How Beenox is building “a love letter to the original Crash Team Racing” in Nitro-Fueled
It is easy to feel a mixture of joy and excitement when the remaster is approaching. The joy of reclaiming an old love conflicts with the understanding that it can taint the memory of the original. That is the effect of nostalgia on you. Nevertheless, developer Beenox is helping to allay our fears while lovingly continuing to develop Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled.
OPM spoke with Beenox’s creative director and co-studio head Thomas Wilson about the upcoming Kart Racer, discussing the studio’s efforts to reinvent what was once great, as well as reinvent it for an improved next-gen player.
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This feature first appeared in the official PlayStation Magazine. Get the latest PlayStation news at home, at an even lower price! Subscribe to OPM here.
Did you work with Vicarious Visions when developing the N.Sane trilogy?
Thomas Wilson: We chatted with good friends at Vicarious Visions. Because they have experience remastering games and doing a great job with the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane trilogy. But since we’re big fans of the franchise and big fans of the original Crash Team Racing, we’ve really focused on providing a great remaster that fans of the original will fall in love with.
Why is it called ‘remaster’ and not ‘remake’?
crack: The original intention is to recreate the awesome gameplay and tracks that people fell in love with from the very beginning. Crash Team Racing introduces a very unique mechanic in the way that you can use Powerslide to glide through the track, which we fell in love with. I started playing Crash Team Racing in the gaming industry 20 years ago.
I fell in love with this game because of the amazing mechanics and track design and the personality that comes out of the characters. So our main responsibility was to make sure we cloned it as closely as possible. You play nitro fuel.
But you definitely wanted to change something?
crack: The skills gap between when the game came out and now has given us an opportunity to modernize the experience by adding online racing and adding more personality. Great attention has been paid to detail to bring life and personality to every track in the game.
Have you ever felt the temptation to modernize more than you?
crack: I see Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled as a kind of love letter to the original Crash Team Racing, and it was very important to stick to the winning formula that Crash Team Racing developed 20 years ago. Our focus is on using these karts to recreate the same driving feel and racing fun, but at the same time we have had the opportunity to add a lot more personality to the way we modernize karts.
We talked about online and leaderboards, but can we also talk about the personality we can infuse into each character? This character is now fully rigged and fully animated and can be used to animate the character as it runs. So, there was a huge opportunity to give it more personality while maintaining the same original gameplay that everyone fell in love with.
A lot has been added to the design of the world track. What (um) drove it?
crack: Each time we remastered each track, the question we asked ourselves was, “What’s the story here? Is there anything we can instill in that we can add more personality to? So each time the question is, “What can we add to the environment?” Is it?”. What can I bring to the table to make it fun and exciting while retaining the original feel of the game?” Take Polar Pass as an example, you have assigned this level to Polar using your Polar Pass. [the polar bear racer]We said, “Well, what is this place?”
You can build a fishing village, build a treehouse with lights on it, and even have a DJ in it. So there’s a polar bear DJ who actually remixes music tracks while the penguins dance next to them. Those are things we think would be nice additions to the original experience. The good thing is that we don’t modify the layout or modify the original experience. But I’m looking for an off-track opportunity to bring a bit of humor and a bit of history to each game. track.
everything you need to know
platform: PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Release Date: June 21, 2019
genre: operation
developer: benox
It feels like a platformer in some ways, but in the form of kart racing. Are you doing that on purpose?
crack: Of course, the mechanics introduced at the time had to be maintained in the remastered version of Nitro-Fueled. Gliding on the ice was a gameplay element that was originally part of the game, so the feeling of sliding should feel the same. Of course, the original game was slightly influenced by the platformer created by Naughty Dog, but our goal here is to bring back all the great mechanics of Crash Team Racing, but to add a lot more to the experience.
How was this remaster work?
crack: I’ve been developing games for a very long time and I know you’re excited. It starts with a plain conversation, but you come up with a strategy to make it happen, and once we get to work it’s pretty interesting. It won the kid’s heart, started the game and played it again. It made me understand or remind myself why I fell in love with the game in the first place. Only good memories came to mind.
So it’s all about bringing all the good memories and love into Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled so fans of the original game can fall in love again and new users discover and appreciate for the first time. How great.
Thomas Wilson loves Crash Team Racing very much, but he did it. Translation into our practice as a game?
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How Beenox is building “a love letter to the original Crash Team Racing” in Nitro-Fueled
It’s easy to feel a mixture of joy and trepidation when approaching any remaster. The joy of an old favourite returning clashing with the understanding that it might spoil your memory of the original; that’s the effect of nostalgia for you. Still, developer Beenox is helping to alleviate our fears as it continues to lovingly craft Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled.
