Racing Cups

Racing cups are a type of tournament game mode seen in the racing games of the Crash Bandicoot series. Here, players participate in a series of three to four races with an accumulating score for each race. At the end of the tournament, the racer with the highest score gets crowned the winner.

Appearances
Racing cups have appeared in every racing game.

Crash Team Racing
In this game, Cup Race allows for up to four players to race together with a total of eight racers on a selection of four tracks. If every cup is won at a certain difficulty, a Battle Arena becomes available to use. Winning on easy difficulty unlocks Parking Lot, medium unlocking The North Bowl, and hard unlocking Lab Basement.

The track selection is not the same as in the Gem Cups of this game's Adventure Mode.

Crash Nitro Kart
Cups reappeared in Crash Nitro Kart, where they functioned similarly to the cups in Crash Team Racing. The main difference, however, is that these cups lack a fourth race. Also unlike Crash Team Racing, the track selection for these cups aren't shuffled around for the Adventure Mode's Gem Cups: the tracks featured in the Wumpa Cup, Uka Cup, Aku Cup, and Nitro Cup are exactly the same as in the Red Gem Cup, Green Gem Cup, Purple Gem Cup, and Blue Gem Cup, respectively.

Crash Tag Team Racing
In this game, the Cup Race mode is renamed Grand Prix, and each Grand Prix needed to be purchased in the Multiplayer menu's Gift Shop for local play usage, each of them based on the five sections of Von Clutch's MotorWorld. In these Grand Prixes, players race through three tracks, and the results for each race is based on how many Wumpa Coins they have earned, which is determined by their placement. Unlike in previous games however, each racer gets an additional 30 Wumpa Coins per KO they have made during the race, which adds up to the total score as well. The Grand Prix ends with an acapella cover of Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" that used in the graduation walking. A reference how the champions uses this march.

Crash Nitro Kart 2
Crash Nitro Kart 2 contains four courses per cup and has four cups in total. Each cup is unlocked by completing the previous one. Successfully completing a cup marks it with a star. Earning a star for each cup unlocks Sudden Death mode.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
Crash Nitro Kart 3D has four tracks in each cup again, like in Crash Team Racing, but only has three cups available. Each cup is unlocked by clearing the previous one. The letters C, R, A, S, and H can also be collected on certain tracks. Collecting these letters allows for the player to unlock a certain character.


 * ¹ - Contains the letters C, R, A, S, and H.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2
This game, the sequel of Crash Nitro Kart 3D, also features four Racing Cup Tournaments with three tracks each.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
This game combines the cups from Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart, with some slight differences made to the Crash Nitro Kart cups: as the Crash Team Racing cups have four tracks each, the Crash Nitro Kart cups now follow the same format, and conversely, there are only three Crash Nitro Kart cups as opposed to four. As there already exists a Wumpa Cup and a Nitro Cup in Crash Team Racing, the Wumpa Cup from Crash Nitro Kart has been replaced with the Velo Cup, and the Nitro Cup of Nitro Kart has its tracks being split over the Aku Cup, Uka Cup, and Lost Cup, the latter being added after an update.


 * ¹ - The Lost Cup was added in the 1.12 (PS4/Xbox One) and 1.0.8 (Switch) update. Prior to this update, Clockwork Wumpa and Oxide Station were two of three tracks that were not featured in any of the available cups.
 * ² - The Bonus Cup was added in the 1.16 (PS4/Xbox One) and 1.0.11 (Switch) update.
 * ³ - The Desert Cup and Space Cup were added in the 1.19 (PS4/Xbox One) and 1.0.14 (Switch) update.