Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is heading to Game Pass this week

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled – the spruce-up of the racer once referred to as “objectively loads better” than Mario Kart by Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell, causing eyebrows to catapult clean off people’s faces – is making its way to Game Pass this Wednesday, 4th December.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is, of course, developer Beenox’s effervescent remaster of 1999 PlayStation cult classic Crash Team Racing, which – alongside a significant audio-visual makeover – introduced elements from 2003’s Crash Nitro Kart and 2005’s Crash Tag Team Racing. “[It’s] is a gold-standard remaster,” Chris Tapsell wrote in his review back in 2019, “capturing the loveably janky, off-brand spirit of classic CTR – and then some.”

“It’s just plain, dumb fun, a game completely unashamed of itself even now,” he continued. “I think that’s probably why, even beyond the enormously generous treatment it’s had from Beenox… CTR is still one of the best kart racers ever made.” He then slapped it with a Eurogamer Essential, whereupon heads across the world began to explode, Scanners-style.

Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled is the first game to be confirmed for Microsoft’s December Game Pass line-up (you’ll find November’s over here). It’s also the latest in a slow trickle of Activision Blizzard titles to have hit the subscription service – following on from the likes of Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Diablo 4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – since Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of the publisher last year.

And if you’re not already a Game Pass subscriber, you might be interested to hear Microsoft recently reinstated its previous £1/$1 14-day trial offer – but only for PC.