"Crash Team Racing" features 5 racing modes: Adventure, Time Trial, Arcade, Versus and Battle. In each mode, the player selects 1 from 8 characters to control. A PlayStation multitap can be installed to allow three or four-player games. The "Adventure Mode" is a one-player game where the player must race through all of the tracks and arenas in the game and collect as many trophies, Relics, Boss Keys, CTR Tokens and Gems as possible. The objective of the Adventure Mode is to save the world from the story's antagonist, Nitros Oxide, by winning races on 16 different tracks. In the beginning of the game, the player only has access to two levels. As the player wins more races, more tracks on multiple worlds become available. In each level, the player must win a trophy by coming in first place. When the player receives all four trophies in a world, the "Boss Garage" of that world can be accessed. In the Boss Garage, the player competes in a one-on-one race against a boss character. If the boss character is defeated, the character will relinquish a Boss Key, which the player uses to access new worlds and ultimately to face Oxide inside his spaceship.