OPM sat down with Beenox creative director and co-studio head Thomas Wilson to discuss the upcoming kart racer, covering the studio’s attempts not only to recreate what was once great but elevate for a new generation of players entirely.
Save up to 51% on Official PlayStation Magazine subscriptions
This feature first appeared in Official PlayStation Magazine. Get the latest PlayStation news on your doorstep early and for a better price! Subscribe to OPM here.
Did you work with Vicarious Visions as it developed the N.Sane Trilogy?
Thomas Wilson: We talked to our good friends at Vicarious Visions because they went through an experience of remastering the games, and did an awesome job with the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. But we’re big fan of the franchise, big fans of the original Crash Team Racing, so really for us our focus was really on delivering a great remaster that fans of the original would simply fall in love with.
Why do you call it a “remaster” instead of a “remake”?
TW: The original intention is to remaster the awesome gameplay and tracks that people fell in love with in the first place. Crash Team Racing was introducing very unique mechanics with the way you can power-slide around the tracks, and so that was something that we fell in love with as well. I started in the game industry 20 years ago playing Crash Team Racing, so it’s kind of sort of come full circle.
I fell in love with this game because of the awesome mechanics and the awesome track design and the personality that comes out of the characters, so our responsibility was first and foremost making sure that we were recreating that as close as possible – to really have the muscle memory kicking in as you play Nitro-Fueled.
But you must have wanted to change things up a little?
TW: There was an opportunity to modernise the experience by adding online racing and by also adding a lot more personality because of the technological gap between when the game came out and what it is now. So, there was a great focus and attention to detail in adding life and personality to every track in the game.
Was there ever the temptation to modernise more than you have?
TW: I consider Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled sort of a love letter to the original Crash Team Racing, and it was very important to us to stick to the winning formula that Crash Team Racing had created 20 years ago. Our focus was making sure that we recreated the same feel, the same fun of racing with these karts, but at the same time there was a opportunity to inject a lot more personality in the way we modernised it.
We talked about online and leaderboards but we can also talk about the personality that can be injected into each of the characters, right? Because now these characters are fully rigged, fully animated, and that’s something we can take advantage of when we’re animating the characters when they’re racing – the reactions when they get hit, when they jump, when they win after a race. So there was a tremendous opportunity to actually inject more personality into it by keeping the same original gameplay that everybody fell in love with.
A lot has been added to the world track design. What (ahem) drove that?
TW: The question that we were asking every time we were remastering each track is “What’s the story here? Is there something that we could inject that would add more personality?” And so every time the question was “What can we add to the environment? What can we bring to the table that would make this fun and exciting while maintaining the original feel of the game?” For instance, Polar Pass. With Polar Pass we assigned that level to Polar [the polar bear racer], and we said “Well then, what is this place?”
We could create a fishing village, we could had a treehouse with the glowing lanterns, we could even have a DJ in there – so we have a polar bear DJ actually just remixing the music track with penguins dancing on the side. These are the things that we start thinking about that would just be nice additions to the original experience, so what’s great is that we’re not modifying the original experience, we’re not modifying the layout, but we’re looking for opportunities outside of the track to put a little bit of humour and just a little bit of story in each of the tracks.
Everything you need to know
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, SwitchRelease Date: 21 June, 2019Genre: RacingDeveloper: Beenox
In a way it feels like the platformers, but in a kart racing form. Is that deliberate?
TW: Of course mechanics introduced back in the day we needed to maintain in the remastered edition in Nitro-Fueled. The sliding on ice was a gameplay element that was part of the original game, and so we needed to make sure that feeling, the way you slide, had to feel the same. Of course, the original game borrowed some influences from the platform games that Naughty Dog created, but here our goal was to make sure that we bring back all the great mechanics from Crash Team Racing but that we add so much more to the experience.
What was it like to be asked work on this remaster?
TW: I’ve been developing games for a very long time and you know, you get excited. It starts as just a regular conversation, but then you build up a strategy so it can happen, and so when we started working on it that was just like very exciting. It brought out the kid at heart in me, booting up the game and playing it again – understanding or remembering what made me fell in love with the game in the first place. It just brought fond memories.
So then it’s a matter of taking all those good memories, all this love, and putting it into Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled so that fans of the original game can fall in love with it again, and newcomers can just discover it for the first time, and appreciate how great it is.
Thomas Wilson has a lot of love for Crash Team Racing, but did it translate into our hands-on with the game?
#Beenox #building #love #letter #original #Crash #Team #Racing #NitroFueled
How Beenox is building “a love letter to the original Crash Team Racing” in Nitro-Fueled
It’s easy to feel a mixture of joy and trepidation when approaching any remaster. The joy of an old favourite returning clashing with the understanding that it might spoil your memory of the original; that’s the effect of nostalgia for you. Still, developer Beenox is helping to alleviate our fears as it continues to lovingly craft Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled.
