I am told by our friend who has played Nitro Kart that the tracks and characters looked good, although there were some key things about certain tracks that had been changed for the worse. In the later game there are also gem cups that only unlock after certain conditions are met.
Only by collecting all the time trial boxes, being exceptionally skilled, or a combination of both will net you a platinum. Relics can be sapphire, gold, or platinum. In addition to just trophy-collecting, there are also CTR races, where you have to collect three tokens (a “C”, “T”, and “R”) around the track while also winning the race to earn a CTR token, and relic races, where you race around the track as fast as you can while breaking golden time trial boxes to take precious seconds off your time to earn a relic. Through the adventure mode, you travel through four areas, each with five tracks, earning trophies by winning a race on each track and defeating bosses (all villains from previous games) and unlocking each new area until you finally reach your race with Oxide. The story of CTR is very simple: Crash and his friends and foes have suddenly taken to kart racing and one day a villainous alien named Nitrous Oxide appears and threatens to turn their planet into a parking lot…unless the fastest among him can best him in a race. The original Crash Team Racing (or CTR for short) came out in 1999 on the Playstation and despite being a blatant Mario Kart ripoff, it very easily eclipsed it in terms of handling and track design.
Image of me nitpicking the differences between American and British English