http://www.longplays.org

Played by: Mad-Matt

The best Karting game on the PlayStation and one that stands up with best karting racers on other platforms. Developed by Naughty Dog and Published by Sony in 1999.


The game is quite highly detailed for a Playstation game and it does this by sacrificing some screen resolution to load in all those nice textures without excessive dithering. The 60fps ntsc region version is being played here and has a native resolution (before vertical doubling) of 512x216. The PAL version while sacrificing some speed runs at a higher resolution of 512x236 although strangely it just seems to stretch the image instead of actually utilising it for more visibility. The game does look ok in its Native Hardware aspect (after virtical doubling). You can select 4:3 in your player software if you want TV Aspect.

I play through Adventure mode as Crash. I wasn't sure how to best show the game and there was a couple of ways but I inevitable chose the more boring way. I should have just run through all the races to show the story and have that as a single part and all the rest of the fluff in subsequent parts. Instead I complete all events in each world area before moving onto the next eventually completing the story.

I am not particularly good at the game and hate time trials in any racing game especially when they are not optional and are needed for completion. I never really get the hang of the slide and turbo mechanic. Initially I just wanted to blast through events to get them done, but as I progressed and got better at the game I was getting the gold medals so the start of the game just looks bad. A couple of the tracks have a few trick shots to help cut corners or a section of the track. You wont see these in the initial races, but i do show them off later in the gem Cup. The hardest to pull off is on the sewer level and I don't show this one until the Relic clean up in part 3 (Not on Ytube)

The game is very enjoyable when playing just the race events but really does drag on when completing relic challenges and token challenges only to have to race every track again in the gem cups. The game is probably the longest Karting game I have played through.

Part 1 of this video plays through all events and end after the first encounter with oxide. Part 2 of the video completed the fourth world area and moves onto the Gem cups. After collecting all Relics I encounter Oxide for the final time to beat the game at 100%

The game can be completed up to 101% by getting all gold relics and even 102% by getting all platinum relics but that is too much for my lack of skills. I have attached a Part 3 of the video where I clean up those sapphire relics making them gold to show 101% completion. I wasn't really interested in doing well in these event at the start of the game and in hindsight I should have put more effort into those.

Part1:
00:06:10 - N. Sanity Beach
00:58:45 - The Lost Ruins
01:47:00 - Glacier Park
02:44:55 - Citadel City
03:09:30 - Oxides Challenge and Ending