OPM sat down with Beenox creative director and co-studio head Thomas Wilson to discuss the upcoming kart racer, covering the studio’s attempts not only to recreate what was once great but elevate for a new generation of players entirely.
Save up to 51% on Official PlayStation Magazine subscriptions
This feature first appeared in Official PlayStation Magazine. Get the latest PlayStation news on your doorstep early and for a better price! Subscribe to OPM here.
Did you work with Vicarious Visions as it developed the N.Sane Trilogy?
Thomas Wilson: We talked to our good friends at Vicarious Visions because they went through an experience of remastering the games, and did an awesome job with the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. But we’re big fan of the franchise, big fans of the original Crash Team Racing, so really for us our focus was really on delivering a great remaster that fans of the original would simply fall in love with.
Why do you call it a “remaster” instead of a “remake”?
TW: The original intention is to remaster the awesome gameplay and tracks that people fell in love with in the first place. Crash Team Racing was introducing very unique mechanics with the way you can power-slide around the tracks, and so that was something that we fell in love with as well. I started in the game industry 20 years ago playing Crash Team Racing, so it’s kind of sort of come full circle.
I fell in love with this game because of the awesome mechanics and the awesome track design and the personality that comes out of the characters, so our responsibility was first and foremost making sure that we were recreating that as close as possible – to really have the muscle memory kicking in as you play Nitro-Fueled.
But you must have wanted to change things up a little?
TW: There was an opportunity to modernise the experience by adding online racing and by also adding a lot more personality because of the technological gap between when the game came out and what it is now. So, there was a great focus and attention to detail in adding life and personality to every track in the game.
Was there ever the temptation to modernise more than you have?
TW: I consider Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled sort of a love letter to the original Crash Team Racing, and it was very important to us to stick to the winning formula that Crash Team Racing had created 20 years ago. Our focus was making sure that we recreated the same feel, the same fun of racing with these karts, but at the same time there was a opportunity to inject a lot more personality in the way we modernised it.
We talked about online and leaderboards but we can also talk about the personality that can be injected into each of the characters, right? Because now these characters are fully rigged, fully animated, and that’s something we can take advantage of when we’re animating the characters when they’re racing – the reactions when they get hit, when they jump, when they win after a race. So there was a tremendous opportunity to actually inject more personality into it by keeping the same original gameplay that everybody fell in love with.
A lot has been added to the world track design. What (ahem) drove that?
TW: The question that we were asking every time we were remastering each track is “What’s the story here? Is there something that we could inject that would add more personality?” And so every time the question was “What can we add to the environment? What can we bring to the table that would make this fun and exciting while maintaining the original feel of the game?” For instance, Polar Pass. With Polar Pass we assigned that level to Polar [the polar bear racer], and we said “Well then, what is this place?”
We could create a fishing village, we could had a treehouse with the glowing lanterns, we could even have a DJ in there – so we have a polar bear DJ actually just remixing the music track with penguins dancing on the side. These are the things that we start thinking about that would just be nice additions to the original experience, so what’s great is that we’re not modifying the original experience, we’re not modifying the layout, but we’re looking for opportunities outside of the track to put a little bit of humour and just a little bit of story in each of the tracks.
Everything you need to know
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, SwitchRelease Date: 21 June, 2019Genre: RacingDeveloper: Beenox
In a way it feels like the platformers, but in a kart racing form. Is that deliberate?
TW: Of course mechanics introduced back in the day we needed to maintain in the remastered edition in Nitro-Fueled. The sliding on ice was a gameplay element that was part of the original game, and so we needed to make sure that feeling, the way you slide, had to feel the same. Of course, the original game borrowed some influences from the platform games that Naughty Dog created, but here our goal was to make sure that we bring back all the great mechanics from Crash Team Racing but that we add so much more to the experience.
What was it like to be asked work on this remaster?
TW: I’ve been developing games for a very long time and you know, you get excited. It starts as just a regular conversation, but then you build up a strategy so it can happen, and so when we started working on it that was just like very exciting. It brought out the kid at heart in me, booting up the game and playing it again – understanding or remembering what made me fell in love with the game in the first place. It just brought fond memories.
So then it’s a matter of taking all those good memories, all this love, and putting it into Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled so that fans of the original game can fall in love with it again, and newcomers can just discover it for the first time, and appreciate how great it is.
Thomas Wilson has a lot of love for Crash Team Racing, but did it translate into our hands-on with the game?
#Beenox #building #love #letter #original #Crash #Team #Racing #NitroFueled
Synthetic: Vik News
