Development
The game was tentatively titled Crash Team Racing 2 during its pre-production phase. The characters of the game were designed by series veteran Charles Zembillas, while the environments were designed by Joe Pearson (another veteran of the series), John Nevarez, Alan Simmons and Di Davies. The karts were designed by Perry Zombolis Jr. and Andy Lomerson. Recognizing that full motion video sequences have become the new norm in state-of-the-art video games, Universal Interactive decided that Crash Nitro Kart would be the first game in the Crash Bandicoot series to feature such cinematics. The cutscenes of Crash Nitro Kart were created by Red Eye Studios; pre-production of the cutscenes was handled by Epoch Ink. The screenplay of the cutscenes was written by Dan Tanguay. The studio's eight artists were given four months to create 32 minutes of pre-rendered cinematics. The actual animation phase was to be completed in 15 weeks, breaking down to almost five shots a day or 15 seconds of animation per day for each artist. The in-game versions of the character models were built using 3ds Max and were outfitted with full inverse kinematic setups, morph targets and UV texture maps by Vicarious Visions. These models could not be ported directly into the cinematics due to their lower resolution for optimal real-time interactivity. Instead, the artists of Red Eye Studios worked from concept sketches provided by Vicarious Visions and used Alias Systems' Maya (with which the artists were more familiar) to enhance the detail of the 27 character models in the game, including the Crash Bandicoot character.
Given the task of forming the personalities of the Crash Nitro Kart cast through the full-motion videos, the Red Eye Studio artists set certain rules for how each character would carry itself by default. As animator Thomas Happ noted, "N. Gin, for example, would always default to twitchy, side-to-side glances, while Tiny would often scratch his head in confusion. There were a lot of scenes where the characters are just standing around listening to Emperor Velo talk, and we had to invent ways to personalize their mannerisms and create a uniquely 'thinking character'." To achieve the bold and deeply saturated colors and textures for the characters and environments, the artists used Maya as well as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. While the artists adapted many of the sets and props in the cinematics from in-game counterparts, they recreated the majority of these objects from scratch in order to add surrealism to the scenery. The cinematics were completed well in advance of the four-month deadline. The console version of Crash Nitro Kart was announced by Vivendi Universal prior to the Electronic Entertainment Expo of 2003, while the N-Gage version was announced on February 16, 2004.
The soundtrack of the game was composed by Ashif Hakik and Todd Masten of Womb Music, while the sound design was created by New Media Audio, a subsidiary of Technicolor Creative Services. Masten was contracted to create the score for the game after leaving Vicarious Visions and returning to California from New York. Based on his research of the Crash Bandicoot series' "very recognizable" sound palette, Masten incorporated numerous percussive tonal instruments into the score of Crash Nitro Kart. Masten extensively used the then-recently-released Reason program by Propellerhead Software in the writing of his score for the game, making Crash Nitro Kart Masten's first entirely digital score. Universal Interactive was so satisfied with the score Masten created that he was asked to remix a custom soundtrack disc as part of a special package deal with Walmart; Crash Nitro Kart is the second video game composed by Masten to receive a soundtrack release. The game is also among the first to support the 5.1 surround sound format.
The voice cast of the game consists of Clancy Brown as Doctor Neo Cortex and Uka Uka, Mel Winkler as Aku Aku, Kevin Michael Richardson as Crunch Bandicoot and an advisor of Velo, Debi Derryberry as Coco Bandicoot and Polar, Steven Blum as Emperor Velo XXVII and Crash Bandicoot, Billy West as Nash and Zam, Dwight Schultz as Dingodile and Fake Crash, Marshall R. Teague as Krunk, John DiMaggio as Tiny Tiger, Michael Ensign as Doctor Nefarious Tropy, Quinton Flynn as Doctor N. Gin and Nitrous Oxide, André Sogliuzzo as Norm and Zem, Paul Greenberg as Geary and Pura and Tom Bourdon as N. Trance and an advisor of Velo.
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