Crash Team Racing

The first spin-off of the Crash Bandicoot series, as well as the last game of the series by original developer Naughty Dog. As a Mascot Racer it shares many elements with the genre-codifier Mario Kart, including multiple characters, randomised weapon pick-ups and zany courses.

The game's plot revolves around an alien named Nitros Oxide, who has challenged the racers of the world to compete for the fate of the Earth. Heroes and villains from the previous games have entered the race to ensure the planet's survival.

The game has a single-player adventure mode similar to Diddy Kong Racing where the player drives around a hub-world to access different races, victories in which earn you items used to unlock more of the map. Most levels have one of each of these items to get:

Trophies: For winning a vanilla race
CTR tokens: Remember the Silver Coin Challenges in Diddy Kong Racing? Well, they're back, but this time you only need to get 3 letters in each race.
Relics: Similar to Crash 3, the courses are littered with time-stopping crates. Finish 3 laps with a good time for a sapphire or gold relic. Or platinum.
There's also bosses and multi-race cups through the adventure, and the battle arenas are converted into contests where you have to get all the crystals in the arena before running out of time (which is cut if you hit a Nitro crate).

Tropes used in Crash Team Racing include:

Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Sewer Speedway.
Comeback Mechanic: As is standard in a kart racer.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The bosses in Adventure mode have infinite items (of the trap variety, and they are laid CONSTANTLY). Oxide starts the race before the green light!
Double Unlock: To get to race Oxide for a second time and beat the game, all you have to do is beat the time trials on every course. Easy, right? Well, that includes a track that's only unlockable if you collect all five gems. How do you get those? Beat a cup race, four races in a row for one gem. How do you unlock those? Collect 4 tokens of the cup's respective color by beating races and collecting letters around the course.
Enemy Mine: Everybody teams up against Oxide to save the world; most of the playable roster is made up of bosses from the previous games, in fact. That said, they are competing to be the one who races Oxide. Even the bosses (except for Oxide, of course) are really on your side and are essentially sparring partners. Their job is to make sure that Earth's champion is actually capable of defeating Oxide, because the entire planet loses if the champion loses.
Gainaxing: The trophy girls.
Go Karting With Neo Cortex: And there are actually more bad guys that good guys as playable characters!
Mad Scientist Laboratory: N. Gin Labs.
One Stat to Rule Them All: Due to how power sliding works, acceleration tends to not be much of a factor for a good player, who will remain at top speed the whole race, and having a high turning stat may prove to be hindering, preventing a character to power slide in a straight line (sound familiar?); so characters are tiered pretty much based on their speed.
Palmtree Panic: Crash Cove.
Regional Bonus: Penta Penguin, the secretmost character, is a run-of-the-mill beginner character in the NTSC version, but, in the PAL version, has all stats maxed out.
Remixed Level: Well, sorta. While some of the tracks in this game are original, most of the courses are racetrack versions of the levels from the Crash Bandicoot platformer trilogy. Most of them focus on Cortex Strikes Back, and few on Crash 1 and Warped. Also, the battle stages remix seven of the game's courses. For example: Lab Basement corresponds to N. Gin Labs, and Nitro Court to Cortex Castle.

Shark Tunnel: Most of Roo's Tubes takes place in one of these.
Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Blizzard Bluff and Polar Pass.
Took a Level in Badass: Every item has a "juiced-up" version if you have 10 wumpa fruit (which are scattered around the course and also slightly increase your speed, like coins in classic Mario Kart).
The Unintelligible: Ripper Roo, whose speaks in mad laughter.
Wacky Racing
"Wake-Up Call" Boss: Papu Papu. Very fast, tricky track. The game after him begins to shape up a bit.
Warmup Boss: Ripper Roo is a character with low top speed, who is raced in one of the more simple tracks of the game, and his trademark trap can be easily shaken off.
Where Are They Now? Epilogue: Played for Laughs, of course. Like how Pinstripe becomes an used car salesman in New Jersey or how Cortex found a new element he calls (and patents as) "Cortexrulestheworldium".
A Winner Is You: Beat all of Oxide's ghosts in time trial... and you can see from the main menu the scrapbook you get shown if you complete Adventure mode.