkable: The Lab Assistant has some downright endearing animations, such as him looking quite worried and gulping over the opposition that he'll have to take on as well as being taken aback by his victory, almost to the point of tears.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: While Gnasty Gnorc's inclusion via Spyro and Friends seemed odd from the onset, seeing as he is a villain, it's been reasoned by some fans that his relationship with Spyro is more of a competitive rivalry, since he's the only major Spyro villain to not want to kill dragons outright and his modern depiction stems from his self-esteem issues.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Nitros Oxide in Adventure Mode is pretty easy. You race him at Oxide Station, which is pretty generous with speed boosts, and he throws red beakers when he gets in front of you, which are easy to avoid. It doesn't help that the bosses prior to him consistently built up how much of a challenge he allegedly is. Of course, the fact that he was nerfed to tumble after being hit instead of spinning out probably doesn't help matters.
• Awesome Ego: Liz and Pinstripe deserve special mention; Liz is the only member of the already-popular Nitro Squad to race for selfish reasons and is beloved for her naughty quirks, while Pinstripe has his larger-than-life gangster personality given even more focus in his adventure mode cutscenes.
• Awesome Levels: Megamix Mania (and, by proxy, the Rustland GP as a whole) has been so beloved by fans after its launch that some are hoping that a Crash game based on its concept will get made in the future.
• Awesome Music: The remixed soundtrack sounds amazing and is widely enjoyed. The fact that the original soundtracks can be played as well just adds to the awesomeness.
• Breather Level:
  • The track challenges from Nitro Kart seem to be under the impression that you're playing Nitro Kart, as they're pretty generous compared to the Team Racing tracks, which does thankfully make the N. Tropy time trials a bit easier. The only noticeable exception is Tiny Temple.
  • In regards to Relic Races, both Slide Coliseum and Turbo Track are surprisingly easy to get Platinum on, especially on easy, when compared to previous levels like N. Gin Labs and Cortex Castle. In fact, anyone who knows about power-sliding can very well get the rank without even trying.
  • Nitro Court's crystal challenge is the last to be unlocked, and is arguably the easiest in adventure mode. The layout of the course is very simple and you have two whole minutes to collect all of the crystals, which easily offsets the trouble the hazards may pose.
  • While the track itself is very difficult to master, Emperor Velo's ghost in Drive-Thru Danger is considered to be rather easy because at one point in the second lap, he falls off from the track, giving a chance to the player to catch up.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: In the roadmap for the second batch of grand prixes, the character headlining the Neon Circus GP is a silhouette of a pigtailed girl. Despite this subterfuge, perceptive veteran Crash fans have recognized her to be Pasadena O'Possum. In the same token, the roadmap for the GP had part of the Koala Carnival track name removed to keep Koala Kong's inclusion a surprise, but some eagle-eyed fans managed to spot his mug on the screenshot for it anyway.
• Cargo Ship: Pinstripe and his machine gun, which he holds close for comfort in his losing animation.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Before engine select got added with the Spooky GP, Speed characters were by far the most used characters in Online Matchmaking; moreso ones wearing a skin that has a Nitro multiplier, which provides an extra Nitro boost on top of the character themselves, which changed depending on the current Grand Prix at the time. During Nitro Tour, for example, Motorsport Ami was the most frequently seen due to being the only character that fit these criteria, while Back N. Time featured Tiny and N. Tropy, who received new Nitro skins. Those gained through the Grand Prix-exclusive Nitro rewards were also common, such as Tawna and Racer Crunch during Nitro Tour and Baby T and Dashing Fake Crash during Back N. Time.
  • Thanks to the new engine swap that was introduced in the Spooky Grand Prix, speed engines have been the go-to choice as a whole. While the character may not matter much beyond flavor, Speed still dominates online races and Time Trial records.
  • Roo's Tubes and Android Alley are highly popular when playing online because of how easy they are to get through and their excellent coin rates compared to the average amount of time it takes to get through them. As far as Oxide times are concerned, Tiny Temple is the most financially efficient track in the game, but that's based on extensive periods of retaining blue fire.
• Creepy Awesome: The Rustland Grand Prix's redesign for Megamix amplifies the horror aspect of the Hybrid Monster, giving it a more cohesive and organic design that shows just how grotesque and nightmarish this abomination really is. Its more defined personality is now a unsettling mashup of all four villains composing it constantly fighting for control, throwing in a Voice of the Legion and a hint of Ax-Crazy for good measure. Fans almost unanimously agree that it's a massive improvement over its original design, which bordered on Nightmare Retardant.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Isabella, Ami, Liz, and Megumi of the Nitro Squad. While they already had a minor following in the original game as the Trophy Girls, they otherwise weren't seen as anything special beyond charming visual flair. Thanks to a grand return in Nitro-Fueled as playable racers with newly-established personalities, alongside Tawna, who became their leader, the girls' popularity exploded and they have become more beloved for it.
  • The Nitro Kart bosses all got a lot more love when they were announced. In particular, Nash was a common sight online for a time, up until the Nitro Squad debuted.
  • King Chicken quickly got a following after his unveiling, because of 1) being the first driver to come with the Drift class by default, and 2) the novelty of being an ordinary chicken that wears a crown and can drive a kart.
  • Amongst the base game roster, Geary slowly became one due to him being the last character in the base game to receive a legendary skin and his hilarious Neat Freak personality coming off as endearing, not to mention his general lack of online presence. Because of these traits, fans have started to feel sorry for Geary and were very happy when he finally received a legendary skin once development of the game wrapped up.
  • The sheer absurdity of its presence being the presumed "secret character" teased several Grand Prixes back, the Iron Checkpoint Crate becomes this immediately with the fanbase within its reveal.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Chickens. After a datamine that revealed a mysterious character only named "King Chicken", alongside the discovery of hidden chickens in nearly every track in the game, and a mysterious door◊ in the Lost Ruins with an image of a chicken on it and five empty slots shaped like eggs, fans have been trying to figure out what any of this means. Some think there will be an event added in later relating to it all, while some think that the chickens are just there for visual humor. The fifth Grand Prix, Neon Circus, proved the first side right by implementing a sidequest in Adventure Mode: find the five gold eggs hidden in the hub worlds to unlock the door and unlock King Chicken.
  • An ad showcasing various games that are on the PS4, including Nitro-Fueled, had shown a mysterious mask trailing behind Coco and near Crash, Aku Aku and Neo Cortex. The mask hasn't been seen anywhere in the series before, so some fans took it as an early tease towards an upcoming game or a Nitro-Fueled character related to said mask, while others assumed that it could be an oversight by a staffer that might not be entirely familiar with the Crash series. The first side was ultimately proven right with the announcement of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time.
  • In the Rustland GP datamine, an unidentified driver referred to as "DriverWhoAmI" had been spotted, with datamines for the subsequent two major updates respectively changing the codename to "DriverWhoCouldIBe" and "DriverIAmAsImportantAsTheBandicootSoIShouldBeTheMainCharacter". The general consensus among fans have determined that this was an attempt to hide a secret character meant for Beenox's time trials, which initially had a mention in earlier datamines as well. As for the character themselves, the strongest beliefs are for Willie Wumpa Cheeks, determined due to the Wumpa Fruits' function in the series and how the codename fits his personality, and Willie Wombat, an early concept for Crash Bandicoot. It was eventually revealed to be Iron Checkpoint Crate, to everyone’s surprise.
  • As of the end of the Gasmoxia GP, the presence of Ripto's voice actor, Gregg Berger, in the additional voice credits has been seen as conspicuously strange, since none of the characters are voiced by him. While some fans believe it could be an oversight in regards to plans for Ripto being scrapped, others think it's an accidental leak towards his eventual addition, with some pointing out that Pinstripe being mis-credited to Jess Harnell had been fixed, yet this issue's been left alone. Adding to this theory is the fact that the Spyro GP's content was not fully datamined prior to its full reveal aside from the racers themselves in an initial roster datamine.
