Naughty Dog’s classic PlayStation kart racer, Crash Team Racing, has been supercharged with 60FPS and widescreen support thanks to some clever modders.
The update comes from a team of Crash Team Racing fans who have spent the past two years digging through the source code of the PS1 original to create the 60FPS and widescreen modes.
Bringing the modern quality of life changes to Crash Team Racing required Brazil-based modder Darkaiser, and engineers Niko, Faradise, Redhot, and Super to research and implement over six hundred changes to the source code. Darkaiser shared a release trailer for the mod online along with instructions on how to play this new version of Crash Team Racing.
The widescreen and 60FPS mod required extensive testing to ensure the changes wouldn’t break Crash Team Racing. More than ten testers collaborated to provide over one thousand hours of testing for the new mod with delivers an incredibly smooth gameplay experience within PS1 emulator Duckstation.
Darkaiser describes the update as “the most logically-complex mod ever built into CTR, and the largest QA testing effort, out of all the mods in this entire channel”.
Super-Mod
I’ve taken the new mod for a spin this morning and the 60FPS and widescreen support is certainly impressive, and the amount of work the team have undertaken to make CTR run so well is truly inspiring.
The 60FPS and widescreen updates required the team of modders to embrace a change in direction during development. Rather than modding the original game, the team instead worked on “rewritten” code. enabling a whole suite of previously developed mods to function simultaneously. Darkaiser confirmed the intention to ultimately combine every mod into one “super-mod” and teases more updates coming soon.
Activision produced a remake of the PS1 original with 2019’s Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled. The Beenox title saw the 1999 original remade in Unreal Engine, with gorgeous graphics, additional content, and extensive online multiplayer options.
