Crash Team Racing/YMMV

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Andy Gavin, one of the creators, notably stated he thought by making Oxide an alien, they would have jumped the shark and caused the series to fail, as Naughty Dog wasn't sure they could take the game very much further. Crash Team Racing received high sales and high ratings from multiple gaming review sites, including notes that, while it added nothing new to the mascot racer genre, Crash Team Racing did some things better than other similar games did (including the original Mario Kart).
• Best Level Ever:
  • Sewer Speedway. The best part is a half-pipe section including a wild shortcut that requires you to hop off the top of the halfpipe with a drift boost (or item) to reach it.
  • Most of the late-game tracks as well, notably Oxide Station the longest in the game. Especially once you know the Easy Level Trick for it.
• Character Tiers: It varies from track to track. Some of the more straightforward tracks require a bit of top speed, while others are more favorable for karts with better acceleration and/or handling. Most Battle Mode tracks require good handling in order to be agile against most projectiles flung at you by other people, while most other kinds of tracks can have handling issues be circumvented a la power sliding to get proper boosts to not fall behind.
• Older Than They Think: Mario Kart Wii introduced tricks which award the driver with a boost upon landing if they make enough hangtime with a hop. Crash Team Racing had the same mechanic earlier, minus the actual tricks.
• That One Level:
  • Dragon Mines, which happens to coincidentally be a track which you have to challenge a boss in (Komodo Joe). While power sliding in a straight line helps mitigate some of the difficulty within the level, there are few straightaways and you also have to watch out for mine carts which get in the way at inconvenient times.
  • Tiny Arena, the last race of the third hub world, combines a lot of tight turns with sudden mud pits that will slow you down significantly if you land in them, along with being one of the longest tracks in the game. In Adventure mode, this is also where even the normal races start to get noticeably more aggressive, and the CPUs start specifically going after you slightly more often the higher place you are instead of firing at random.
  • Hot Air Skyway, for the same reasons as Dragon Mines and more. Except for a few portions of the track, Hot Air Skyway for the most part has no walls. An inexperienced player will have difficulty with Pinstripe (the boss you confront in Hot Air Skyway) because they will have trouble with keeping themselves away from falling off the narrow roads. Pinstripe himself is not too difficult, but his bombs offer no favors due to how narrow the track itself is. There is a way to circumvent a bit of the difficulty via jumping across the other side of a track at a point where one of the walls is the only thing between two close portions of the road running parallel with each other.
  • Be warned: you will rage trying to get some of the Crash Team Racing tokens. For example, one race has you dip into a pool of water - which slightly lowers your speed - to get to a jump that's just high enough that if you press the hop button too early you will run into the side and not make it. You then have to go down a short path and run off the side of a bridge in the reverse direction to get one of the letters. The track? Crash Cove, the first racetrack of the game. And it gets worse from there.