  • "Was the Beenox Pack the last content drop or not" has become another widely, and heatedly discussed topic as well. On one hand, they never specified if players would be seeing anything more added to the game after the Beenox Pack. On the other hand, they also didn't specify if the Beenox Pack was the last thing they were adding to the game. Adding more fuel to the fire was the introduction of Legendary Skin Recolors. While we did get a couple dozen new skin recolors added to the game, there's still an enormous amount of legendary skins that have not received any recolors.
  • The final DLC tracks, Megamix Mania and Drive-Thru Danger, just so happened to have levels eerily similar to them revealed in the launch trailer for Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time!. Whether the tracks were meant to foreshadow locations in that game is a matter of serious discussion, especially since Beenox has confirmed to work on that game's N. Verted Mode, so they would have had knowledge of them. Adding to this, the fact that most of the characters in Nitro-Fueled were added without prior context has made fans wonder which ones, if any, would show up in It's About Time, due to the multiverse premise. The former was confirmed to a degree with Hazardous Wastes (even featuring a poster cameo of Megamix) and Bermugula's Orbit, while the latter largely amounted to cameo appearances in the 100% epilogue, likely indicating that they'll be used for future mainline entries.
  • Beenox's statement about the end of updates had them tease the prospect of future game projects in the same breath. This, combined with the rumor of a Crash Player vs. Player game mentioned by the insider TheGamingRevolution had several fans believe that they would be the main developer of the next spin-off game in the series, with some believing that it could be a party game (since Beenox already did a racing game via Nitro-Fueled, and the series' 25th anniversary would happen in 2021). This game would later be confirmed at the 2022 Game Awards as Crash Team Rumble, but it was instead developed by Toys for Bob, who also developed It's About Time.
• Fandom Rivalry: Has something of one with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Team Sonic Racing, especially the latter as it came out only a month prior.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Cortex's red Palette Swap is often referred to as "McDonald's Cortex" due to it resembling the restaurant's red and yellow coloration.
  • Although the game refers to it as "Blue Fire" in some Grand Prix challenges, the blue-colored, much-faster boost seen on several tracks is coined by the community under the name of "Ultimate Sacred Fire".
  • The female characters are so beloved (by both the regular and furry sides of the player base) that they earned the moniker of the "Waifu Squad", due to half of them being the Nitro Squad.
• Fountain of Memes: Liz. Practically every other line coming out of her is comedy gold coated in British snark and it works brilliantly:
  • "Your mum's an armadillo!"
  • "You're gonna see my name in lights!"
  • "VROOOOOOOMMMM!"
  • "Oi! Watch yourself!"
  • "Pardon me!"
  • "Impressive, innit?"
  • "Biscuit, anyone?"
  • "You havin' a laugh?!"
  • "Catch me at the winner's circle!"
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Unsurprisingly, the Nitro Squad is pretty beloved in other parts of the world, up to and including the countries represented by certain members of it.
  • Practically invoked with Hasty, a brand-new moose racer who became a crowd favorite after his reveal, especially with Canadians. It helps that he's one big walking reference to a fan myth for the original Team Racing.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • While in an online game, it's possible to give your character another character's model but still retain the first character's animations and skeleton, warping them into a horrific abomination.
  • A minor one, but when players win a race as Crunch, his losing animation plays right after his victory animation, making it look like Crunch intentionally punches himself to keep in line. Sadly, this was patched on the Spooky Grand Prix.
  • When the Back N. Time Grand Prix had just started, players had reported getting the eponymous decal already despite it being that Grand Prix's ranked prize. It took until near the end of the event to be addressed by Beenox, in which case a new Back N. Time Decal was offered as the proper prize.
  • Every lap skip exploit, even reaching Mario Kart Wii levels of brokenness. Use of this online is obviously loathed, but offline is free real-estate for easy Wumpa Coin farming.
  • When playing with AI controlled characters on Electron Avenue, for a time, it was not uncommon to see an AI in last place driving in circles at the exact same bend and ramming into the walls constantly as a result.
  • Some players reported being granted access to the Spooky Grand Prix decal for the Champion kart the day after it ended, a few days before it was supposed to be given out for the Pit Stop reset. The same thing happened with the Neon Circus, Rustland and Gasmoxia Grand Prix decals afterwards.
  • There was a glitch in which players can customize the normally uncustomizable Retro and Firehawk karts, with the former being able to change the wheels and the latter having a spot to put stickers on it. Unfortunately, these was patched out in the Winter Festival Grand Prix. However, the first post-GP update introduced the Neon Hawk, which is essentially a fully customizable Firehawk kart.
  • After the Winter Festival Grand Prix launched, it was found that Hasty and four of the decals for Nitro gauge-exclusive karts could be bought in the Pit Stop, which definitely wasn't intentional.
  • Starting with the Rustland GP, randomly selected players have noticed that they receive 70%-75% more Wumpa Coins offline than usual that could last the entire GP.
  • As a reference to the Rustland GP intro, Chick's Rustland skin lacked his bowtie, effectively leading him to readjust thin air in his victory podium animation. This got patched out on the Gasmoxia Grand Prix, however.
• Growing the Beard: The use of the Grand Prix allowed the game to be expanded and polished through updates with each new event. The October "Spooky" GP, however, is considered when it really ups its game. Not only does the event mark a good helping of the most awaited characters such as Nina and N. Brio playable at last, but the GP challenges are more varied and utilise unique mechanics to make grinding for items more fun and less repetitive. The update with the GP also brought in some beloved extra bells and whistles such as the engine selection option and a new cup, with a lot of long-awaited bug fixes implemented by this point (even if the first few days of this GP introduced some glitches of its own).
• He Really Can Act:
  • Those who are used to Robbie Daymond's roles in Eastern video games ended up being impressed by his performance as Pinstripe, showing how much range he truly has. If that wasn't enough, he was later revealed to voice Hasty as well as Small Norm and Hunter.
  • It's generally agreed that Debi Derryberry's reprisal of Nina is much better than her prior performances in the animated shorts and Nintendo DS version of Crash of the Titans, sounding less like her usual voice and more like Amy Gross' version.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Because unlike in the original game, USF speeds are different for each character class, Speed characters are faster than the other classes even while using USF. Additionally, due to the advent of U-turning, the main weakness that Speed characters are supposed to have, that being turning control, is completely negated. This technique alone makes them feel like they have stats equivalent to Penta in the European version of the original game, only they can power-slide on a straightway, something that OG Penta couldn't do easily due to his maxed-out turning. Before engine select got added with the Spooky GP, which allows any character to use the Speed stats, any single character in this stat category was almost guaranteed to be in the Complacent Gaming Syndrome group, with the biggest offenders being Ami, Crunch, and Spyro due to them already being Ensemble Darkhorses.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The presence of promotional items based on Sour Patch Kids and Trident Vibes suddenly made more sense once the Winter Festival Grand Prix was fully unveiled, as it comes with a track and items themed around sweets.
  • All those incidents of horribly glitched racer models performing other ones' animations were already funny, then later they seemed prescient of an actual abomination being done for real: Megamix.
  • Thirteen days after the Geary Day celebration, Geary wound up having a set of daily challenges themed after him.
  • The massive demand for Geary to get a legendary skin (which he did get at the end of the game's content support) has somehow resulted in him showing up as a mini-boss for Crash: On the Run!'s base game. The kicker? One of his alternate variants is him wearing his Beenox Robot legendary skin.
  • N. Brio has the Bandicoots' theme as his victory podium theme, even after numerous patches. In Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time!, it's revealed that he deliriously believes every single action he does is for the greater good (even harming people in other dimensions), and the bandicoots fighting him is seen by him as working together with them.
