Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

Mario Kart on the N64 is the standard I hold every kart racer to, and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled holds up better than most. Up to four people split the screen for races and battle modes, and clean drifting matters more than item luck. The AI does not go easy, so a player new to kart racing will spend the first few races at the back. That frustration is the price of a racer with some bite. On Game Pass it is console only, which rules out a laptop evening.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is not on Game Pass, so this is where the kart itch gets scratched, and it scratches harder than I expected. The drift is the whole game. You hop into a slide, hold it, and time a tap for a boost, and anyone who skips learning that gets lapped. I put it on for my kids first, then caught myself replaying time trials after they went to bed. Local split-screen works for a full couch. Younger players will need patience, because it is tougher than the mascot racer it usually gets compared to.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled remains the kart racer with the highest skill ceiling I've played, powersliding and boost-chaining rewarded far more than most mascot racers bother to reward anything. It's the closest Xbox gets to a Mario Kart rival built for people who actually want to get good rather than just have chaotic fun. The tracks are dense with shortcuts that take real practice to nail consistently. It drops to honorable mention status mainly because Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds now covers similar ground with fresher visuals, and this one is starting to show its age outside of the core driving model, which somehow still holds up.

Racing has always belonged on a couch, and I've put plenty of hours into Forza and Gran Turismo, but those are sim-leaning experiences that ask a lot of a casual guest. Crash Team Racing isn't that. Four-player split-screen, karts, weapons, tracks that don't punish you for taking a corner wrong, and everyone at the table has a shot at winning regardless of skill. The battle mode alone is worth a full evening if racing itself gets old. It's an older game getting by on a solid remaster rather than new ideas, and the roster leans heavily on nostalgia for people who grew up with the original. For a group that wants chaos over precision, it beats the sim racers every time.

The list needed a kart racer and Crash Team Racing is the strongest one currently available on PlayStation for four-player split-screen. It plays faster and more technically than most kart games, which is either a selling point or a warning depending on your group. It runs via backward compatibility rather than as a native PS5 title, which cost it some points on polish, but the local racing itself holds up well. If your household has been waiting for a proper kart racer on PS5 and does not own a Switch, this is currently the best answer available.

CTR looks like a kids' game and then humiliates you on the first real circuit. The boost-chaining system rewards practice in a way that most kart racers deliberately avoid, and the shortcuts are genuinely worth learning rather than decorative. My kids can play it and enjoy it at one level while I am optimizing reserve boosts at another. That range across skill levels is rare. Online remains active as of mid-2026, which matters on a game this age. If you want a kart racer with real mechanical depth underneath the cartoon presentation, this is the pick.