Crash Team Racing debuts as the third biggest release of the year in the UK

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It arrived in style: Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, the remaster of the classic PlayStation kart racer, came out on June 21, 2019 and ended its launch week as the third biggest release of the year in the UK in physical sales. It was behind only Days Gone and the Resident Evil 2 remake.

For those who like comparing scoreboards: Activision’s game sold more discs in launch week than Mortal Kombat 11, Devil May Cry 5, Rage 2, The Division 2 and Anthem, all 2019 releases. It debuted at number one on the British chart, ahead of FIFA 19 and Forza Horizon 4. But let’s be honest: the number was far from the debut of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy in June 2017, which sold double on PS4 alone, while CTR added up PS4, Switch and Xbox One.

Check out the pedigree. The original Crash Team Racing came out in 1999 on the first PlayStation, made by Naughty Dog, and Nitro-Fueled, developed by Beenox, recreates everything with a new look and also pulls in content from Crash Nitro Kart, from 2003. The launch had 26 playable characters, the Adventure mode against the alien Nitros Oxide and online races for up to eight players. To see the difference between the remaster and the PS1 game, Digital Foundry made a side-by-side comparison:

What came next

Critics liked it: praise for the faithful recreation, the colorful look and the amount of content, with reservations about the difficulty, the online and the microtransactions added after launch. Beenox kept the game alive with free seasons called Grand Prix, which took the roster to 56 characters in total. And the result was a nice one: Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled passed 10 million copies sold by June 2025.