The original title for this game was Crash Team Racing 2.
This game was originally going to be developed by Traveller's Tales Oxford Studios and introduce Nina Cortex to the series. After development was passed to Vicarious Visions, Nina's introduction was pushed to Twinsanity (which, ironically, was beaten by Purple's earlier release).
Naughty Dog had a credited participation in the development of this game for sharing certain assets to aid with development. Adding to this, Joe Pearson and Charles Zembillas (who created the art and characters for the original game) created much of the game's art, including environments and character designs.
A "Retro Option" was planned early on in the game. This option would take the player into driving recreations of the Crash Team Racing tracks, with completely new and different visuals applied to the old track layouts.
The game was planned to have a full-fledged online mode. Various references to this mode, including a "Virtual Lobby", can still be found in the game's data, as well as a spectator mode (likely intended for players as they waited to join the next race after finding a lobby).
Polar, Pura, and Zam's voices were not changed for the Japanese version, most likely because they don't speak.
Geary was originally named Otto and Krunk was named Kongo. They are still referred to by those names in some of the game's data.
The track Meteor Gorge was initially called Frozen Frenzy. That name was eventually given to the battle arena. Out of Time was called Out of Mime (a reference to Norm), Thunder Struck was Head N. Clouds, and Electron Avenue was Electric Avenue. Planet Terra was also called Lost Earth at first.
Velo's name is probably taken from the word 'velocity'.
Jungle Boogie is named after the 1973 song by Kool & the Gang.
Electron Avenue is named after the song called Electric Avenue (and, in fact, that was this race track's original name).
Clockwork Wumpa is a reference to the novel turned movie, A Clockwork Orange.
The PAL and NTSC covers for this game use character renders from The Wrath of Cortex. The N-Gage cover is a mix: it shows Crash in his Twinsanity design, Cortex as he appeared ion The Wrath of Cortex, and Tiny and Coco as they actually appear in this game.
Terra is the Latin, Portuguese, and Italian name for Earth.
Dingodile's line: "Move over, ya spruce goose!" might be an odd reference to the old airplane with the same name.
Cortex's line: "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Tiny..." is a reference to The Wizard of Oz, where the main character Dorothy tells her dog: "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto."
The lab assistant head statues in Tiny Temple parody the giant Moai heads from Easter Island.
A statue of Komodo Joe can be found in Jungle Boogie.
Remixes
You can hear part of the WARPED theme in the intro FMV.
Inferno Island is a remix of Crash Team Racing's Crash Cove, as both tracks are visually similar and use the same beach motif.
