Earlier this year, Activision released a remaster of the beloved Crash Team Racing. Now subtitled Nitro-Fueled, it’s another example of a remaster done right.
“As we got with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro’s recent remakes, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is a loving remake of the PlayStation’s best kart racer. It’s still as fun to play today as it was twenty years ago.”
One of the most surprising things about the game was its economy. There’s a store, where you’re able to buy skins, carts and digital accoutrement. Given it’s a game that was released in 2019, that’s not surprising. What was surprising was the fact that you could only earn money for that store by racing, like in the good old days. The game had zero real-money microtransactions. I say had, because it looks like they’ve been snuck in in the game’s latest update.
As part of the latest update, the game is getting a Back in Time Grand Prix, which includes a shiny new dinosaur-themed level. The whole affair includes karts, characters, items, the aforementioned track which will offer “Jurassic-sized flora, violent geysers bursting from the ground, caves with mysterious wall-paintings, and of course, giant dinosaurs roaming the land”.
It’ll also introduce real-life microtransactions, despite promises from the developers before release that the game would be free of them. While it doesn’t make that much of a difference to the game, sneaking them in a few months after release is what we like to call, in technical parlance, a bit of a dick move. For starters, because the US’s games rating agency mandates that games that have microtransactions say so on the physical game boxes, Crash Team Racing is on shelves without one, despite now having them – and that’s a little misleading.
Thankfully, future prints of the game will have the requisite labelling, as Techraptor confirmed with the ESRB.
“After adding In-Game Purchases to Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, Activision will include the In-Game Purchases notice on all future prints of the game. We do not require stickering in these scenarios. In the meantime, we have already updated the ESRB rating for Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled on esrb.org.”
That all said, I think this is a tactic we can probably expect more of.
Last Updated: July 31, 2019
Admiral Chief Umbra
July 31, 2019 at 08:56
MTs, if done right (and by right, I mean ONLY IN WARFRAME), can word (AND ONLY IN WARFRAME)
For the rest, they can GITMFS
Pariah
July 31, 2019 at 09:12
You know, I felt like dota’s MTX so far has been the best implemented. Warframe is still a bit expensive for what you get, PoE’s costs are fucking insane, and the gambling loot boxes many of these other games have are just a fat no.
In the end, all MTX is designed to make you spend more money than you aught to. No matter how well they’re implemented, they’re all, by their very nature, predatory. Some prefer to lie in wait or scavenge, while others prefer the pack hunt, but that doesn’t change their nature.
Guz
July 31, 2019 at 09:12
I’ve spent about R500 on my battle pass this year in dota…….. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fbf1806b0038a2338ada0022e24b928801ead4a7a72a631ec95ab56efd6cbde4.jpg
Pariah
July 31, 2019 at 09:12
I look back and think of all the money I dropped on those and I just think about what I could’ve bought instead, and I sigh.
Dresden
July 31, 2019 at 19:43
This years Battle Pass has been the worst one so far, in my opinion anyway.
I don’t spend more than the entry level for a BP and earning levels is much more difficult comparatively to the previous ones.
Guz
August 1, 2019 at 08:45
I think that’s why the prize pool grew so much this year, it is so hard to grind the levels. Also this years event is super shit, I think Ive played 1 match
Yahtzee
July 31, 2019 at 08:56
Activision being Activision as usual.
Original Heretic
July 31, 2019 at 09:12
Boooo-urns!!
Guz
July 31, 2019 at 09:12
Lol can you imagine the conversation that goes on in his head, hahaha