• I Knew It!:
  • Fans suspected the inclusion of Crunch Bandicoot, a major character from the post-Naughty Dog games, due to the confirmation that the game would have tracks and karts from Nitro Kart.
  • On a more negative note, a number of fans suspected that microtransactions for the Pit Stop would be added at a later date. As of August 2019 that unfortunately came to pass, although the microtransactions were surprisingly lenient by Activision standards.
  • Several Spyro-related elements were predicted long before they were actually revealed:
    • When concept art for a Spyro-themed track was shown off, pretty much everyone expected him to appear as a guest. The announcement that every character from Nitro Kart would be in the game furthered this belief for a number of people due to him being present as a guest character in the Game Boy Advance version of the game.
    • Certain fans predicted that Sparx would be added as the invincibility mask equivalent for the Spyro characters. This was proven true.
    • Gems are indeed used as the substitute for Wumpa Fruit on Spyro Circuit.
    • Spyro uses some of his power-up colours from the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.
  • Some fans expected that there might be a Christmas/holiday-themed Grand Prix to go along with a Halloween one. Both were confirmed with the reveal of the Spooky and Winter Festival GPs, respectively.
  • Some elements related to the Spooky Grand Prix had been anticipated and came true:
    • Some of the general content is indeed related to Crash Twinsanity, including the Nina's Nightmare track having Academy of Evil influences, and a skin based on that game's unused Evil Coco concept, albeit heavily altered for modern sensibilities.
    • The general assumption was that Nina, N. Brio and Komodo Moe would all arrive in the same GP, which was correct.
    • There is a Halloween theme for the bonus skins, as expected.
    • Certain fans thought about the possibility of DLC racers returning with new skins sometime after their GP was over, and could arrive with items that failed to be implemented in the Pit Stop. Both got confirmed with the arrival of the Witch Tawna skin and the Tawna Pink paint job as well as Spyro's Winter Guardian skin.
  • Some more fan theories got confirmed in relation to the Neon Circus Grand Prix:
    • Some of the people who noticed the datamine leak for it assumed that this would be the one that would finally confirm King Chicken, and the amount of hints pointing towards his inclusion, mainly the mural of a chicken with five eggs in the Lost Ruins hub. They were right.
    • One strategy guide for Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex gave Neo Cortex a backstory of him coming from a clown family, so a clown skin inspired by this piece of trivia from the older continuity made sense to a fair few fans. Sure enough, the Neon Circus GP gave him one.
    • There was the hope that Rilla Roo would get some level of involvement to reference Crash Bash, which is called Carnival in Japan. That came true, via a banner pitting him against Koala Kong, another character who appeared in that game, with Rilla Roo himself becoming playable in the following GP.
    • The Nitro Squad members were expected to get more distinct outfits^note Back in the Nitro Tour Grand Prix, all of them and Tawna sported the same type of bonus skin, but with different colors. for their Circus skins in this GP, which is the case; Ami is a ringleader, while Liz, Megumi and Isabella are performers with different skills (fire dancer, hula hoop busker/harlequin and acrobat, respectively).
    • At least one fan thought the Koala Carnival could have a big jump area, similarly to the Hyper Spaceway and Electron Avenue tracks. There's one right at the start of it.
    • The Twitter artist NitroNeato managed to accurately guess that Pasadena would wear pink lipstick.
  • Yet more fan theories have been confirmed, once the Winter Festival Grand Prix finally got unveiled:
    • Ever since the start of the GPs, it was heavily suspected that Yaya Panda would eventually become playable, especially since the Rocket kart from Nitro Kart 2 came with the Nitro Tour GP. She eventually did come the Winter Festival GP. Furthermore, some expected her to have a smaller height like Coco and Nina, since her source game made everyone there this way, and Stephanie Sheh was correctly predicted to be the one to voice her.
    • Several fans assumed that the fight banner in Koala Carnival hinted towards Rilla Roo coming later on. They were proven right.
    • There was the assumption that Beenox might have been aware of the myth surrounding Fasty the Hippo and decided to include him in some way. They did, albeit as a moose with a slightly different name, no less.
    • Due to the datamine, at least one fan expected Nash's Legendary skin to be based on the NPCs seen in Meteor Gorge. This is 100% true.
  • On a more negative note, there has been a lot of speculation as to whether the Beenox Pack was the very last update the game would receive, since it was never specified that it would be the last... As of September 1st, Beenox finally did announce that, yes, the Beenox Pack was the last update.
  • The YouTuber Johnny Cooper 64 had correctly predicted that the Grand Prix for January would have a post-apocalyptic theme, some days before the announcement.
  • The arrival of the Rustland Grand Prix continues the trend of confirming assumptions:
    • Due to the name of the GP having "rust" in it, fans were expecting for Rusty Walrus to be involved in some fashion. He definitely is, via a graffiti of him and a dented wall found on N.Gin's ruined battleship.
    • A select few fans figured that with the addition of characters from the majority of the series, the oddball Megamix would show up sooner or later. Which happened, as he's the sole new racer for this GP. Some fans also figured that the mixed villains' voices and victory podium animations would all be incorporated.
  • Some fans were certain that Beenox could still continue to release extra content, like new racers and karts, after the Grand Prix events end. This view has been proven to be valid, once Beenox stated in a blog post on February 14, 2020 that the addition of smaller extra content will be maintained after the 8th and final GP. Also, some saw that the end of the GPs was coming, due to the Rustland GP only bringing a single racer.
  • The YouTuber MisterBo correctly predicted that there would be a space-themed Grand Prix.
  • Quite a few elements in the Gasmoxia Grand Prix had been anticipated for months before their unveiling:
    • Emperor Velo the XXVII (in his bulky robotic body, not the real one), was seen coming by fans ever since the launch of the game, due to his conspicuous absence from the base roster despite the rest of the playable characters from Nitro Kart being present to start with. He was also accurately expected to cap off the final Grand Prix as its only star racer.
    • Emperor Velo is indeed present as the opponent for new time trial times.
    • The kart Velo and his Champions use in Nitro Kart's boss races was seen as a given, since it was the only kart from the game to be missing at the game's launch.
  • The first post-Grand Prix update brings with it a host of new theory confirmations:
    • At least one fan thought that Geary would get a legendary skin based on Beenox's former mascot. This is eventually confirmed within this update, along with other Beenox-related content. It also confirmed suspicions about the skin being the teased item that would "make fans very happy".
    • Most fans were sure about Baby Cortex and Baby Tropy eventually arriving in the game, despite them missing out on the Back N. Time GP.
    • A few supporters were hoping for the Lab Assistant to become playable, which came true.
    • Some fans did an accurate educated guess about the Beenox time trial ghosts not being any new racers.
    • As expected, the secret bonus racer teased in earlier datamines is here.
  • During the production of Nitro Kart, the idea of bringing back CTR tracks with updated graphics◊ had been thrown around but ultimately scrapped. 16 years later and it's the Nitro Kart tracks getting that treatment in a Crash Team Racing remake.
  • The Twitter user NitroNeato drew Tawna as a witch, a few days before her official witch skin got unveiled.
  • The Twitter user Esmael J drew a picture of most of the female characters with Rustland-themed skins, giving Liz a skull facepaint and skull shoulderpad. Once the Gasmoxia Grand Prix arrived, Liz's space pirate outfit just so happened to have a skull pattern on it.
  • The Twitter user Hudson Hatley reposted this comic featuring Emperor Velo, a mere four days before his confirmation. In addition, some fan artists had depicted Velo being angry with Oxide for "stealing" his title of fastest racer in the galaxy, yet the CTR TV report shows that Oxide actually invited Velo, as they're on friendly terms.
