Lonely At The Top

Lonely At The Top

A game I loved…

Lewis Anderson once loved to powerslide. Now he can’t bear the thought…

I remember the first time I played 1999 Naughty Dog racer CTR: Crash Team Racing. It was only a demo from a CD off the front of a magazine, and it felt like a poor man’s Mario Kart: it was slow to play and slow to captivate. I skimmed through the demo and swiftly rejected it.

But after reading a little more about it, I grew curious. I heard tales of high speeds and frantic mechanics that sounded totally unlike the game I had played. Although it was only a demo that I’d tried, the game couldn’t have changed that much, could it? So I went back. And just like that, I was hooked.

Reborn in speed

Instantly, the game had transformed from a dull, plodding racer to petrol-fuelled insanity. Getting a good powerslide and some decent airtime gave you a boost, and boosts could be chained together, meaning breakneck speeds were of the essence. Even the hardest difficulty settings became trivial as I madly played hour after hour in some twisted mission to master the game.

I later bought the full version and played it to extinction, before one day putting it on The Good Shelf: an area of furniture solely dedicated to what has transcended being a mere object. There it proudly sat, smack between B-Movie and Commandos 2 – games never to be sold, always to be treasured.

And so I went on, living my life, occasionally meeting others who’d played it but not truly mastered it like I thought I had. They would frantically battle with the AI racers while I raced as though there was a gun to my head, almost disappointed that I could win so easily.

The days of pre-online gaming meant you could only play others in person, and every person I played was worse than me. I thought I was the best in the world, the Usain Bolt of CTR, and I was proud of it. No one was good enough for me. Or so I thought.

A chance meeting with a friend of a friend changed all that. He just happened to have his PlayStation 3 on him (as you do) and after a few hours of casual playing we grew bored and scrolled through the things he had on his hard disk.

What did I spy with my little eye? Lurking in the list was a tiny but instantly recognisable icon. I turned to him slowly. “Is that… Crash Team Racing?” I asked. Perhaps, at last, sitting in front of me was someone worthy of being called a rival. A nemesis! He looked back, eyebrow raised. “Played it much?” he said.

Photo finish

And in the blink of an eye, it was on. Finally I had found someone equal to my ability. He too knew how to powerslide, knew how to boost, knew all the shortcuts. Races were fierce as we ploughed through the tracks, neck and neck all the way with sometimes only luck deciding who won. It was like a dream come true! I finally had my challenge and I relished every minute.

But then, as we came to the final tracks, I realised that there was a chance I could lose. We had a league going behind the races and we were pretty much equal on points. One slip up, one accident, and it could all go his way. I couldn’t let that happen. After all the years of thinking I was the greatest, that would destroy me.

We raced on and came to the final track. Like in a bad film, it had come down to the last race, and a jolt of anxiety ran through me as the light turned green. We boosted away from the startuing line, inches between us as we carved up the circuit with our powerslides. My thumbs hurt and my eyes strained, but through the pain I gradually chiselled out a lead over him. I was winning! I had nothing to fear! I was the greatest!

And then, on the last straight, he got me. A bomb, fired from what seemed like a mile away, caught me on the last corner, sending me over the edge of the course. He had all the time in the world to catch up, overtake me and cross the line. He had won.

He watched his character celebrate atop the podium, then patted me on the back and parted with “Good game, mate.” My world shattered, and to him it was just a game.

CTR: Crash Team Racing no longer sits on The Good Shelf.