I’ve stopped really caring about the free games doled out by Xbox and PlayStation every month as part of their digital subscriptions. They’re nice to have; It’s always lovely getting something extra to play on top of something you’re paying for anyway. Later today, Sony will reveal the games that’ll be available as part of the PlayStation Plus Instant Games …

I’ll forever associate Nintendo with platformers and collect-a-thons. You could blame their iconic plumber in red, but it also comes from past comparisons. While Banjo-Kazooie was busy gathering up music notes, the height of digital combat realism was being experienced with Metal Gear Solid over on the Playstation. This is, of course, a gross misconception as colourful kid-friendly mascots collecting …

Twenty years later, and Crash Team Racing is back on the trac, ready to kick some marsupial butt and leave the competition in its dust. Alessandro recently had a chance to take the game for a few laps, and believe it or not…He’s actually good at this game.

Crash Team Racing is almost unbelievably faithful to the original PlayStation 1 kart racer from Naughty Dog. Whipping my kart around the long corners of Tiny Arena felt like I was a kid again, experiencing arcade kart racing for the first time again while mastering all the right jumps and angles for efficient boosts and drifts. But like both the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro Trilogy remasters before it, Crash Team Racing using more powerful hardware to make these remakes stand out in new ways. With Crash Team Racing that’s clearly evident in its more effects heavy and detailed races, but modern enhancements are taking hold off the track too.

For every Sonic, there’s something infinitely worse hiding in those nostalgia mines. The cheapest clone, the rank odour of imitation that came from an age where every publisher wanted a slice of anthropomorphic pie. Here’s a look, at ten of the worst offenders.

Seems as though Crash Team Racing is getting its long-awaited reveal at The Game Awards this week. Start your engines!

If you don’t mind the lower resolution and slightly less crisp visuals, then the Switch version is incredibly easy to recommend, especially as it gains portability. It’s a cracking port of one of the best remasters around. If you already own it on PS4 and don’t care for playing it on a handheld, then you can safely give it a skip.

Crash is getting his first brand new stage in many a year, thrown directly into the N Sane Trilogy. Called Future Tense, the new stage can be accessed from Crash Warped and features a wholly original design with more challenging elements that were designed to test players of any skill level.