  • Canadian Guy Eh posted this montage of pitched-up N. Tropy voices, the day before Baby Tropy was confirmed, with an even higher-pitched voice to match.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • As was the case in the original game, Komodo Joe is fought solo, with his brother Moe being nowhere to be found. Fans of the duo were disappointed that the battle wasn't changed to accommodate both brothers akin to the Norm boss race in Crash Nitro Kart. Komodo Moe would eventually join the game in the Spooky Grand Prix.
  • One of the criticisms given to the game was that it runs at 30 frames per second as opposed to 60. Some were hoping that the new game would yield higher framerates than the original CTR, but that wasn't the case.
  • Battle Mode is one of the few elements of the game to not gain much of any enhancements through the game's updates and Grand Prix. With no new battle arenas or modes, along with very minimal coin rewards for winning battles, many gamers find little incentive to play them besides the Wumpa Challenges, which also tend to be some of the most repetitive.
• Les Yay: Thanks to their refined personalities in the game, many fans have come to ship Ami/Megumi, citing them as having a Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic, as well as enjoying the prospect of an American-Japanese romance.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • As was the case in the original game, Turning characters are unfortunately considered terrible due to their poor design: their main draw is supposed to be their great handling allowing them to take corners better than the other types, but this is usually more of a hindrance than a benefit due to this ensuring they can't snake effectively on straightways and thus struggle to retain their reserves. In addition, they're the slowest of the four classes, meaning that if they do end up leading, they're likely to be overtaken anyways, with their only niche being on tracks that heavily utilise USF such as Oxide Station and Cortex Castle. It's gotten to the point where Turning characters are not only the least-used class online, but fans are actively dreading the idea of their requested characters being Turning (though this became a non-issue after the engine select feature was added).
  • Balanced characters unfortunately don't fare that much better. This is mostly due to the fact that like in the original game, the stats listed for the Balanced characters are deceptively low: although their speed stat is stated to be one point higher than the Acceleration characters, they're actually slower than them and have worse acceleration than the already-slow Turning characters, resulting in them being heavily outclassed by Acceleration and Turning in everything they can possibly do. Even their comparatively better turning is considered a flaw: due to a technique called u-turning, which allows players to turn incredibly fast without losing much speed by braking while hopping, the turn stat is often regarded as a redundant Dump Stat by experienced players at best, and an active detriment at worst due to the tighter turning ensuring it's much harder to snake on straightways consistently coming to the point that a low turn stat is considered a Game-Breaker online. Balanced characters are considered so terrible that there's active demand to buff them to actually reflect their in-game stats, as they can't even function as the Jack of All Stats they're supposed to be.
• Memetic Badass:
  • William P., Beenox's technical designer, is notable for having incredibly fast Time Trial records on difficult to master tracks, such as Turbo Track, Dragon Mines, Out of Time, Megamix Mania, etc. Players who have beaten his records have reported having difficulty beating him, making him this in regard.
  • The Iron Checkpoint Crate's inclusion has single-handedly managed to prove that any character suggestion isn't too absurd for this game.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Geary is notable for having been the only base game character without a legendary skin for a long time. In addition, his appearance in this game makes him a lot smaller than he was in Nitro Kart, to the point of seeming completely harmless. Ditto with Pinstripe, as he hasn't received any new event-themed skin yet and only left with his lone Gangster skin.^note Although he did get legendary exotic recolors for it in the same update Geary got his skin, at least. As part of the post-GP content update, Geary finally got his long-awaited legendary skin, which was completely overshadowed by the addition of an inanimate Iron Checkpoint Crate as a playable character.
  • Among the tracks, Turbo Track is seen as this. Not only is it consistently avoided by online players due to its infamous difficulty in relation to the tight turns, it's the only track to have not been included in any cups (unlike Oxide Station and Clockwork Wumpa, which were left out in their origin games), especially with Megamix Mania and Drive-Thru Danger getting their own dedicated themed cups.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Oxide has become a minor example thanks to his "Hot Rod" skin's podium winning animation. When Oxide wins using this skin, the exhaust pipes in his head will ignite and he'll look to the sides while striking a "riding" pose. This frequently makes him look as if he's ogling the ass◊ of whoever's in third place while metaphorically "revving the engine". His sticking his tongue out while doing so makes him appear lecherous, not making the staging of the animation any better.
  • Fake Crash became something of one, due to the premise for Prehistoric Playground: stealing N. Tropy's scepter and messing with the timeline, which resulted in the track essentially being made in his image. This has lead to some jokes about him having had intercourse with every living creature in the Mesozoic era.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Coco's "Bandicoot Power!" line has caught onto the fanbase, even moreso than in the original game. It helps that there are more bandicoots in this game besides her, Crash and Fake Crash compared to the original game, such as Crunch, Tawna, the baby versions of Crash & Coco and all four Trophy Girls of Tawna's Nitro Squad.
  • Papu Papu's "big breakfast" line is also quite popular.
  • Liz and her iconic "Your mum's an armadillo!" line.
  • Stew's Jaw Drop during the intro for the Back N. Time Grand Prix has found use as an effective reaction face.
  • CHARACTERNAME_A/B/C, ITEMNAME_A, TRACKNAME_A, Juiced Up to the Finish Line 999/999^note The Grand Prix's Daily/Weekly Challenge generator has given the impressions of Obvious Beta to players due to its tendency of spouting the aforementioned placeholder names, buggy objectives that cannot be cleared whatsoever (one Weekly Challenge from the Back N. Time Grand Prix, Sky is the Limit, requires jumping for a total of 1 meter, but how that is accomplished in practice is never known and whatever tips given from other players who allegedly cleared it just plain do not work), or just plain impossible challenges (No Boost Needed on the boost pad-required Hyper Spaceway). Meanwhile, Juiced Up to the Finish Line seems like a plausible objective until one looks at the uncleared yet 999/999 progress and its description which varies and always involves the placeholder names, in other words a placeholder objective until the game is reset and the proper objectives are loaded..
  • Farming N. Gin Labs.^note Prior to its patching, this track was the most exploited by players for easy Wumpa Coin farming due to its lap skip being relatively easy to do with loose margin of error. It was so notorious that almost every friend race request in the CTR subreddit involves this track for the most optimal Wumpa Coin gain, especially during weekends where the double bonus is in effect.
  • Farming Dingo Canyon/Thunder Struck.^note Similar case to the above, but cuts down time to single-digit seconds per lap if done properly. Dingo Canyon had an oversight in the collision near the starting line which allows racers to bypass a check to trick the track that they have raced the entire track normally. Thunder Struck requires more precision despite not relying on invisible solid collisions but can help score more Wumpa Coins than Dingo Canyon. After causing a similar flood of racing requests thanks to N. Gin Labs being patched, both have been fixed in a sudden major update.
  • Armadillo Liz/Armalizzo/Lizadillo^note A further mutation of Liz's already memetic "Your mum's an armadillo!" line by the Twitter community, namely by turning her into an armadillo.
  • No skins for Geary/Pinstripe.^note As stated in Memetic Loser above, Geary is the last character in the base roster to have recieved a Legendary skin. Ditto with Pinstripe, who only has one Legendary skin and hasn't received a new one since launch, recolors aside. Discussions about future updates will always have someone mention if Geary and/or Pinstripe will receive a new skin.
  • #GearyDay^note To honor Geary because of his (former) lack of Legendary skins, fans across all the Crash-related social media paid respects for him by racing as him in Single Player or Online Matchmaking events on February 1st.
  • More skins for Coco^note Prior to the first post-GP update, Coco recieves the most amount of Legendary skins out of all roster alongside Crash. However, the distribution of Coco's skins were almost consistent between Grand Prixes than Crash's (Crash recieved skins in Nitro Tour and Back N. Time before going into a halt for three GPs before recieving more in Winter Festival and Rustland, meanwhile Coco recieved skins in Spyro & Friends and Spooky before halting at Neon Circus, then continuing at Winter Festival and Rustland), making hers more noticeable by fans. This has received sarcastic remarks on if Coco will get a skin in future updates.
