Mario Kart makes a big deal of power-ups of course, but its are memorable, often avoidable tactical. Indeed, actual racing doesn't feel like the focus - the power-ups do. The hard difficulty level's quite challenging, but that shouldn't be mistaken for fun. Tracks are forgettable, shortcuts unnecessary, and drifting is just a case of tapping square as you turn - doing so builds up boost, but you rarely need it to win. That game continues to entertain me - not least because I keep figuring out new things about how it works, and the satisfaction of being able to manipulate the red-sparked drifting model to snake expertly through a pack of tight right-angled turns never gets old.

These days, you expect these things because of Mario Kart DS. What you do expect is tight track design and a supremely engaging racing model. The visual approach here is a bit like Tim Burton post-lobotomy. You just don't expect it in a kart racing game. For some reason, you also have to do lots of staple 90s-issue platforming to get to each race, collecting crystals and coins in the process and body-slamming ninja penguins. Okay, I haven't committed them to memory, which is actually quite symbolic of the whole experience). I think the idea is that some camp German's lost his marbles (or jewels or something - I don't know, I was buttering a crumpet at the time) and you have to buzz around an amusement park winning them back by racing through tracks in each of the themed zones (Happily Ever Faster, and er. And yet so it is in Crash Tag Team Racing. When I buy kart racing games, I don't expect to spend a quarter of an hour peering at load screens and cut-scenes and platforming before I get anywhere near a race. When I go to the pub, I don't try and buy sausage (not least because I usually go to the pub in Vauxhall, where the notion of buying sausage has all sorts of other connotations). When I go to the shops and I want a loaf of bread, I don't go into the butcher's.

Game ppsspp crash team racing