Crash Nitro Kart (Traveller's Tales)
It's hard to believe, but Crash Nitro Kart was initially to be developed by Traveller's Tales Oxford, before the production being handed over to Vicarious Visions in favor of a Game Boy Advance version.
Pitching
Paul Gardner recalls an early pitch, where the vehicles would have taken damage until just a single wheel remained, but could be repaired using pick-ups from around the track.
Sketch of Dr. Cortex from a TTOxford Crash racing game pitch. Can't remember what the name was. 2001-ish? The vehicles would have taken damage until just a single wheel remained, and repairable using pick-ups from around the track. (Source: Paul Gardner)
Nina Cortex's debut
As you can see, the game would have served as Nina Cortex's debut in the series, however, after the shift between the studios occured, Traveller's Tales Oxford decided to keep their Nina concept art to include her in a future game. Unbeknownst to them, Vicarious Visions introduced her in Crash Bandicoot Fusion one year prior to the release of Crash Twinsanity, which really surprised and shocked the developers at Traveller's Tales Oxford, because they haven't told anyone about her.
Yeah, I actually remember when we first found out about that! I was looking through some of the newly released screenshots from Crash Fusion, and could just make out the image of Nina Cortex's portait on the HUD (if I'm remembering correctly!). I went over to the lead designer, and the producer, and pointed this out to them, and they were shocked! Apparently they knew nothing about it!
It probably hit the lead Game Designer, Paul Gardner, the most...as he was really fond of the character Nina Cortex, and was responsible for a lot of the characterisation and development of her... so I think he probably felt annoyed that she was going to appear in another game first, when Twinsanity was supposed to be her debut! (Keith Webb, 2012)
Here's an early Nina Cortex sketch by Duke Mighten, featuring a somewhat different race car.
Nina was designed by [Duke Mighten] for a Crash racing game, but we loved her so much that we used in [Twinsanity]. I built this model so we could quickly see her in the game. The body is modified from Dr. Cortex's, built by Jon Derby.
Nina Cortex's early test character model was built from Dr. Cortex's body.
Gallery
(Source: Paul Gardner and Keith Webb, former Traveller's Tales Oxford employees. Nina Concept art (c) Duke Mighten)
Trivia
- A similar race car to the one in the Nina Cortex concept art, the Rocket, is an unlockable car body in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled.
Sources
- Paul Gardner's Twitter posts: 1, 2, 3
- "Interview with Keith Webb (Twinsanity)" on Crash Mania