  • Mergumi^note A Twitter user known as Coco Happy made fan art of Megumi as a mermaid, leading to this portmanteau and other artists drawing her as such afterwards.
  • A crate got in before [requested character].^note The unexpected inclusion of an iron checkpoint crate being the "secret character" Beenox teased from previous Grand Prix datamines completely demolished all theories about Willie Wumpa Cheeks being a playable character, in addition to highly-requested characters such as the Viscount, Madame Amberly, etc.
  • Why isn't the boulder playable yet!?^note The aforementioned iron checkpoint crate's promotion into a racer led to an increased movement of fans half-jokingly suggesting that the giant boulder from the first game should become a racer as well.
  • The PC port.^note Nitro-Fueled is infamous for never having received a PC release like the other revival Crash and Spyro games have, but because it is so extremely acclaimed in the fanbase (even approaching Sacred Cow territory in some circles), fan demand for a PC release remains extremely high. If there is a rumor that there will be a Crash announcement going around, expect several comments hoping that it is the announcement of a PC release for Nitro-Fueled, even if the rumor or news heavily implies it is something totally unrelated.
• Memetic Troll: N. Tropy gained this reputation upon the reveal of a data corruption glitch connected to his time trials in the PlayStation 4 version, which players have to beat if they want to unlock him. The fandom promptly latched onto that as N. Tropy using his time powers to intentionally mess with players who want to use him, which fits surprisingly well with his natural personality.
• Moe:
  • The non-evolved animals' alternate skins have helped to make them even more adorable than before.
  • While all of the Nitro Squad members are considered to be rather cute, Megumi is the biggest example, thanks to being a Genki Girl and because she is the nicest member of the group.
  • Spyro is in the game, with all his Badass Adorable mannerisms to match.
  • Yaya Panda is seen as positively adorable by a vast majority of the fanbase, from her Chinese-oriented design, to her tiny size, to her attempts at being aggressive towards the other competitors coming off as more cute than anything. She's even endearing when she loses, stroking her hair in a quiet, hurt manner.
• Narm Charm:
  • Fans who aren't put off by Rilla Roo's goofy-looking modern take on his face have found it funny in a ridiculous sort of way, even being somewhat comparable to Shrek.
  • The Lab Assistant using pitched-down Crash voice clips, alongside his newfound Adorkable personality, has made him hilariously endearing to fans.
• Nightmare Fuel: October 2019's Spooky Grand Prix's new track, Nina's Nightmare, is dominated by an enormous jack-o-lantern spider abomination with multiple glowing green eyes and a fanged, hungry grin.
  • The whole of the Rustland event paints a pretty bleak picture. The new track, Megamix Mania, is colorful for an apocalyptic wasteland, but features wrecked landmarks from the series, such as N. Gin's ship and the dried out remains of Roo's Tubes. The various new skins show the likes of Crash and Coco needing to become Action Survivors, and other mutants such as Dingodile becoming even more mutated. Even the CTR TV intro feels off, with the studio left abandoned.^note Although this is because they're too busy racing. It doesn't help that the event following it is set in outer space and only adds new skins for the DLC racers.
  • Megamix. This complete beast is a fusion between Dr. Cortex, N. Gin, Tiny and Dingodile. While he looked a slight Narm-ish in the GBA game, here his design is genuinely unsettling and disturbing, with pores popping all over his flesh, the metal from N. Gin's head melting into his skin and Tiny's lower jaw and teeth, as well as the spikes from his uniform tearing through his shoulders. His goofy pants, taken directly from Dingodile do give a slight Nightmare Retardant, but just barely. And on top of it all, his voice is a disturbing mix of all four baddies in one. It really goes to show how wrong it actually is.
• Older Than They Think:
  • One aspect of the updated tracks that is universal is the addition of unique looking CTR banners at the starting/finish lines, whereas the original game used the same checkered banner for each track. This is actually something that was considered for the original game, but ended up being scrapped due to technical limitations of the original PlayStation.
  • The game having customizable kart options, including the body and wheels, was an idea originally proposed in the cancelled Crash Team Racing reboot from 2010. However, unlike that game, the customization options here are purely cosmetic and have no effect on gameplay whatsoever.
  • Crash Nitro Kart was planned to be a nostalgia game for CTR, with recreated tracks from the first game and even an early online mode planned late in the game's development. Nitro-Fueled takes these ditched elements and makes them the centrepiece.
  • Although some fans aren't keen about the brainwashed mutant Coco skin being labeled Evil Coco instead of the Twinsanity-inspired Dark Coco, there is a precedent for this; N-Tranced had Coco get this designation for her boss level while under N. Trance's influence.
  • While it's occasionally believed that the CTR initials on Isabella's track suit are a new detail, it was actually there in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment during her old podium animation for the original Team Racing. They could also be seen in some of Naughty Dog's promotional images for CTR, such as this one◊.
• Paranoia Fuel: When racing online, a Warp Orb or N. Tropy Clock can be used at any time. They can hit at the beginning of the race, potentially negating an early lead, or during a shortcut or a jump, costing the victim a significant amount of time. Even worse is that both can be used multiple times in short succession. Players will be keeping their eyes on the map and hoping for a shield power up if they’re doing even remotely well online. Thankfully, patches decreased the appearances of those items. However, the Winter Festival GP update has increased the Warp Orb's speed.
• Questionable Casting: After the Nitro Tour GP, no new voice actors have been added. This has occasionally led to some unusual casting choices:
  • Tom Kenny replacing Maurice LaMarche as N. Brio hasn't really gone over well. Many longtime fans of the series who were highly anticipating N. Brio finally making his racing game debut were particularly disappointed by the change in his voice, with some saying the change is so noticeable that it no longer sounds like N. Brio at all. This was only punctuated when Roger Craig Smith (Chick's voice actor) took over as Brio the following game, and managed a near perfect replica of La Marche's version, meaning Nitro-Fueled missed out on an ideal casting choice.
  • Debi Derryberry replacing Shanelle Workman as Pasadena O'Possum received the most flak out of all recasts. While Derryberry's previous voicework as Nina has been recieved well, her take on Pasadena's has been criticized for sounding too much like Coco, almost omitting out the Southern accent.
  • John DiMaggio replacing Danny Mann as Ebenezer Von Clutch wasn't too well-received either. For many, DiMaggio's take on the character sounds far higher-pitched and less convincingly German-sounding than Mann's, with some believing that Corey Burton would've made a better replacement instead.
  • Although not hated entirely, André Sogliuzzo replacing Steve Blum as Emperor Velo XXVII has been a let down to many fans who had been anticipating his return, in which Sogliuzzo's performance as the Emperor is criticized for sounding too high-pitched, not quite accomplishing the same baritone Cold Ham Blum gave him.
  • While Ike Amadi doesn't sound too far off, many questioned why the game cast Kevin Michael Richardson for Stew and yet didn't have him reprise Crunch.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Most of the characters debuting in Nitro Kart, including the Promoted to Playable bosses and Zam, whose updated design and more expressive dog-like personality have given him a fair few fans. Zem remains a pretty contentious character, though he has received new skins that tone down his Gasshole characteristics.
  • When it comes to the tracks, while the Nitro Kart tracks weren't hated per se, they were often seen as duller versions of the tracks in Team Racing. However, thanks to this game's much faster gameplay, the design of these tracks have become much better received, with Deep Sea Driving and Electron Avenue commonly being cited as favorites from the entire selection.
