Following the successful remasters of the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon trilogies, it's only natural that Activision would turn to another of its beloved classic games for a revival: Crash Team Racing. Almost twenty years on from its original release, this is still a fast and challenging counterpoint to Nintendo's more polished and casual-friendly Mario Kart, and this revival does an excellent job of staying true to its roots while injecting some modern niceties.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled has a lot of elements that will be immediately familiar to old-school CTR fans, but it's also a bit more expansive with its new additions than the Crash Bandicoot remasters were. For example this game includes not only all of the tracks from the original game, but tracks from the 2003 sequel Nitro Kart as well, and they all look amazing with a HD coat of paint. Then there's a full (and painfully contemporary) cosmetic system that lets you unlock skins for your favourite characters, and various kart parts so you can tweak your ride.

What's very much the same is the actual driving. CTR is a more technical game than Mario Kart, requiring well-timed button presses while power-sliding to get those essential boosts and earn a spot on the podium. There are a variety of power-ups, but the focus is on offence rather than catching up. You also shouldn't expect to see any "rubber-banding" in your favour, where you get better items and have AI players slow down for you if you've fallen behind. In fact the AI can be downright ruthless, and racing solo on anything but the easiest difficulty can be quite frustrating for this reason.

The main mode is Adventure, where you play through the original game's tracks while facing the occasional boss (and here you will certainly see rubber banding, in the sense that the boss will never fall behind). You can choose to play Adventure exactly as it used to be, or you can opt for a more modern setup that lets you choose a difficulty and switch characters between races.