  • While Slide Coliseum and Turbo Track weren't hated in the original Crash Team Racing, they were seen as having relatively boring designs compared to the other 16 tracks as they are mostly flat with little decoration aside from a load of tires everywhere. In this game, Slide Coliseum now is themed around a concert with holograms of the original eight characters, the bosses aside from Oxide and the trophy girls. Turbo Track has signs of Crash, Coco, and Cortex hung up along a huge screen of Chick and Stew from Crash Tag Team Racing. Turbo Track also exists in its original form exclusively for the PS4 version as Retro Stadium.
  • Coco and Crunch's brainwashed selves from Mind Over Mutant, now referred to as Evil Coco and Evil Crunch. They weren't hated on their own, but their game of origin symbolized the temporary death of the Crash franchise for years before the N. Sane Trilogy came into being. Evil Coco and Evil Crunch reappearing as skins has not only shown Beenox's willingness to pull content from any game in the series (even a controversial one from the late Radical era), but got some fans appreciating how Creepy Awesome they look.
  • For the first several months of release, Balanced and Turning-based characters weren't exactly beloved due to their terrible stat-spreads. Relief was omnipresent amongst the player-base and people who like to play as those characters with the advent of engine swapping as of the Spooky Grand Prix, allowing any character to use any stat-spread.
  • A minor case for Tag Team Racing's chicken-based humor; while funny, it seemed random and just there for the sake of absurdity. Here, it's integrated a little more smoothly overall, having fairly unobtrusive chicken appearances in the story cutscenes and track backgrounds, as well as more reports for Chick & Stew to do thanks to the Grand Prix. It also amounted to something with King Chicken and the aforementioned Chick & Stew becoming playable.
  • Yaya Panda was originally introduced in an obscure mobile racing game made between the Radical era and the series' long hibernation and wasn't seen as very popular, having very little of a personality to speak of given said game's lack of plot. Not only did this game flesh her personality out much more than was ever seen previously, but most of the fanbase was pleased by how utterly adorable they managed to make her in the process.
  • Megamix had been an unlockable boss encounter in The Huge Adventure, that tended to be taken out of context by fans and caused bafflement due to this unusual genetic accident of a design with body parts assembled haphazardly (including Dingodile's goofy-print pants). Luckily, it got a more consistent design that plays up how wrong it is, and was given personality traits that show what logically happens to four villains trying to use one body, which made it more appealing.
  • Aku Aku and Uka Uka's Titans and Mind Over Mutant designs were heavily divisive, with the former barely having a resemblance to the classic design and the latter completely different. Here, both of these designs have been repurposed and combined into a brand-new mask called Apo-Apo, allowing all of these masks to coexist, and add some nice flourish to the Rustland skins' victory animations.
  • When Rilla Roo was first released in Winter Festival, fans weren't pleased with his design, especially his mouth. Eventually, Beenox added Fixed Rilla Roo, a character that brought him back to more closely resemble how he looked in Bash. Those who liked the Winter Festival design can still play as him.
  • The vitriol for Baby Crash and Baby Coco allegedly replacing Baby Cortex and Baby Tropy subsided, once the latter were eventually confirmed to arrive via the first post-GP update.
• The Scrappy: In a game where most of the added characters have been met with great enthusiasm by the fandom, Baby Crash and Baby Coco are notable for their unpopularity. They have commonly been criticized as clumsy and gimmicky attempts to follow in Mario Kart's footsteps by including baby versions of established characters as playable racers. Fans have also mocked them (particularly Baby Crash) for being more grotesque than cute, as well as expressed disappointment in that they had been released before Warped's baby versions of Cortex and N. Tropy, who had been teased in an early datamine.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • As with the original games, you can't just get a certain goal time in Time Trials to label the Tropy/Oxide ghosts beaten. You must race the ghosts proper to defeat them. Unlike the original game, the ghosts are not enabled instantly after they're unlocked, meaning you have to go back to the main menu and manually enable the ghosts for your next run through a track. This is doubly so for Oxide should you decide to go beat his times too and unlock N. Tropy's Digital skin.
  • While the cosmetics have been incredibly well received, the Pit Stop you buy them in and the Wumpa Coins you buy them with have not. The Pit Stop works on a daily rotation, meaning that you'll have to wait a while in order to get costumes for characters that you like. This would be less of an issue if Wumpa Coins were easy to get, but how you get them is obtuse. You get a number of coins for every race, but the number of coins depends on the actual track, which range from 20 coins to 80 coins. Items in the Pit Stop cost well over 1000 coins. In order to gain more coins than the pitiful amounts given per race, players must race online. For the first thirty minutes of race-time-total, a five-times multiplier is given to all coins earned with an overall double bonus during weekends outside of the bonus time. Because it requires a farily stable and speedy online connection, not to mention being the subscription services necessary to be online in the first place, this can get pretty expensive for some players. To cap it off, if a player is incapable of being online at all, they cannot earn Wumpa Coins nor can they access the Pit Stop. Needless to say, quite a number of players are not happy about this. Another potential negative for the Pit Stop is that an interview with Canadian Guy Eh and a Beenox developer revealed that the some Pit Stop items and even the Grand Prix rewards could be anywhere from seasonal or even Temporary Online Content, depending on what direction they take for the items.
  • While you can select a difficulty when starting Adventure Mode, you are locked into that difficulty for the entire playthrough. Find an event too hard? You'll have to start a completely new save if you want to change it.
  • Prior to Back N. Time, N. Trance and certain character skins were only unlockable as part of certain packs. During Nitro Tour, the slot in the Pit Stop that N. Trance's pack Summer Time appeared in was dedicated solely to the Nitro Squad and would remain completely empty after all four of their packs were obtained. It was also feared that there would only be a four-day grace period following the end of Nitro Tour and the beginning of Back N. Time to obtain N. Trance, with a number of players frustrated that the window was so narrow, though the entry for Author's Saving Throw above explains how Beenox alleviated this. However, it would take until an update patch midway through the Spooky Grand Prix in October for N. Trance's Life Saver skin is to be available on its own at last, four months after the Summer Time bundle was last available.
  • With microtransactions confirmed as another way of obtaining Wumpa Coins starting with the Back N. Time update, fans' reaction has become intense, especially considering that this is a full-priced game to begin with.
  • For much of the online community, the N. Tropy clock and Warp Orb powerups have become this. In the original game, since AI racers didn't have access to the items and the game only allowed up to four players in multiplayer mode, getting hit by these items was relatively uncommon and seldom ever happened multiple times in a row. In Nitro-Fueled's online multiplayer, however, all eight racers can potentially have access to the powerups, which frequently results in one being bombarded with them over and over, utterly killing the pace of the race. In the worst cases, players have reported as many as five Warp Orbs traversing the race course simultaneously.
  • During the middle of the Back N. Time Grand Prix, it was discovered that whatever chooses the daily challenges can choose impossible ones when a No Boost Needed challenge involved Hyper Spaceway, one of the tracks where boost pads cannot be avoided as they are too large to jump over and are required to make the many jumps across the track. This reared its ugly head again very early in the Rustland Grand Prix, where a challenge was to score a certain total of flags in Capture the Flag mode in Coco Park, which, obviously, is not a Battle Arena.
  • There are items that are only obtainable from redeeming codes from real-life products such as Trident and Sour Patch Kids. Said products are US-only, natch, and thus only work on US copies. Unlike the platform-exclusive items (which are justified), this is considered by the playerbase as being on the same level as the Microtransactions issue mentioned above. Making matters more baffling is a kart that's only available to subscribers of the Xfinity service.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • The AI is all-around smarter in this game compared to the original. Many have found themselves stuck for a while playing Adventure on Classic, which corresponds to Normal difficulty. Yet it is also fair; shortcuts are still the players' exclusive right to use. Let's just say Nitro-Fueled Mode is added for a reason.
  • It is harder to unlock N. Tropy now. Previously, you only had to beat his Time Trial Ghost in 18 tracks, because those are all the original CTR has. The addition of CNK tracks in the base game, however, means that the number of tracks you have to beat him in adds up to 31. And to make the experience even more grueling, the N. Tropy ghosts now take certain shortcuts it simply ignored in the original game, such as Sewer Speedway's halfpipe jump and Blizzard Bluff's leap across the frozen lake.
  • N. Oxide can now be raced on said 31 tracks. Which would be all well and good, since defeating him was optional, except that there is a reward for doing so this time; an unlockable skin for N. Tropy.
  • Emperor Velo's Time Trial Ghost times are even more challenging here than the ones he had in CNK, accounting for the fact that Oxide uses the older ones while abiding to that game's slower physics.
  • And in case those weren't hard enough, you have the Beenox Times, which use tricks like U-Turning to make the racing so hard that if you clear them, you could race for your country!
  • Getting rewards^note namely the trophy paint jobs, which replace the extra arenas as they're already available from the get-go for beating all cups on all difficulties is also tougher now. Especially since there's now eleven of them to do as opposed to just four like it was in the original^note on the other hand, one can simply cut the knot and beat all the cups on hard, since that will unlock all the paint jobs in one fell swoop.
• Shocking Moments: Just when the base game seemed to have all the advertised characters and content wrapped up, a special report started online and in-game: CTR TV, hosted by none other than Chick & Stew from Tag Team Racing! Besides establishing large-scale extra support for the game via the Grand Prix events, the immediate follow-up report shows off Tawna, who finally becomes playable alongside the newly-promoted Trophy Girls, as the Nitro Squad.
• Squick:
  • Ripper Roo now vomits up his boss key upon being defeated. Thankfully, he tucks his head outside the edges of the screen as he expels the key.
  • Zem's defeat animation involves him sticking a finger up his ear and licking it.
  • In his winning animation, Bulldog Zam struggles for a few seconds before urinating off the side of the podium and looking quite pleased. If you see him in the Pit Stop before purchasing him, you can rotate the camera to see water emerging from Zam's crotch. Thankfully, there are no naughty bits on his model.
  • The Academy of Evil group portrait has its version of kid Cortex sporting his signature beard, despite the kid version of Cortex not sporting one in a flashback from Twinsanity.
  • Chick & Stew's Rustland skins depict them having been so baked by radiation that their feathers appear to have been burned off, bloodshot eyes, and green liquid is leaking out of their eyes and beaks.
  • Megamix's redesign gives the Cortex part of its head hideous-looking boils, and its Rustland skin makes them spread all across the organic parts of its body.
• That One Level:
  • The Tropy and Oxide ghosts on Oxide Station. The original game featured an unintentional shortcut which eliminated much of the difficulty; in Nitro-Fueled, it was removed. Tropy's time is a mere three seconds slower than Oxide, and is significantly harder than any of his other ghosts. Merely unlocking Tropy's ghost requires coming within two seconds of his own time—most tracks have more wiggle room to trigger the unlock (several seconds). In order to have a ghost of a chance, you absolutely must hold on to the USF for as long as possible, which is much easier said than done, and the methods through which this is done vary depending on the speed, acceleration, and handling of your character.
  • Tiny Temple, despite its simple layout, has deceptively difficult ghosts. The first lap is standard, but then the ghosts gain USF from the ramp at the end (Tropy keeps it for roughly half the track each lap, while Oxide keeps it for the entire remaining two laps), flying through the level at breakneck speeds. If you haven't learned how to utilize USF for yourself, it's all but impossible to keep up with them.
  • On Blizzard Bluff, the Tropy ghost takes the ice pond jump shortcut on two of the three laps. Miss one jump over the pond or get crushed by the giant boulder while trying to build up enough speed to jump the pond and you might as well reset. Defeating the Velo and Beenox ghosts absolutely requires exploiting the fence shortcuts, which is a difficult task by itself.
  • Sewer Speedway, due to the ludicrously high shortcut that the Tropy and Oxide ghosts (especially the Oxide one, which will always take that shortcut every lap) will take. Getting through it requires timing your jump perfectly in order to take it, unless you don't mind smacking headfirst into a wall. And the less said about the barrels, the better.
  • In regards to regular tracks, Hot Air Skyway, already notorious for lacking railings à la Rainbow Road and having the most difficult boss race before Oxide, inexplicably got even worse, as the developers decided to add dense packets of clouds obscuring most of the edges and turns ahead of you as well as patching out nearly every shortcut and exploit to keep you from skipping large swathes of the course.
  • Dragon Mines is just as bad as it was in the original, with very steep turning needed for the ramp up the mines and an incredibly risky shortcut midway through the track. The ghosts here are also no joke and will be the bane of the N. Tropy sidequest alongside the previously mentioned tracks.
  • Deep Sea Driving is probably the Nitro Kart track that has caught the most amount of heat by the fans for its difficulty. While the track layout itself isn't that difficult, what makes it an example of this are the spinning sawblades that appear throughout most of the track. Their pattern is extremely difficult to predict, and there are five of them, two of them right nearby one another, in the tube section. This, coupled up with the invisible walls in that same section, makes holding USF for the entire race a massive ordeal. Even the Oxide and Velo Ghosts have trouble navigating that part cleanly.
  • Turbo Track is mostly a very straightfoward track. Flat ground, no jumps, no hazards. Maintaining USF is pretty easy too, since there are many turbo pads and they all grant it. However, one section has three extremely tight turns in a row. If you haven't mastered U-turning, you will lose your speed during this section. That's more than enough to put you at a massive disadvantage against players that have mastered this section, who can zip through while maintaining USF the entire time.
  • Out of Time is often regarded as having the biggest difficulty spike between Oxide and Velo's Ghost by a wide margin. While the Oxide ghost is relatively easy compared to most other Oxide ghosts on other tracks, the Velo ghost is a whopping 33 seconds faster than Oxide's and requires holding USF for a large majority of the race once you get to the windmill at the end of the lap while taking relatively hard shortcuts such as the fence jump.
  • Among the special Grand Prix tracks, those that have gained the most ire from fans for their difficulty are Spyro Circuit, Gingerbread Joyride, and Drive-Thru Danger:
    • Spyro Circuit is littered with sharp corners and unwieldy obstacles such as ice balls and explosive chests which can be easily mistaken for Wumpa crates, and everywhere off-road is treated as out of bounds, an easy feat to achieve in its second section as it primarily consists of ramped terrain perfect for high jumps.
    • Gingerbread Joyride, on the other hand, qualifies for two reasons: the first is that not long after the starting line and just after the Blue Fire pads, there is a shortcut on the right hand side that is covered by a ramp; you can only access it by U-turning the right amount while keeping Blue Fire, which can be difficult as the ramp on the inside can take your boost off if hit on the side. The other reason? At the end of the track there are two jelly blocks that act as squashing obstacles while wrestling each other; their pattern is quasi-randomized and it's very hard to see them coming because they're sandwiched right between two sharp corners.
    • Drive-Thru Danger is perhaps one of if not the hardest track in the game. It makes it clear right from the beginning that you'll be in for a rough time as it places a row of crates to hide a sudden sharp turn over a bottomless pit and drag you right into the back of the pack. The rest of the track is narrow and filled with many sudden, almost blind turns, including a hairpin turn halfway through a lap that will eat your speed and reserves unless you take it very optimally.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Unlocking N. Tropy still requires you to beat all of his Time Trial ghosts, but this time you have to do it across both the Team Racing and Nitro Kart tracks. The key word here is "ghosts"; even if you've already beaten Tropy's time on the first attempt, you have to unlock and beat his ghost for it to actually count. Similarly, there's getting N. Tropy's Digital skin, which involves beating all the Oxide ghosts, who are way faster than the N. Tropy ones.
  • Getting the higher-ranked Relics remains as nail-bitingly tricky as ever, especially as, like with Time Trials, you have to do it across thirty-plus tracks. Your reward for accomplishing this task is special Gold and Platinum paint jobs for your kart, which is thankfully obtainable just by getting Relics on the original Crash Team Racing tracks. Papu's Pyramid's Relic Race in particular deserves special mention: everything listed on the original game's That One Sidequest section still applies here.
  • The Gaxmoxia Grand Prix added Emperor Velo ghosts to all tracks which are even harder than the Oxide ghosts. Not helping matters is the addition of two Champion kart skins which require beating Oxide's and Velo's ghosts on all tracks. This makes all the time trial tracks under That One Level to become even more brutal as well as making tracks under Breather Level actually difficult. To compound this, Beenox had stated they had intentions of adding developer times that were faster than the Oxide times beforehand. The Velo times are not those times, and the developer times are, in fact, even faster.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • While most of the Nitro Kart track redesigns were well-received by the fanbase, Hyper Spaceway's redesign caught some flack for cutting out the first anti-gravity section (and consequently the second jump through the colosseum) altogether instead of reworking it, making the track feel more like a series of straight lines than the ultimate final showdown it was in the original game.
  • In the original Crash Team Racing, the Invincibility music when you get the Aku Aku Mask included a cheery xylophone to go with the manic drumbeat. In Nitro-Fueled, however, it's only the drums, making it sound like it was directly ripped from the N. Sane Trilogy. The legacy version still has the xylophone however.
  • Uka Uka's voice in Adventure Mode. While he's still voiced by John DiMaggio, he's a lot less scary than he was in the N. Sane Trilogy. While this change in tone was also the case for when he was played by Clancy Brown in the original versions of Warped and CTR, the difference here is a lot more noticeable and jarring, with a lot of fans comparing his voice to Otto Mann from The Simpsons.
  • Another minor example comes from the credits. While the minor changes to the epilogues themselves have been accepted, the removal of the Nitro Squad has not. Even with their reintroduction as racers, the credits have not been changed to accomodate this. Further, the CNK racers were not included either so they continue to feel like an afterthought to some players' eyes, nor were any characters introduced via the Grand Prixs.
  • Microtransactions. Adding the ability to pay for stuff in a game that already costs money to begin with, alongside noticeably higher prices on bundles,^note such as the "Weird Science" bundle costing a whopping 9,900 Wumpa Coins since it was one of of only three bundles added in Back N. Time with the other two being only around 3,000, versus Nitro Tour which added five bundles of around 5,000 each brought in lots of displeasure from fans who thought the game was already fine as it was, as well as the usual complaints about microtransactions being awful. Further adding fuel to the fire are accusations that the choice of adding them after launch was done deliberately to avoid the ESRB’s “in-game purchases” label with the launch versions of the game.
  • Rilla Roo's makeover had a fairly mixed response. While he does very much act and sound the same as his Bash self, his design is drastically altered in favour of a bizarre stout top-heavy frame and completely redesigned, Shrek-esque face with a large chin and goatee. To say Rilla's design was polarising upon first reveal to the fanbase would be a massive understatement.
  • To a lesser degree, Pasadena's reimagining, with the omission of most of her defining traits such as her flirtiness and her Prehensile Tail, were met with disappointment as well, especially given the game's track record for capitalising on each characters' quirks and design defects. Her new voice was particularly contentious as well.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Tiny. Between his victory animations and some of the stuff he says, he comes off as more purely childlike in this game than in any other.
  • Zam. His retooled dog-like mannerisms have made him pretty appealing, for a weird, dinosaur-like alien.
  • Megamix gets this at times despite being Nightmare Fuel incarnate, particularly when Tiny takes over. This can be seen in its podium victory animation where it stands around with a big, goofy grin on its face before jumping around in joy.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • The "golfer" skins for Big Norm and Small Norm show both of them without their mime makeup and with regular human eyes. The result is that both of them look like semi-realistic humans without noses. The effect is rather off-putting.
  • The baby versions of Crash and Coco mix bulbously formed versions of themselves while also adding realistic human baby proportions to them, resulting in designs that are mocked by the fanbase for being more grotesque than cute.
  • Compared to her original more cartoony design, Pasadena now has a more humanoid build akin to the Nitro Squad. The extra detailed render used for her promo art◊ is particularly awkward, making her look awkward mainly due to a frontal perspective being used for her face instead of a profile.^*Which is odd, as her expression for the victory podium animation version of her render's pose is more joyful and not sultry.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Spyro Circuit has two mechanics lifted straight from its home series: firework boxes and gems. Firework boxes litter the track and explode if someone runs into them, while gems actually give a varying amount of wumpa depending on the colour; both help to make the track stand out among all the others, but haven't been used since despite the fanbases' requests for another Spyro track.
• Unexpected Character:
  • All the characters from the post-Naughty Dog era games have been considered unexpected at some point, since the canon status of their games wasn't clear after the N. Sane Trilogy went back to the beginning of the continuity. The first one to be confirmed was Crunch Bandicoot, though at that time it was revealed that the game would have tracks from Nitro Kart, so most fans saw him coming.
  • Chick and Stew have a small cameo in the two Stadium tracks and introduce the Grand Prixs, confirming that characters from Tag Team Racing would be added.
  • While many fans figured Tawna and Baby T could become playable, given that their models were already made for the N. Sane Trilogy, absolutely no one expected that the Trophy Girls, now known as the Nitro Squad, would be made playable as well.
  • Revealed alongside Spyro and Hunter is Gnasty Gnorc, which caught a lot of Spyro fans off-guard, since Ripto is generally seen as the more popular villain in that series' original trilogy and his voice actor Gregg Berger continues to be listed in the credits even after the Spyro GP ended, so it's odd that Gnasty made the cut instead. In addition, he made only one further appearance aside from the original game and the remake thereof, whereas Ripto had made the most reappearances out of all the villains before the classic series' original run ended.
  • The Winter Festival event is full of these, as well as making Chick and Stew playable: we have Rilla Roo, a character that only appeared once 19 years before Nitro-Fueled, and Yaya Panda, a character exclusive to the mobile games from the post-Radical Entertainment era who wasn't even present in the initial Content Leak. Yaya lampshades her own unexpectedness via Leaning on the Fourth Wall when she finishes a race with the line "Bet you didn't see me coming!".
  • Megamix, a one-off True Final Boss from Vicarious Visions' early Crash projects on the Game Boy Advance, wasn't heavily expected before the Rustland GP came along.
  • The update following the Gasmoxia Grand Prix promotes an Iron Checkpoint Crate to playable. Crates have never been portrayed as anything more than inanimate objects in the series before, so the fanbase was caught completely off-guard.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Carried over from the general quality of the N. Sane Trilogy, the environments are rendered in gorgeous stylistic detail, and match the character models ported from there perfectly. In addition, models made explicitly for Nitro-Fueled have particularly excellent detailing to them, such as the slight weathering on Oxide's carapace to imply his age, or the karts and how they interact with the terrain. And all of this is put through the usual cartoony filter of the series, with animation that uses all sorts of animation tricks to give the characters that extra bit of life.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Cool as it is, the Rustland GP is also terrifying. How so? The YouTube trailer actually asks the viewer their date of birth before it can be watched.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Circus Isabella from the Neon Circus GP; while the choice of an acrobat outfit didn't raise any eyebrows by itself, some found the addition of a mohawk replacing her standard hairstyle awfully unfitting for a character as elegant as Isabella (well, whenever she's not angered, that is).
  • Reindeer Crash from the Winter Festival GP; while the costume makes sense, some were a little confused that the Santa one from a Naughty Dog promo image for Warped wasn't used instead.

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